OBAMA: COMMUNIST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Some cool business review weekly images:

OBAMA: COMMUNIST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

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THIS IS A MUST READ IF YOU ARE TO UNDERSTAND THIS ADMINISTRATIONS POLICYS ARE FULLY BASED ON A SOCIALIST/MARXIST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
THIS MAN IS A COMMUNIST THROUGH AND THROUGH
ALSO READ THE PREVIOUS POST TO THIS ONE


The Obama Vision

Book review of: RADICAL-IN-CHIEF BY STANLEY KURTZ, National Review

November 15, 2010
by Ronald Radosh



The charge by some conservatives that President Obama was and indeed still is a socialist has been met with disbelief or brushed aside as irrelevant by our liberal elites, most consequentially by the media. They have assigned it to the land of the “wing-nuts.” Even the conservative writer Andrew Ferguson could not resist throwing in a gratuitous remark about Stanley Kurtz’s new book, Radical-in-Chief, in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard, arguing that “there is, indeed, a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama, but it’s not . . . even socialism. It’s liberalism!” For Ferguson, “unchecked liberalism . . . is worrisome enough.”


I have to admit that before reading and evaluating the mountain of evidence Kurtz presents in his book, I too was skeptical of the charge, regarding it as a somewhat overheated smear word that Obama’s opponents liked to throw out in the heat of political debate. It held no more water with me than did the epithets of “fascist,” “Nazi,” and “un-American” hurled at Obama by his angriest enemies. But Kurtz’s book leads me to the inescapable conclusion that indeed Barack Obama started out his adult life as a socialist, functioned within socialism’s orbit for decades, owes much of his political rise to the socialist community, and has never repudiated the ideology he adopted so long ago.


Kurtz claims that when he began research for his book he knew that Obama had had some associations with radicals like Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, but was dubious about the socialist label. These associations were brushed off by Obama and his supporters with such arguments as that he hardly knew Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, and, in any event, was only eight years old when the couple were engaging in their violent Weathermen activities. As for Wright, well, Obama just wasn’t in church when the reverend was damning America.


Kurtz wanted to find out whether there was anything behind the socialist charge by digging deeper and tracing Obama’s path to the presidency. He approached his subject as any good historian would, by going to the primary sources, looking at the records and internal publications of the many groups and organizations that Obama had been associated with: the Socialist Scholars Conference, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, ACORN, the Black Theology Project, the Harold Washington mayoral administration, the Midwest Academy, the New American Movement, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Charitable Fund.


Kurtz traces Obama’s exposure to socialist politics and circles back to the early 1980s, when he was a student at Columbia University. A pivotal experience was Obama’s attendance at the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars Conference (SSC) held in New York’s Cooper Union. (This was a world I was most familiar with. At the time, I was on the SSC’s planning committee, which was based at the sociology department of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.) The SSC was attended by enthusiastic members of various socialist sects; there was in fact little scholarly about it. Most of the sessions addressed various pressing political questions: the state of rebellion in Central America, the strategies for moving America towards socialism, etc. It would be interesting to know what sessions Obama attended and why he went to it in the first place. After all, most attendees were activists, committed socialist intellectuals, or both.


The answers would never be brought forth, because no one in the media sought to ask him about it. Kurtz reports that Obama did address it once, in an offhand manner. In his bestselling 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote that while living in New York, he engaged in political discussions that “came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union. . . . [They were among] the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.” Since it was so inconsequential, why did Obama take care to mention it? Perhaps the ambitious Obama knew that since he had registered for it in his own name, someone might find he had attended; so “why not,” Kurtz writes, “acknowledge the fact in such a way as to minimize attention and defuse the power of eventual revelation?”


But, as Kurtz shows, after the SSC, where Obama was exposed to both Black Liberation theology and community organizing, he decided to leave the field of foreign relations and nuclear disarmament — about which he had written a now well-known article — and instead started on the new career path of community organizing. Moreover, the speaker at one of the major sessions developed the theoretical concept of working for “socialist incubators,” the effort to combine different community groups into one national movement, which would then “democratize control of major social, economic and political institutions.” This was not an old-style nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy; it was, rather, an attempt to achieve socialism from below. The theorist was Peter Dreier, who later became a major strategist for ACORN and, during the 2008 campaign, an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama. These groups, or “incubators,” would push the U.S. towards socialism and socialist programs like universal single-payer health care.


Dreier’s theory coincided with the popular view of the French Marxist André Gorz, who developed the concept of working for “transitional” or “non-reformist reforms,” seemingly small steps that would help destroy market capitalism and build the basis for complete structural change and the adoption of a socialist economy in Western societies. When a crisis finally occurred, especially a “fiscal crisis of the state,” the moment would be ripe to transform the economy into a publicly owned statist entity.


As the years went by, and Barack Obama moved from community organizing to Harvard Law and then back to Chicago, Kurtz shows that one thing remained constant: Obama continued to move in the same socialist circles that he had first come across at the SSC at Cooper Union. It was there that he probably heard a young Cornel West talk at a panel on race and class in Marxism, and was introduced to the father of Black Liberation theology, James Cone, the mentor to a minister named Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was also at the SSC that he most likely came across a leader of Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of America, the Yugoslav-born Bogdan Denitch, who wrote an essay on the importance of Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign in Chicago, in uniting the black and white Left in a new class politics that would produce victory and socialist momentum.


These ideas and theories motivated Obama and helped him choose his own career path — that of community organizing as the way to lead a coalition of blacks, whites, and Hispanics to create a socialist “redefinition” of America, with one caveat: The concept and advocacy of socialism as the final goal would consciously be hidden from sight. As Kurtz reveals, the socialist theorists openly talked about what they called “stealth socialism” or “incremental radicalism,” small steps that move the nation forward until the ultimate goal of a socialist transformation is obtained. One moves apparently without an ideological plan, but working for measures that will end with an irreversible move to a statist economy based on public control through groups run by labor and community organizations. As Kurtz writes: “Obama’s college socialism, the influence of socialist conferences on his career, his choice of a profession dominated by socialists, and his extensive alliances with the most influential stealth-socialist community organizers in the country give the game away. Obama has adopted the gradualist socialist strategy of his mentors. . . . Eventually, this will transform American capitalism into something resembling a socialist-inspired Scandinavian welfare state.”


With this fundamental transformation finally obtained, wealth would be redistributed from individuals and businesses to the state and especially to the public-employee unions, which would effectively run state and national governments. Seemingly minor adjustments would be the effective “non-reformist reforms” advocated by Gorz and others, and would eventually undermine the current system. When Michelle Obama inadvertently let the cat out of the bag and told an audience that her husband was essentially a community organizer using politics to achieve the ends he always wanted, she confirmed Kurtz’s analysis.


All of this fit well with the political strategy developed by the late Michael Harrington, the last socialist leader of national prominence since Norman Thomas; Harrington’s followers play a major role in national government and the Democratic party today. Harrington favored what I call Browderism without Browder and the old Soviet tie; i.e., working in the Democratic party with non-socialists, helping to transform it into, in effect, an “invisible social democracy.” The so-called Democratic Left — under the guidance of conscious socialists who assumed leadership positions in various mass movements including unions, women’s groups, and community organizations — would help to develop their programs until all converged to create the structural socialist transformation of society.


Readers of Kurtz’s book will see example after example of how Obama’s otherwise inexplicable actions — such as pushing health care ahead of jobs in a time of economic downturn — make perfect sense if he is acting according to the theories and programs of the mentors he took along with him when he moved into the political arena. By keeping his real views hidden — the chosen policy of the descendants of Saul Alinsky who argue for masking socialist convictions — the political organizers can push the country in a direction it may not want.


Once one realizes that this is indeed Obama’s chosen course, it becomes clear why, during the campaign, he went out of his way to downplay and deny his actual close involvement over the years with major socialist players. In his important and detailed chapter on ACORN, for example, Kurtz spells out better than anyone has how the group fought tooth and nail to get banks to lower lending standards and to provide loans for those without good credit and even without any demonstrable ability to pay a mortgage. The housing group, despite its many denials, is shown by Kurtz to be a major factor in the development of the subprime-lending spree that crashed the housing bubble. ACORN pressured the banks by pressuring the Clinton administration and working with HUD secretary Henry Cisneros. Together, they used a direct-action campaign to draw the entire financial system into unwise lending schemes that helped foment today’s housing crisis.


Not only did Obama work closely with ACORN, he also cooperated intimately with the quasi-socialist Midwest Academy. He had lengthy and sustained relationships with both Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers — who, Kurtz demonstrates, knew and worked with Obama way before anyone else imagined. Ayers appointed him to boards that, in turn, quickly acted under Obama’s leadership to fund Ayers’s extremist and Marxist educational programs, as well as the radical projects of his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.


Thus does Obama’s past explain his policies today. He adopted the ACORN leaders’ strategy of transforming the economy through expanding entitlements, and combined it with Michael Harrington’s plan to realign American politics through polarizing the electorate along class lines. By radicalizing the Democratic party — a goal already pretty much accomplished — he would have the ability, once in power, to push America to a left-wing “social democracy” in which business would be demonized. (This strategy is very much in evidence in the 2010 midterm campaign, with the administration’s noxious attack on the Chamber of Commerce.)


As for health care, Kurtz speculates that Obama hopes that if Republicans succeed in repealing the new law, the repeal will ignite a political movement of the Left that will further radicalize the Democratic party — a class-based strategy that would put into effect Harrington’s “realignment,” in which, finally, the poor and the educated middle classes would push the country to socialism. Thus public-employee unions, minorities, and the poor would stop the “haves” from running the country, and — as Obama told Joe the Plumber in that eventful campaign stop in 2008 — we would move to fairness by redistributing the wealth to those who deserve it and don’t have what they need. In the Obama administration, we have Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven’s advocacy of pushing the system to its limits united with ACORN’s stealth socialism and socialist incubation.


Stanley Kurtz succeeds, then, in showing the “consistency of [Obama’s] convictions.” Beginning in his college days, and possibly even in late high school, Obama gravitated towards socialism as the answer for America. His entire political advance depended upon the backing, support, and work of the Chicago socialist community. It was a stealth-socialist circle, carefully hidden from the public, but now unearthed brilliantly by Kurtz. With a “thoroughgoing pattern of deception,” he misled the American people into believing that he was a post-ideological pragmatist. “Obama has made concerted efforts to hide his socialist convictions from the voters who put him in office,” in a “systematic deception” that “corrodes democracy itself.”


For these reasons, Stanley Kurtz has written what I believe is the most important political book in years. I would go so far as to say that had he or someone else done this work during the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama would not have been elected president — because it would have been clear that Obama is simply not who he claimed to be. During the election, Obama presented himself as a post-partisan figure who would unite the country and work with Republicans to find practical solutions to America’s problems. He would heal the country’s racial wounds. Instead, he has divided us. At a time when Europe is digging itself out from under the weight of its social-democratic policies, Obama is pushing us in that direction: out-of-control deficits, unsustainable entitlements, high taxes, and a sluggish economy. That is not where the American people want to go.



Ronald Radosh is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute; Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York, and the author of many books, including "The Rosenberg File;" "Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996," and most recently, "Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left."

www.hudson.org/

progressive/liberalism explained for the simple minded (other liberals)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrqdZFFb5c&feature=related

Anne Frank in the World

Image by elycefeliz
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/reviews/frankrev.html
In Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945, the Anne Frank House has produced a compendium of photographs telling her heroic story. This unique work, designed for younger audiences (grades 7 and up), puts pictures to the life of perhaps the most famous Holocaust victim. Although Anne Frank perished at age 15 in 1945 in a Nazi concentration camp, her memory, her short and tragic life, remain with us through her legendary diary and the photographs of this book which not only capture proud family portraits of the Franks, but also more somber scenes of the rise of Nazism and its terrible effects.

By looking at the photographs, Anne appeared to have a happy childhood, with scenes of her on the beach and playing with friends. However, darkness lingered on the horizon. In 1933, Hitler became absolute ruler of Germany and began instituting oppressive measures against Jews. Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945 shows pictures of burning synagogues, Jewish shopkeepers sweeping up after Kristallnacht and Jewish World War One veterans proudly display their war medals as they face discrimination amid signs and posters of anti-Jewish propaganda.

Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945 gives haunting scenes of Nazis rounding up and deporting Jews, sending them to concentration camps. In 1942, Anne Frank and her family hid in what they called the Secret Annex in Amsterdam, until their discovery by an SS agent in 1944. The Nazis split up the Frank family, sending Anne and her sister Margot to disease ridden Bergen-Belsen, where, tragically, they both died within a year.

Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945 tells the unforgettable story of Anne Frank and the events surrounding her life through more than 225 photographs revealing what she saw as a young woman growing up in the 1930s and 40s in Europe amidst Nazism. The book concludes with daunting pictures of contemporary hate organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other hate groups, reminding us that intolerance still plagues us.

www.amazon.com/Anne-Frank-World-House/dp/0375911774
From Publishers Weekly: A much improved version of the identically titled catalogue published in 1985 to accompany a traveling exhibit, this volume joins an already large number of distinctive, accomplished books that magnify Anne Frank's experience to teach young readers about the climate in which she perished. While other titles (including the Anne Frank House's Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary by Ruud van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven) focus intimately on Anne Frank, this volume stresses history, detailing the rise of Nazism and its immediate effects on the Frank family. Photographs, several on every spread, tell even more of the story than does the compressed text. Readers see not only the by-now-familiar photos of the young Anne, but a view of a Jewish man, wearing the military decorations he earned fighting for Germany in WWI, standing outside his store in 1933 Cologne in response to the boycott of Jewish stores ordered by Goebbels; happy Dutch families with arms extended in a Heil Hitler; an anguished-looking naked girl, described as "mentally disabled," restrained by uniformed nurses right before she is to be killed through Hitler's "Euthanasia Project." The concluding sections, with views of Bosnian Muslims and Serbian soldiers, contemporary Ku Klux Klan rallies, a Londoner injured in an attack on a gay bar and other shocking instances of racism and racial crimes, explicitly connect prejudice with violence in an eloquent plea for tolerance. Ages 10-up. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Obama Paper for sale in Bogota, Colombia

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Obama Paper for sale in Bogota, Colombia

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Informal business is the name of the game. A man buys a paper for sale on Avenida Jiménez in Bogotá, Colombia.

Display Cases for Sale

Image by radven
While at the Serramonte Mall this evening we stopped into Mervyn's, which was in the final moments of its "Going Out Of Business" sale.

The store was completely picked over. Shoppers riffled through the few remaining bins and racks like vultures on a carcass. Even the display showcases were being offered up for sale.

At one point a voice came over the PA to announce that the store would be closing for good in ten minutes, and that everything left was now "Ten for .00".

It was a sad and surreal experience to be there as the retail giant literally gasped its last breath.

Obama Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 2009

A few nice business address images I found:

Obama Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 2009

Image by The Fanboy
A Wordle.net graphic of Obama's Inaugural Address.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the

sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity

and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of

prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging

storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office,

but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding

documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of

violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of

some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been

lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day

brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a

sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next

generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.

They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met. On this day, we

gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out

dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time

has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that

noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and

all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our

journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for

those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the

risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor,

who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these

men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or

wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no

less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed

than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing

pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting

today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we

will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and

bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science

to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will

harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our

schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will

do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many

big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and

women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments

that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too

big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can

afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no,

programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely,

reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust

between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and

expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out

of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy

has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our

ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to

our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers,

faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a

charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for

expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals

to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman,

and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

ecall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy

alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us

to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the

justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand

even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly

leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will

work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize

for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing

terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot

outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims,

Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this

Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter

stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of

tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that

America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that

your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through

corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we

will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters

flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty,

we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's

resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at

this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the

fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a

willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will

define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people

upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of

workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.

It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a

child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our

success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -

these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a

recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties

that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying

to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can

join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not

have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's

birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome

of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could

survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words.

With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by

our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor

did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of

freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Model of SPark, UWE Ventures, University of the West of England

Image by jisc_infonet
The University of the West of England is involved with other partners in the area in the development of a Science Park - SPark. This model is on display within the UWE Ventures space - giving clients an illustrative example of the development of enterprise activities within the region.

Maryland Space Business Roundtable Luncheon

Image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Senator Barbara Mikulski addresses the Maryland Space Business Roundtable (MSBR) Luncheon at Martins Crosswinds in Greenbelt, Maryland on Monday, April 11, 2011.
The MSBR is an organization that encourages the growth and development of aerospace-related business in Maryland.

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Bill Hrybyk

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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OBAMA AND WALL STREET

Some cool small business financing images:

OBAMA AND WALL STREET

Image by SS&SS
Bestselling investigative reporter Charles Gasparino's latest tome Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street commences not with a scene from the much-ballyhooed first one hundred days of the new Administration, but at a hush-hush 2007 pow-wow at Johnny's Half Shell in Washington, D.C. between then-Senator Barack Obama and executives from Wall Street's top firms -- Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns -- which went so swimmingly the only warm fuzzy it lacked was the ghost of Humphrey Bogart intoning, "Barry, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

From there the Fox Business Network senior correspondent and Daily Beast columnist lays out in gobstopping detail just how well both sides have since profited from this extended dalliance, combining fiery outsider indignation with hard-won insider knowledge, narrative prowess, and a true knack for the telling anecdote -- disgraced Bear Stearns hedge fund manager Warren Spector spending his days knocking on Florida doors as a volunteer Obama campaign worker and nights bedded down at luxury hotels while his preferred candidate ceaselessly derides Republicans as the party of Wall Street is but one among many doozies.

Bought and Paid For is, in short, required reading for anyone interested in the obscured behind the scenes machinations of the economic maelstrom we currently find ourselves mired in. Gasparino was recently kind enough to speak with TAS about his book.

TAS: What compelled you to write Bought and Paid For?

Charles Gasparino: The notion of Big Government and Big Wall Street colluding to do bad things is something I've covered for a long time. I've always been interested in the conflicts between public policy and finance. What I've seen over the years is this seemingly bizarre anomaly of how Wall Street, which is allegedly the epicenter of capitalism, in reality thrived on something that is very anti-capitalist, which is Big Government. Crony capitalism. And these guys aren't doing it just to make money on fees selling government bonds to finance the deficit or government programs. The people at the top have political beliefs that are strongly aligned with progressivism.

TAS: Reading your book I was surprised to learn how kindred a spirit the big players of Big Finance saw in Barack Obama, particularly at first. They weren't supporting him simply as a pragmatic, strategic move. David Axelrod joked about Obama having a "man crush" on JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and you write financial executives saw the future president as "a guy who could have easily worked at a big Wall Street law firm if he hadn't gone into community organizing first."

Gasparino: I think a lot of the country was projecting something onto Obama they wanted to see but maybe wasn't there. Here was one of the most far left politicians I have ever seen -- based on his record, based on his associations, everything. People forget Reverend Wright, aside from his racially charged language, taught liberation theology, which basically says the Bible is infused with Marxism. That's his spiritual mentor. And all these Wall Street guys were lining up to support him.

TAS: Why?

Gasparino: Well, first, McCain couldn't stand them. It was oil and water. He screamed at Hank Paulson any chance he got. He'd spent five years in a prisoner-of-war camp, crashed a couple planes -- not exactly the type of guy who's gonna kiss a banker's ass. McCain was foreign to them and his campaign doubled down on that foreign-ness by picking Sarah Palin. When they looked at Obama they saw a guy who went to their schools, who shared their manners, who didn't break their chops. Obama was just so personally charming that something like Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers didn't have any effect. They believed at heart Obama was a moderate who understood them. And it panned out. If you look at one line of work that's done very well under Obama it isn't construction, it isn't small business or entrepreneurship. It's all the big banks that started making a ton of money the minute they got bailed out, and all those bailout mechanisms Bush put in place have been carried over and doubled down on under Obama.

TAS: Do you think the difference between the media caricature of Wall Street as a militant free-market bastion and its limousine liberal reality will ever be cleared up in the general public's mind?

Gasparino: I think it already has been. That's why the President started attacking Wall Street like a minute after Scott Brown won Teddy Kennedy's seat. The public has definitely started to put it all together. I'm not a member of the Tea Party by any stretch of the imagination, but I will say one of the good things about that movement is that they understand this inside game, they don't like it, and they want it to end. They understand how corrupting it is for the entire system when Big Business can exploit the growth of Big Government. They instinctively know there is huge hypocrisy in Obama calling these guys fat cats when Wall Street is just exploiting what he presented them to exploit. Now, Wall Street shouldn't be commended for that, but let's be honest about it: this was a partnership…. This country is in desperate, desperate straits because government has skewed the incentives. The free market, which has been demonized, wouldn't have given these guys a bonus. It would have destroyed all of their businesses.

TAS: Could there be Big Government on the scale we've recently seen it without the complicity of Big Finance and Wall Street?

Gasparino: They feed off each other. If there were no bailout, I guess you could say there'd be no opportunity to make money off the bailout. But what we can say is you need someone to underwrite Obamacare. Wall Street is there to do that. BlackRock managed all the toxic assets of Bear Stearns. When they do cap-and-trade, they'll be creating a new commodity to be traded on some exchange somewhere. The Fed, urged on by the White House, went in and bought .3 trillion mortgage backed securities, artificially propping up the market with taxpayer money. All the Wall Street firms that bought for pennies on the dollar are benefiting from the appreciation of a market that is only appreciating because of taxpayer money. Forget financial reform. The banks have made a killing since the bailout. And the average American? They're stuck with the wonderful stimulus package that gave us 9.6 percent unemployment.

TAS: The last chapter of your book sums up this collusion between Big Finance and Big Government, sarcastically, as "Money Well Spent." Does the failure of recent government intervention -- diehard, never-could-be-convinced-otherwise defenders notwithstanding -- signal that we're on the verge of this sort of alliance no longer being money well spent?

Gasparino: Look, I think crony capitalism hurts the system. It basically allows a few privileged, wealthy, connected people to do well exploiting the spoils of government that the rest of us can't. It's getting worse, it ain't getting better. The small business lobby is not as strong as the fat cat lobby in Washington. The bailouts of the last 30 years are how Wall Street got used to taking so much risk, and the latest bailouts? The government thought by creating a market of mortgage-backed securities somehow that whole shadow banking system that allowed the banks to make those loans in the first place would come back, but it never did because banks think logically about this: "Why should we be extending loans when we can just make money off this one program?"

Unintended consequences. That's the problem when government gets involved in this stuff. When will banks start making loans again? Well, you need the mortgage market to deflate. It'll only deflate when we have more pain. Now, there was no easy answer. But if you let natural forces take control in the financial crisis…firms go under, they stop lending, prices of securities drop dramatically, lots of losses. A tremendous amount of pain. And then the ones that survive pick up the pieces. But look what happens when you bail them out. They limp along for two years. Instead of the immediate pain you have a dead man walking. That's what we have right now. The bailouts just postpone the inevitable.

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Image by USDAgov
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks at the National Export Initiative (NEI) Small Business Tour in Milwaukee, WI, on Wednesday, August 3, 2011. An important goal of the NEI is to provide additional assistance to small and medium-sized businesses, which are major drivers of job creation. The NEI is assisting small and medium-sized businesses win more foreign government contracts, find buyers worldwide, participate in more trade missions and trade shows, receive more export financing, and learn new ways to sell products and services overseas. USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.