Van Jones Not Fired - Just Transferred to Another Division of Soros Inc

They really aren't gone -- they're just hiding in the woodwork, like rats. In case you are worried about Van Jones future employment, don't. Or Tom Daschle, or for that matter the ex-employees of ACORN.

All in all, though, an excellent job has been done to expose these people, and the investigative reporting should continue in the absense of a real media. RedState is one of them, as in this piece:


Van Jones Not Fired - Just Tansferred to Another Division of Soros Inc.
This is like watching 'Lost'. People don't seem to stay dead
Posted by E Pluribus Unum, September 15, 2009

You did not suffer under the delusion that Democrats are ashamed of their America-haters, cretins, adulterers, racists, perjurers, thieves, tax cheats, and other criminals, did you?

Did you now?

September 6 - Van Jones resigns under pressure as Obama’s ‘Green Jobs Czar’.

September 9 - He’s back at the Center for American Progress, where he was previously a Senior Fellow.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that (NTTAWWT), of course.

Make no mistake. Van Jones is well taken care of. Just like Louis Caldera, the fall-guy for that Air Force One fly-over stunt over Lower Manhattan, who also now works at CAP. Tom Daschle is getting along just fine, as is Perjurin’ Bill Clinton. And don’t be surprised at all if convicted felon William Jefferson (D-LA) is well-taken care of once he’s done his time. He’ll land some fat-cat do-nothing job under some leftist umbrella group. No Democrat is ever shamed out of public life; they’re merely transferred to a less visible position from which to continue the same subversion.

CAP is not just *any* old think tank. It is Soros-backed and operated by Clintonista John Podesta. It has a 180-person staff, including at least 10 full-time bloggers, and a $27 million budget. Podesta ran Obama’s transition team. CAP holds policy briefings that are reportedly packed full of reporters and lobbyists who want to get a feel of where the administration is going. They write policy that ends up in these 1,000 page bills Obama keeps trying to shove down our throats.

It is hard to tell where the Obama administration stops and Center for American Progress starts, no? The sad, sick truth is that this nut-job America-hating 9/11 truther will be allowed to influence policy and legislation probably no less than from his position as Green Jobs Czar.

Democrats are primarily about the accumulation and securing of power to themselves, and the advancement of government control over the lives of America’s citizens. It is the fatal flaw of flatulent braying camels like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Trent Lott, Bill O’Reilly, populists, independents, Rockefellerians, and RMSP toads that they assume otherwise, in spite of decades of finding “Kick Me’ signs on their backs and having the Lucy-Charlie Bown-football scene played out too many times to count.

When you understand the nature of the enemy, you have a chance to defeat it — loosely rendered Sun Tzu. Driving Van Jones out of his position was a good thing. Success breeds success, and conservatives are lately on a tremendous roll that may yet topple the entire leftist gameplan, from top to bottom. Just don’t think because we take down a leftist orc that he’s *actually* down until we see his rotting political corpse burning in a pile with the other one.

MEDIA WATCHDOG HAS NO BARK

Back in the day, the media was our watchdog.  It kept all phases of government honest, and hence was under constant scrutiny and intimidation.  Freedom of the press has been hard fought down through our history, and a welcome sight at our door each morning.

Times have definitely changed, and none more obvious that this past year.  The Heritage Foundation writes:

Media Watchdog Has No Bark
The Heritage Foundation, September 15, 2009

In the age of Obama, the media formerly known as mainstream can remind one of 19th century British literature. Pride and Prejudice sometimes, of course, but more often a favorite Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze. In it, the famous sleuth has the following exchange with Inspector Gregory:

Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

The media, you see, used to have something called a “watchdog” role in this country, by which it was understood that they worked for society and protected it against those in power, preventing abuse. But as with the Sherlock Holmes case of the “dog that didn’t bark,” old traditional media such as the New York Times, network television, National Public Radio and PBS, are not doing much, if anything, to keep those in power in check. For that today, one has to rely on blogs and popular outlets such as FOX News. In fact, FOX News gets labeled as conservative for merely fulfilling this obligation.

The New York Times, for example, ran zero—that’s right, zero—stories on Van Jones, the Obama Administration “green jobs” Czar before he was forced to quit last weekend. It was left to investigative reporting by conservative bloggers, amplified by FOX News, to reveal that Jones had signed a petition accusing the Bush administration of allowing 9/11 to happen so they could have a pretext to wage war on Iraq. This was a man with real power and real budget authority. In fact his department’s budget nearly doubled the total annual budget for NASA. But not only did the New York Times or the networks never devote any resources to investigate, even after the revelations of his obvious instability came to light, the traditional media outlets sat on the story.

Much, much worse, has been the silence on ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the community shakedown artists for whom President Obama worked with when he was a community organizer. ACORN also has real power—it was going to work with the Department of Commerce on the 2010 Census—and receives tens of millions of dollars annually in tax payer money.

It was left to a couple of 20-somethings working for the new BigGovernment.com site to break omerta on ACORN by releasing videos of ACORN employees conspiring to help avoid taxes for a criminal enterprise. Thanks to these new media types, last night, in an 83-7 vote, the Senate voted to strip all funding of ACORN from the transportation housing and urban development appropriations bill.

Why didn’t the old media report on Jones, or ACORN? Where was 60 Minutes, or 20/20? And where are all the old media on the tea party protestors? Why do they keep denigrating them, emphasizing how angry they are, or how they are unrepresentative of the public? When was the last time tens of thousands of people showed up on the steps of the Capitol, less than a year after an election, to speak up against out of control federal spending? Many across all sides of the spectrum are taking note. One of the left’s sharpest minds, Camille Paglia, observed in an article in Salon last week that:

Too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web—both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights.

No wonder that, according to Pew Research this week, two thirds of Americans do not trust the media, the lowest ranking ever. And no wonder that Glenn Beck, the FOX commentator who went after the Jones story, gets 2.6 million viewers every day, while his closest competitor at the same time slot gets 600,000 on a good day.

The old media is busy keeping the administration accountable—the Bush Administration, that is. NPR this morning had another long piece on the investigations into Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft. Trouble is, the Bush administration is no longer in power.

In the case of the dog that didn’t bark, the pooch stayed silent because it was friendly with the man who committed the transgression. Today the left has all the power, controlling the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the media in all the above-named outlets are acting like adoring supporters. Is that the reason this watchdog isn’t barking?

Democracy, Thomas Jefferson believed, could only survive if the populace was informed, and that, he believed, was the job of newspapers. Thank God, at least, for those media still doing their jobs.

OBAMA'S BUNKER MENTALITY

Anybody need more proof what a disgrace the media is? Last week had some pretty historic events revealed by good old fashioned investigative reporting -- Van Jones and ACORN's child prostitution scandal. They completely ignored the 9-12 March on DC, and to their peril. The American people are not stupid, and the press are treating them as so. It's the 'If we don't report it, then it didn't really happen or certainly wasn't worth reporting' mentality.

Remember the days of Woodward & Bernstein looking for the truth? Oh my, when the public loses confidence in the mainstream media reporting, the media will be overlooked for accurate informative reporting -- and there's lots of it.

Here's a brilliant piece by Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs (go girl!):


Obama's Bunker Mentality
by Pamela Geller, September 13, 2009

Into the bunker he went ......................

While the largest civilian march on Washington in the nation's history was taking place, dear leader was hiding in Minneapolis. Like a dog marking his territory, O took to the stage where the RNC held their convention last year. In yet another staged event, Obama was given his daily fix of faux cheering to feed his insatiable head.
 

The face of a divider. (photo hat tip Van)

 
This march on Washington was of enormous historic import, an American phenomenon, and the media (save FOX) would not cover it. They are washed up. This week alone they failed to report on Van Jones, the huge child prostitution scandal at ACORN, O's plummeting popularity...... When the news won't report the news and the folks find out they aren't reporting the news, the folks will do to the media what the media did to Terry Schiavo.

For every person who showed up in DC there were at least 100 who didn't but wanted to. The O-bots know this. The propagandists, disinformationalists and their corrupt media activist tools will minimize it, marginalize, ridicule it, but they will not stop us. This is the beginning of the end for them (if not them, us).

We now have a President who seeks to divide and destroy. Has the nation ever been so at odds? Not since the civil war. And in a stunning paradox, we now have a president seeking to enslave half the American people.

LAST NIGHT (HEALTHCARE SPEECH) DIDN'T QUITE DO IT

In a look back to last week's unbelievable health care speech, full of lies, one has to admire the audacity of this man who calls out specific people, namely Sarah Palin, and admonishes his opponents.

Methinks he needs to clean his own house, before casting stones. PajamasMedia writes:


Last Night Didn't Quite Do It
by Victor Davis Hanson, September 10, 2009

Obama’s problem with warning Americans about bickering, partisan politics, lying, and misrepresentation last night is that his green advisor Van Jones just left after it was disclosed that he called Republicans “a–holes”, whites polluters / more prone to mass murder in schools, and charged the former President with involvement in 9/11. Obama said nothing about such “lying” and “misrepresentation” in his administration–other than to warn school kids to be careful what they put on facebook, twitter and the internet since it can be brought back up for the rest of their lives (i.e., poor Van Jones).

Like ‘hope and change’, ‘this is our moment’, and the now old ‘greatest time in history’ tropes, so too we are getting used to a highly partisan president complaining about partisanship.

Yet, all the American people wanted last night was 1) the rough cost and where the money comes from (not more gimmicks that bad people will have to cut their profits or magic savings will come from waste and fraud [if the latter is really true, why not bank the savings right now?]); 2) how those who fall through the cracks will be covered (is it 30, 46, or how many million in Obama’s latest version?); and some appreciation that a great system can be improved, rather than the old anecdotes about victims of bad people that we’ve become used to on the campaign trail. (Trying to attach his agenda to the condolences of Ted Kennedy or raising the bloody shirt that more will “die” will not scare or charm a reluctant public that likes its present health and is uneasy about a state-run plan with caretakers of the likes of a Geithner or Jones. Most believe that more will in fact die if we have a Canadian or British style system that devolves into rationing care.)

The President really has to watch this constant return to these soaring cadences that deliver banalities. One cannot sound like Lincoln if there really is no message. It is time to move on, ignore criticism, and offer something that most can work with; instead, after 9 months we are getting a ‘they are mean to me’ whine at about every speech and photo-op, in the manner of biblical prophets who lash out at doubters.

Obama never gives many concrete details, nor gets precise and concise, and now one wonders whether it is because he simply thinks he can go to the hope and change / soar like an eagle mode, and we will once more get mesmerized, or he has nothing to say at all, or both. But most caught on to all that, and now want a plan, not a prophet.

Bottom line? Obama should just borrow from the Republican plan, assure the Democrats he’s extending coverage to those uncovered, and then, and only then, go back to his eagle routine and soar with it in the stratosphere with “I alone hoped and changed health care.”

OBAMA'S PLAN TO DESECRATE 9/11

Today we remember and honor the men and women we lost this day, September 11, 2001. God bless them.

Ironically, Obama found the time to travel to New York City to speak at Walter Cronkite's funeral, but not today. Twisting 9/11 into a national day of service is an outrage. It's an insult and insensitive. We're rekindling our spirit of (community) service? Obama is completely disconnected, and to make a point:

"..... It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Nov-1863

From the great American Spectator: (h/t Rush Limbaugh)

Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11
by Matthew Vadum, August 24, 2009

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

The administration's plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.

Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the "Democracy Now" radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. "I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die," he said.

On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning," and "productive," said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."

A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.

Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.

With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.

"The organizing term is to 'go dark.' You don't tell the press, don't tell people you think will tell the press," said the source.

Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don't see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.

"When you criticize them, they are prepared to say, 'Did you want 9/11 to be another day of selling mattresses, like Presidents Day?" the source said. "They are truly trying to change the American mindset."

They view Sept. 11 as a "Republican" day because it focuses the public on supposedly "Republican" issues like patriotism, national security, and terrorism. According to liberals, 9/11 was long ago hijacked by Republicans and their enablers and unfairly used to bludgeon helpless Democrats at election time.

MSNBC's foremost left-wing bloviator, Keith Olbermann, summed up this ugly perspective the week after the Republican Party convention last year:

But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It
has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without -- literally -- any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.

On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration's plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity "for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America."

On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be "the first milestone" of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.

"From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations," Yearwood said.

At no time does anyone explain why this National Day of Service has to be held -- of all the 365 days in a year -- on Sept. 11.

HAD ENOUGH? OBAMA'S JOHN MITCHELL STRATEGY

We cannot spend enough time on this Van Jones debacle, because it's not about Van Jones. It goes to the core of what is wrong with this administration. Too much power grab, too much government will awaken the American people, whose freedom is inbred -- born from one of the hardest fought wars for freedom.

From the American Spectator:


Had Enough? Obama's John Mitchell Strategy
by Jeffrey Lord, September 8, 2009

''Watch what we do, not what we say''
-- Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell to reporters as Nixon Administration began.

"Had enough?"
-- Republican slogan in the 1946 congressional elections.

Had enough?

Van Jones was not a vetting problem, he was a "getting caught red-handed" problem.

As discussed on Friday in this space, Jones would never, ever have been allowed in the door of the White House with his nutty record -- much less be hired to work there -- unless people at the top thought of him in, an ideological sense, as one of their own. This episode has nothing to do with vetting, with race or anything else other than that the curtain was momentarily pulled aside to reveal what President Obama and company really, truly believe.

More to the point, it shows exactly where they are trying to take the country.

As the President prepares to address the health care rebellion that burst into public view at town hall meetings across the country, and as the real meaning of the Van Jones resignation begins to sink in, let's look back a moment. Turn to what seems to be an eerily familiar strategy that was, in the day, famously associated with President Richard Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell.

William Safire explains how it worked.

Mr. Safire, the wonderfully talented and fearless Nixon aide and loyalist who wound up his career in the public eye as the resident conservative on the New York Times editorial page, described Mitchell's "watch what we do, not what we say" strategy this way in an essay at Mitchell's death in 1988:

Coming from the law-and-order campaign manager with the visage of a bloodhound, that epigram was interpreted as the epitome of political deceptiveness.

But his intent was to reassure blacks that, foot-dragging poses aside,
the Nixon Justice Department would accomplish desegregation. John Mitchell knew
that the appearance of a tilt toward white Southerners would ease the way for
acceptance of steady civil rights progress for blacks, and sure enough, what he
did in this area was much better than what he said.

The objective was admirable. Integrate the segregated public schools of the South -- a legacy of the Democrats -- while proclaiming other intent. Notably, this also worked. To his opponents' teeth-grinding acknowledgment, it was in fact Richard Nixon who saw to it that segregated schools in the American South went the way of the dinosaurs.

The sudden burst of attention surrounding the resignation of Obama "green jobs czar" Van Jones serves notice that the president who was a community organizer and follower of Saul Alinsky has up until now been effectively putting the Nixon/Mitchell stratagem to work -- resurrecting it on behalf of some of the furthest left causes on the American political scene. If watching what was said while not paying attention to what was being done worked for Nixon and Mitchell on school integration, it can work for what is really the Obama agenda.

The Nixon-Mitchell approach was working for Obama, in a fashion. Everybody was watching, almost hypnotically so, what Mr. Obama said -- the wonderful verbal imagery, the now unmistakable voice earnestly oozing words like "keep your doctor" "tough choices" "putting a sweeping economic recovery in place" and, of course, the trademark "yes we can!" The polls were high, the good-will abounded.

But almost no one in the mainstream was, per John Mitchell, watching what Mr. Obama and company were actually doing: effectively attempting to re-make America in the image of the oldest of far left-wing nostrums, using socialism, identity politics (racism), appeasement and soft tyranny to overhaul a nation built on principles of freedom and liberty. Changing a country of vast prosperity created by a devotion to bread baking economics into a nation of economic beggars, based on long discredited leftist theories of bread slicing economics. With Mr. Obama and his political allies doing the slicing.

Were it not for the conservative opposition on talk radio, in the blogosphere, on Fox News (Glenn Beck, please take an extremely well-deserved bow), and in publications like this one, Van Jones would still be wearing his White House pass. Because it is here in these places -- and only these places -- that people spend their time actually learning what Mr. Obama is really doing -- not just listening to the pretty words. They will, as learned long ago, not be getting it from a mainstream press that has sold its journalistic soul to liberalism and Mr. Obama. On Sunday, a furious New York Times columnist Tom Friedman sat on NBC's Meet the Press and referred to the Internet in the context of Van Jones record as "an open sewer." As Byron York at the Washington Examiner trenchantly pointed out, the number of stories on Mr. Jones in the Times preceding his resignation? Zero. Ditto with the three broadcast networks and the Washington Post.

The reaction as reality of all this has dawned, as was abundantly evident in one town hall meeting after another across the country the last two months, is now furious. It can perhaps best be captured in the two word question asked of the nation in the 1946 elections by Republicans running against fourteen years of the New Deal:

Had enough?

The question in 1946 was answered with a GOP landslide.

When exactly in the last nine months did you reach the point where you "had enough"?

• When you heard the Obama stimulus bill was 1,071 pages long and members of Congress passed it without reading it?

• When you heard that Congress passed the $747 billion dollar Obama "stimulus" bill on the principle that spending tax dollars would keep the unemployment rate below 8% -- and then it shot up to almost 10%?

• When you realized that the Obama administration had stopped talking about the 3.5 million jobs that would be created by the stimulus bill and had subtly changed the term to "jobs created or saved" -- a term not measured by the Labor Department, Treasury Department, nor, most tellingly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics? And then you heard that the stimulus had already "created or saved" at least 150,000 jobs.

• When you heard the federal government and Obama union allies had taken control of General Motors, a private company?

• When you heard the federal government forced Chrysler, another private company, into bankruptcy, giving control to Obama union political cronies and the federal government?

• When you heard the head of General Motors, a private company, was fired by the President of the United States?

• When you heard the president appointed a "pay czar" to regulate the salaries of private sector executives?

• When you realized "health care reform" meant government rationing of your health care?

• When you realized that government rationing of health care would mean the government "counseling" the elderly on when and how they should die?

• When you realized health care reform meant a $500 billion cut in Medicare?

• When you heard the President say he approves of a policy in which the government tells your Mom "that maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the pain killer"?

• When you realized members of Congress had no intention of living by the same health care plans they were trying to force on you?

• When you heard the Obama White House admit that the president would not rule out breaking his pledge not to raise taxes on those earning under $250,000, saying: "it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what"?

• When the White House underestimated the ten-year deficit by $2 trillion, insisting all the money it was spending would cost only $7 trillion -- then putting out the news on a Friday night that it would actually be $9 trillion?

• When you heard the "cash for clunkers" program was supposed to run from July to November, but was so mismanaged it ran out of its $1 billion allotment in a week -- and car dealers all over America are now mired in both debt and paperwork because the government hasn't figured out how to pay them. And the program set to expire in November was canceled in August?

• When you understood the Attorney General announced he will re-open investigations as to whether CIA officials who protected the country should be prosecuted for their efforts, something the president said he would not do?

• When you realized that for the first time in American history, U.S. soldiers were being forced to read an enemy captured on the field of battle their Miranda rights (which begin, "You have the right to remain silent")?

• When you realized the president had hired over thirty "czars" like Van Jones to run the government, none confirmed by the U.S. Senate as is constitutionally required of senior policy makers?

• When you heard that the Obama "green jobs" czar, White House aide Van Jones signed a "Truther" petition, was an enthusiastic supporter of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and belonged to a group which the Washington Post -- after the fact of Jones's resignation and with the greatest of delicacy-- described as having "Marxist roots"?

• When you heard that the Federal Communications Commission now had a "diversity officer" named Mark Lloyd who is a fan of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's efforts to shut down free speech a free press? Said Lloyd: "This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."

• When you heard that Americans challenging their elected representatives on the details of health care and all of the above were being labeled as "Nazis" and "un-American" by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and as "thugs" by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?

Maybe there was something else in the last nine months that finally convinced you there was real trouble in Washington. But as this (partial) list of activities makes one thing plain, to borrow astronaut lingo: Houston, we have a problem.

What is that problem?

The American people have reached a "tipping point." They have begun to realize with startling clarity that the common thread running through every action listed above -- and more - is a drive to deprive them of their freedoms. Whether it's the freedom to be president of General Motors subject to the approval of a board of directors and shareholders, or the freedom for you to choose your own health care without government rationing, more and more people are now getting what is at stake here. That tipping point is even captured numerically in the latest Rasmussen poll that shows the Obama approval numbers going south, with 53% opposed to the president and 47% in favor, the kind of plunge not seen since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

The abrupt White House decision to ask for a Joint Session of Congress is a clear admission that President Obama feels compelled not just to try and salvage the tattered remains of his so-called "health care reform." What is really going on here is a frantic attempt to distract attention from the core beliefs motivating this president, his staff, his administration and his allies. An attempt to get the country to look away from an increasingly long list of absolutely chilling actions and appointees that flow directly from those beliefs.

Those beliefs are exactly why Van Jones was working in the White House. They are what got him in the door. It's the belated recognition by everybody else that got him shown the door.

So what do we have here?

We have a president who is once again about to take center stage, supposedly to talk health care. But this time, Americans are on to his use of the Nixon/Mitchell strategy. They are no longer willing to sit quietly and watch what Barack Obama says. They now understand in increasingly vivid detail what it is he is trying to do.

They understand in their gut that Van Jones was not some vetting mistake, not an accident of process, but rather a symbol of the entire belief system that now resides in the White House.

Which makes the next set of questions as follows:

• Again, who hired Van Jones, approved Van Jones, vetted Van Jones?

• Who hired Mark Lloyd over at the FCC? Who was his sponsor, who vetted, who approved, what did they know?

• When will Congress put a stop to the appointment of these unelected "czars"?

• And for good measure, let's ask the question the Old Media will never have the guts to ask:

Just what role has Valerie Jarrett, the enthusiastic booster of Van Jones and senior Obama loyalist on the White House staff, played in all these personnel decisions?

The New Media proceeds.

IS OBAMACARE CONSISTENT WITH OUR 1st PRINCIPLES?

Our Founding Fathers created our Constitution specifically for separation of powers, creating the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Yet, Obama is determined to undermine this by creating more and more power to the executive branch in history.

The bigger the government, the less the freedom.

The Heritage Foundation writes:


Is Obamacare Consistent With Our First Principles?
September 8, 2009

Late this Saturday night President Barack Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Van Jones, resigned amid what the Washington Post calls another “lapse in the administration’s vetting procedures.” That’s putting it mildly. Jones is an admitted former communist and black nationalist. His Ella Baker Center for Human Rights produced a rap record in 2005 “hosted by” cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal, in which Jones links the Palestinian fight against Israel as part of the “global struggle against the U.S. led security apparatus” that “we need to see linked” to “our problems here.”

His more recent advocacy for green jobs fits perfectly into Jones’ racial/Marxist worldview. In a 2008 interview Jones said: “The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color’s communities because they don’t have a racial justice frame.”

So how did someone with views as radical and inflammatory as Jones’ get into a position where he would control one of the “five pillars” of President Obama’s plan to rebuild the entire economy? The short answer is that Jones was never vetted. Jones was never asked to fill out the exhaustive 7 page 63 question form White House officials require of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position. And why did he not fill out the questionnaire? He did not have to. His official “czar” job, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, does not require Senate confirmation. To be fair, President Obama did not create the first Executive branch czar, but his administration has authored of them. In fact, President Obama just appointed another czar, former steelworkers union official Ron Bloom, to oversee his manufacturing and automotive policy yesterday.

According to Politico there are, not counting Jones or Bloom, 30 other Obama administration officials with czar-like duties and powers, including: Afghanistan Czar Richard Holbrooke, AIDS Czar Jeffrey Crowley, Auto recovery Czar Ed Montgomery, Border Czar Alan Bersin, California Water Czar David Hayes, Central Region Czar Dennis Ross, Domestic Violence Czar Lynn Rosenthal, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, Economic Czar Paul Volcker, Energy and Environment Czar Carol Brower, Faith-Based Czar Joshua DuBois, Great Lakes Czar Cameron Davis, Guantanamo Closure Czar Daniel Fried, Health Czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, Information Czar Vivek Kundra, International Climate Czar Todd Stern, Intelligence Czar Dennis Blair, Mideast Peace Czar George Mitchell, Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, Science Czar John Holdren, Stimulus Accountability Czar Earl Devaney, Sudan Czar J. Scott Gration, TARP Czar Herb Allison, Terrorism Czar John Brennan, Technology Czar Aneesh Chopra, Urban Affairs Czar Adolfo Carrion Jr., Weapons Czar Ashton Carter, and WMD Policy Czar Gary Samore.

The proliferation of czars is a direct consequence of both the ever expanding power of the federal government and Congress’ willingness to cede ever more legislative and judicial functions to the Executive branch. Our Founding Fathers specifically created a Constitution dividing the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government into three branches so that the separation of these powers would limit the size and scope of the federal government.

Since the dawning of the Progressive Movement, the left has correctly identified the Constitution’s separation of powers framework as an obstacle to their remaking of American society. If our republic is to survive in the 21st century, our Congress must begin to reassert itself and rein in Obama’s czar state.