Category Archives: Election ’12
Shenanigans Afoot at Wikipedia Concerning Obama’s New Campaign Slogan: Forward
How much can we or should we rely on Wikipedia, particularly concerning controversial issues? I have linked the site in the past from Liberty Papers’ posts and probably will in the future but I do think anything you or I find at Wikipedia should be verified by at least one other source before assuming it true. It was almost a year ago that Sarah Palin supporters tried to scrub the page concerning Paul Revere and his ride to cover up and support her mistaken history of the event.
Now it seems that Obama supporters are doing something similar as it relates to his one word 2012 campaign slogan: Forward.
Just yesterday, Neal Boortz referenced the Wikipedia article for the word “forward” as it related to politics but by the time he was off the air, the page had been significantly altered. Boortz explains:
So yesterday I gave you a laundry list of different political philosophers, publications and propaganda that all used the phrase “forward” to embody and promote their socialist or communist causes. Considering the historical use of the word “forward,” it is no surprise that our Marxist in Chief would select this phrase as his new campaign slogan. But one of the many examples I referenced was a Wikipedia entry under “Forward” that Cristina found entitled “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).” Yesterday morning if you went to this link you found a long history of socialist and communist publications published in many languages, principally German, Russian and French, using that name as their title.
[…]
By yesterday afternoon Obama sycophants and myrmidons were busy. They were demanding that Wikipedia remove that reference to the word “forward” being a generic name of socialist publications. Toward the middle of the afternoon if you clicked on that link it would say “This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia’s deletion policy.” By the end of the day, if you searched the word “Forward” in Wikipedia, the link to that entry had been removed from the website.
Boortz’s blog Nealz Nuze cached the original Wikipedia search and is included in his post.
The as of the publication of this post, the Wikipedia page Forward (Obama-Biden campaign slogan) says: “On April 30th, 2012 the Obama–Biden campaign announced the slogan “Forward”.” If you go back to the main page and look under “Politics,” there are 4 links in addition to the Obama campaign link of political groups, all Marxist in nature, all of which use “forward” as a slogan.
This could be a coincidence, but that is beside the point. My question is what is it about this page that certain Wiki editors who want to delete the page find objectionable? Was the original article not factual or do they not like that other Wiki editors pointed this out?*
» Read more
Open Thread: If I Wanted America to Fail…
FreeMarketAmerica.org has released a great video (above) called “If I Wanted America to Fail.” It’s a pretty decent list of policies one would want to implement to cause America to fail but it’s far from complete.
Here are a few suggestions of my own:
If I wanted America to fail, I would want congress to abdicate its war powers and give those powers to the president so he could commit acts of war against any country he desires for any or no reason at all.
If I wanted America to fail, I would want these undeclared wars to be open-ended with no discernable war aim. This would lead to blowback and create more enemies for America.
If I wanted America to fail, I would have troops deployed around the world to make sure the world is “safe for democracy” but would topple regimes, even those elected by the people of these countries, if the president found the new leaders not to his liking. This would create even more enemies who would try to cause America to fail.
If I wanted America to fail, I would do away with due process – even for American citizens who the president considers “enemy combatants.” I would want the president to have the ability to detain these people indefinitely, ship them to a foreign country, and even give the president the authority to kill these people anywhere in the world they are found.
If I wanted America to fail, I would have the ATF sell arms to Mexican drug cartels so they could kill innocent people on both sides of the border. I would name this operation after a lame action movie franchise and pretend to know nothing about it when details were made public (It’s not like the media would have any interest in investigating this deadly policy because this is a Democrat administration).
Now it’s your turn. What are the policies being implemented now that you would want implemented if your goal was to make America fail?
Quote of the Day: In Response to Van Jones’ Remarks About “so-called libertarians”
Over at Reason, Mike Riggs responded to President Obama’s former Green Jobs czar Van Jones’ tirade about “so-called libertarians” at an Occupy rally in L.A. In case you missed it, Van Jones said that libertarians “say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings.” Clearly, he has never been to a Libertarian Party convention; I have. These people are more welcome in the LP than either of the big two political parties, I assure you.
Riggs responds:
I’m going to have to mic check you there, Mr. Jones. You’re not talking about so-called libertarians, but your former boss and current president. See, it’s Barack Obama who supports “traditional marriage”; Barack Obama who supports a drug war that sends an alarming number of black men to prison and destroys their employment prospects; Barack Obama who supports a foreign policy that kills children; Barack Obama who supports regulatory barriers that require the poorest of the poor to borrow their way into the workforce; Barack Obama who supports an immigration strategy that rips apart families and sees the children of undocumented workers put up for adoption.
Whether Obama’s support for those policies means he hates gays or brown folk is not for me to say. As the scriptures tell us, “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?”
Libertarians, on the other hand, love brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, and immigrants. Many of us, after all, fit rather neatly into those categories, and we show our affection for ourselves and our neighbors by supporting the right of all peoples to live free of state-sponsored violence, discrimination, undue imprisonment, and theft; as well as the entirely predictable consequences of both left-wing and right-wing social engineering.
In fairness to Van Jones, there are a fair number of social conservatives,* NeoCons, and yes, certain unwelcome elements who do advocate these things who try to call themselves libertarians, but damn man. Would it be too much trouble for Jones to go on the series of tubes that is the interweb and do a search on the Libertarian Party Platform before shooting off his mouth about “so-called libertarians”? If so, he would find that true libertarians are the polar opposite of what he described.
Signs of Intelligent Life in the Colorado Senate
Several members of the Colorado Senate introduced a bill yesterday that would reduce drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, favoring drug treatment programs over incarceration in state prisons.
Lynn Bartels reporting for The Denver Post writes:
Senate Bill 2012-163 deals with drug offenders who primarily are users and addicts rather than dealers, and enhances their access to treatment.
“We have so many people throughout this country who are the casualties of a failed war on drugs,” said Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder. “And in one sense, when you get a felony, not only do you get a criminal penalty, but what you have is a sentence to life without employment.”
During a news conference at the Capitol, Levy presented the bill with Sens. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, and Pat Steadman, D-Denver, and Rep. Don Beezley, R-Broomfield.[…]
“Let’s be clear. This is not legalization. This is not decriminalization,” Mitchell said. “This is simply a smarter approach to fighting the evils of drug abuse in our society.”
While this bill doesn’t go as far as I would like, this is certainly a step in the right direction. I’m not a big fan of forced drug treatment programs but it’s a far better alternative than a felony conviction that never goes away. In addition to this proposed legislation, Coloradans will have an opportunity to legalize marijuana (with the same regulations as alcohol) in November. If both of these become Colorado law, this would be a pretty significant blow to the war on (some) drugs and the prison industrial complex IMO.
Will either of these reforms pass? It’s hard for me to say but I’m a little skeptical. Still, the fact that these sorts of reforms are being proposed outside of libertarian debate societies by people who can actually change the criminal code is quite exciting and quite encouraging.
