Tag: Margaret Thatcher

Pope Francis: The Pope of the Far Left

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

th (7)The current Leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has chosen a very different path than any of his predecessors.

And, from this Christian American’s Viewpoint, that is not necessarily a good thing.

Yahoo News Canada reports that

Pope Francis’ hard-hitting criticisms of globalization and inequality long ago set him out as a leader unafraid of mixing theology and politics. He is now flexing the Vatican’s diplomatic muscles as well.

Last year, he helped to broker an historic accord between Cuba and the United States after half a century of hostility.

This past week, his office announced the first formal accord between the Vatican and the State of Palestine — a treaty that gives legal weight to the Holy See’s longstanding recognition of de-facto Palestinian statehood despite clear Israeli annoyance.

The pope ruffled even more feathers in Turkey last month by referring to the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century as a “genocide”, something Ankara denies.

After the inward-looking pontificate of his scholarly predecessor, Pope Benedict, Francis has in some ways returned to the active Vatican diplomacy practiced by the globetrotting Pope John Paul II, widely credited for helping to end the Cold War.

Much of his effort has concentrated on improving relations between different faiths and protecting the embattled Middle East Christians, a clear priority for the Catholic Church.

However in an increasingly fractured geopolitical world, his diplomacy is less obviously aligned to one side in a global standoff between competing blocs than that of John Paul’s 27-year-long papacy.

This is reinforced by his status as the world’s first pope from Latin America, a region whose turbulent history, widespread poverty and love-hate relationship with the United States has given him an entirely different political grounding from any of his European predecessors.

“Under this pope, the Vatican’s foreign policy looks South,” said Massimo Franco, a prominent Italian political commentator and author of several books on the Vatican.

He said the pope has been careful to avoid taking sides on issues like Ukraine, where he has never defined Russia as an aggressor, but has always referred to the conflict between the government and Moscow-backed rebels as a civil war.

That approach is intended to ensure he remains more credible with countries like Syria, Russia or Cuba, all nations where Francis feels he can help local Christians best by steering an independent course.

DIPLOMATIC RISKS

Francis already has his hands full overhauling the Vatican’s complex internal bureaucracy after a series of financial and sexual scandals involving abuse of children by priests which date back decades.

But clearly deeply interested in how the world outside the walls of the Vatican works, he appears determined to use his position and the huge global audience he commands to challenge entrenched diplomatic positions as well.

The former secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a veteran insider whose office formerly controlled both relations with foreign powers and many internal Vatican affairs, has been replaced. His office has been downgraded to resemble a more classical diplomatic service while Francis has set a bolder, more personal stamp on Vatican foreign policy.

“He’s someone who’s capable of praying in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and then talking about the Armenian genocide. He’s not someone who’s bound by political correctness,” said former Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

“It’s the diplomacy of a real leader.”

Whether it is to the taste of all the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, world politicians with priorities of their own or even the many layers of the Church’s own administration is another matter.

With many conservative Catholics unhappy about the pope’s focus on issues like economic injustice and his relatively tolerant tone on sensitive social topics like homosexuality and the status of divorced people, pronounced views on delicate diplomatic issues could cause further division in the Church.

It is a point where he will be particularly tested in September on his upcoming visit to the United States, where some conservative U.S. Catholics are openly hostile.

After helping to foster last year’s agreement reviving diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington, Francis reaped criticism from many U.S. conservatives, including Marco Rubio, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a practicing Catholic, avoided directly admonishing the pope, but said he should “take up the cause of freedom and democracy” in Cuba.

That kind of veiled criticism from a politician who would normally be considered a staunch Church ally reflects the wider unease some Catholics feel at the change Francis has ushered in at one of the world’s most conservative institutions.

“Bishops complain that he becomes popular by attacking the Church,” said Franco.

“He speaks directly to the people and doesn’t respect the usual command structures. He decides on his own or with people who are not those who previously had a central role.”

In other words, he is the first pope who seemingly represents the Far Left Political Viewpoint.

Pope Francis seems more comfortable reaching out to Communist and Socialist countries, then he does to the Vatican’s Traditional allies, those countries who enjoy strong economies, built upon freedom and a competitive marketplace.

I know that I may sound like an old cracker, but my generation was blessed with three very remarkable leaders: United States President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.

These three stood for everything that was good about freedom.

All three knew the dangers and corruption of the implementation of Marxist Theory through the governments of man.

Here is what the wonderful and gracious Pope John Paul II said about an out-of-control Nanny-State (Socialist) Government:

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending, In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them who act as neighbors to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need.

And, while this present Pontiff is romancing the Palestinians, Pope John Paul II reached out to God’s Chosen People.

In 1994, John Paul II established full diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel. He said,

For the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel and who preserve in that land such precious testimonies to their history and their faith, we must ask for the desired security and the due tranquillity that are the prerogative of every nation . . .

Pope John Paul II also said…

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

Why is this present Pope supporting the enemies of Freedom…and of God’s Chosen People?

Being a peacemaker is one thing. Being an enabler of the Enemies of Freedom is quite another.

 Until He Comes,

KJ

Former Community Organizer Sends White House Aides to Strong Arm Robbery Suspect’s Funeral

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

obamamacdaddyPresident Barack Hussein Obama is sending three trusted aides to a very important funeral. The funeral is not that of a Head of State, a Business Magnate, or a Nationally-Known Man of Faith.

Nope. His friends called him “Big Mike”. He was fond of smoking Swisher Sweets loaded with marijuana, which he stole from the local convenience store.

According to gatewaypundit.com,

The Obama administration is sending Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, an African-American who heads up an Obama initiative to help young black males, to lead the administration’s all-black delegation to the funeral on Monday of Michael Brown. Brown is the unarmed black 18 year-old robber shot dead in a confrontation by a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer two weeks ago in a case that has stoked racial tensions.

Johnson’s attendance at the funeral was first reported by April Ryan, White House Correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief for American Urban Radio Networks, in a posting on Twitter.

The Washington Post later reported two more black Obama administrations officials are being sent to Brown’s funeral. Marlon Marshall, Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Director of Public Engagement and Heather Foster, Public Engagement Advisor. Both work under Valerie Jarrett.

The Post reported Marshall is from St. Louis and went to high school with Brown’s mother.

Johnson was appointed earlier this year by Obama to be chair of the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force which is aimed at helping young black males avoid the fate of the likes of Michael Brown and lead successful lives. Johnson’s official title is, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, revealed by Politico this week to be Obama’s man in Ferguson, will deliver the eulogy at Brown’s funeral which will be held in St. Louis at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church according to BET.

Last week Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson where he met with Brown’s parents among others in an effort to reassure the community of a “fair and independent” investigation. While in Ferguson, Holder spoke of a few incidentsin his past when believes he was hassled by police for being black.

CNN reported earlier this week Obama has no plans to visit Ferguson anytime soon.

“He has spoken with elected and other leaders, and his public statements have been measured. No presidential visits to Missouri are planned for now although Attorney General Eric Holder is due in Ferguson on Wednesday.

“”I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events before investigations are completed. Because, although these are, you know, issues of local jurisdiction — you know, the DOJ works for me,” Obama told reporters on Monday. “And then when they’re conducting an investigation, I’ve got to make sure that I don’t look like I’m putting my thumb on the scales one way or the other.

To say that the Obama White House has been selective and controversial in sending representatives to funerals , is an understatement.

On August 5th, Major General Harold Greene, the first U.S. general to die in combat since Vietnam, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

As this National hero was justly honored for his unflagging service to America, President Obama was on the course at the Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown, Mass. As the president was putting around, the question of whether he should have attended the funeral was the subject of both personal and internet conversations from coast-to-coast.

Last year, one of America’s most steadfast allies, the Iron Lady of the United Kingdom, Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away, and The President of the United States did not attend. Instead, a delegation of low level bureaucrats was sent.

And now, you tell me that the President of the United States of America, who has already sent his Attorney General to Ferguson, Missouri to interfere with a Grand Jury, is sending 3 of his Presidential Aides to the funeral of a 18year old, blunt-smoking street thug, who , as 3 autopsies have shown, was shot to death as he charged a police officer, whom he had pushed back into his patrol car.

Any American with common sense would ask,

Why?

Sadly, this answer is simple…and sickening:  POLITICS.

When Obama was being slobbered over by the Main Stream Media and the rest of his Democratic Sycophants as the Democrat Nominee for President, he was lauded as “The First Post-Racial President”, meaning, as a Black American (I almost said “African”), he would be able to unite the races.

And, then, Obama started to campaign. And, as he begin to talk about “radically changing” our country…a red warning light started flashing in the minds of Americans out here in the Heartland.

)So, Americans interested in the background of this “clean and articulate” (as his VP, Joe Biden, called him) Black Presidential Candidate started doing the research that the Main Stream Media refused to do.

And, we found out that the first “job” that Obama ever had was a political one.

From 1985 – 1988, Obama was a Community Organizer in Chicago.  What does a Community Organizer do?  I’m glad you asked.

Per Byron York in an article found at nationalreview.com:

Community organizing is most identified with the left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909-72), who pretty much defined the profession. In his classic book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote that a successful organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.” Once such hostilities were “whipped up to a fighting pitch,” Alinsky continued, the organizer steered his group toward confrontation, in the form of picketing, demonstrating, and general hell-raising.

Obama was hired by Jerry Kellman, a New Yorker who had gotten into organizing in the 1960s.  Kellman was trying to help laid-off factory workers on the far South Side of Chicago, in a nearly 100% black community.   He led a group, the Calumet Community Religious Conference, that had been created by several local Catholic churches in the industrial community.   Kellman was advised to hire a black organizer for a new spinoff from CCRC.  They called it the Developing Communities Project, designed to focus solely on the Chicago part of the area.

One of Obama’s projects while he was there, was to try to build an alliance of white and black churches and enlist them in the cause of social justice.  Obama had a problem, though.   He didn’t go to church himself.   And that, brothers and sisters, is how Obama, drawn to the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and a political opportunity), joined Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street.

If you ask Obama’s fellow Community Organizers what his most significant accomplishments were, they’ll say two things: the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects.   Those  were his biggest victories.

As I have written before, Obama ascended to the throne of the Regime during a period when our nation was experiencing a period of economic recession, by appealing to the masses by promising that if he was elected, the oceans would rise and fall, the sun would come out tomorrow (Hey, that sounds like a song. Oh…never mind.) and everybody would receive a unicorn in their backyard. (Okay. He didn’t really promise that. But, heck, he promised everything else.)

Obama’s “speechifying” sounded great to the 47%, who have relied on Uncle Sugar’s largesse for generations.

Obama has always aimed his “soaring rhetoric” toward that audience, preaching not only economic class division, but racial division, as well.

The attention which he has paid to isolated racial incidents, like the shooting of Michael Brown, blown up to national attention by the Democrat Party and their professional race-baiters, including Obama himself, diminishes the presidency.

When Reagan was president, he was in the Oval Office by 7:00 a.m. every morning, in a coat and tie, because he felt like his being in shirt sleeves was unseemly for the highest office in the land.

Obama saunters into the Oval Office every day about 10 a.m. or so, in shirt sleeves. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that he doesn’t wear his golf shorts and an Izod golf shirt.

Going to college, back in the day, one of the books I had to read for a Business Communications Course was “The Peter Principle”, which states that everyone, in their chosen profession, rises to their level of incompetance.

Unfortunately for average hard-working Americans, Obama’s level of competence ended in 1988.

And, he’s been Community Organizing ever since.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

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Obama, Mandela, and Thatcher: “When the Legend Becomes Fact, Report the Legend.”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

MandelaMichelleIt has been announced that President Barack Hussein Obama, his wife, Michelle, and two former American Presidents will be attending the Funeral of Former South African President, Nelson Mandela.

This diplomatic show of respect comes 7 months after Obama’s Presidential snub of the funeral of one of the most pivotal figures in the war against Communism in the 1980s, British  Prime Minister and staunch ally of America, the “Iron Lady”,  Margaret Thatcher.

On April 13, 2013, National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland posted the following Opinion Piece on foxnews.com:

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest today in Great Britain. The “Iron Lady” died last week at age 87.

Some commentators have expressed surprise that President Obama did not send a high-level official delegation to her funeral. I’m way beyond surprised. I’m ashamed….and angry.

After all, it is standard operating procedure for the Vice President or First Lady or, at a minimum the Secretary of State, to attend funerals of foreign leaders, even those from lesser nations.

Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.

It goes without saying that when one of the longest serving leaders of America’s closet and most enduring ally dies, the United States should send a large and distinguished delegation of America’s leaders, past and present.

Not this time.

The White House offered a lame excuse — all the senior Obama administration officials are way too busy to take 24 hours out of their hectic schedules to pay respects to the woman who helped win the Cold War, turn around the British economy, and shatter the glass ceiling of the English-speaking world.

Vice President Biden, for example, was presiding over a series of votes on gun control in the Senate, late Wednesday afternoon. Okay, understood. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that no senior administration official could spare the time or make the effort to head ‘across the pond’ for a few hours.

One suspects something else is at play besides busy government executives struggling to get through their long work days, staggering under the weight of their official responsibilities.

Could it be that Margaret Thatcher was a Tory? That she battled British Trade Unionists and won? That she worked hand-in-hand with Ronald Reagan, the incarnation of evil for many left-wing Democrats?

It used to be American politics stopped at the water’s edge, and that American

President’s honored foreign leaders, regardless of their political persuasions or party.

No longer.

By failing to send even one senior level official to Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, this President has shown that partisan politics now extend beyond the grave.

Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.

Former Secretaries of State Kissinger, Shultz and Baker did attend Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral. Kissinger opened relations with China and hammered out the first Middle East peace agreements in the 1970’s. Shultz negotiated the first arms reduction agreements with the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. Baker helped bring down the Berlin Wall, push the Soviet Empire to the point of collapse, and won the first Gulf War in the 1990’s. But while they were giants in their day, they are not part of your team. The snub to the British was palpable – only yesterday’s men could be spared.

And frankly, Mr. President, this makes you look foolish as well.

Perhaps if you had sent some senior members of your administration as part of the American delegation, they could have pulled aside those former leaders to ask for a little advice. Because, Mr. President, in case you’ve been too busy to notice, your reset with Russia is a failure, your Middle East peace efforts are going nowhere, and North Korea has just become a nuclear power.

Back to the Present. Are you aware that President Obama ordered all American Flags at Government Installations to be flown at half-mast to honor Nelson Mandela?

Who was Nelson Mandela?

He was a transformative figure, to be sure. But, he was not the saint that Obama, his administration and their media lackeys are portraying him as.

Back in 1990, Tim Graham of the Media Research Center wrote the following for their newsletter, MediaWatch, on the occasion of Mandela’s trip to the United States. He recently re-posted the information on newsbusters.org.

Communism. In their rush to proclaim him a symbol of freedom, none of the networks covered Mandela’s ideology or the relationship between Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In his own handwritten manuscript How To Be A Good Communist, Mandela wrote “Under a Communist government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.” With the exception of NBC’s Bob Kur and Mike Jensen, no reporter even mentioned Mandela’s support of economic nationalization. With Mandela’s ideas and “loyal and disciplined” membership in the ANC, would South Africa become a multi-racial democracy or a one-party Marxist state like its neighbors? No one asked.

Political Prisoner. “The former long-time political prisoner will address Congress,” Dan Rather announced when Mandela arrived. TV reporters called Mandela a political prisoner eight times, but never referred to Mandela as a saboteur or terrorist, even though Amnesty International declared in 1985 that “Mandela had participated in planning acts of sabotage and inciting violence, so that he could no longer fulfill the criteria for the classification of political prisoners.” Network reporters did report Mandela’s refusal to renounce violence in 14 stories, but most referred to it only in the context of fighting apartheid, not in the context of the ANC’s involvement in black-on-black violence or the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.

Arafat, Castro, Qaddafi. Without Ted Koppel’s June 21 “town meeting” with Mandela, the tour might have escaped controversy completely. Questioners asked Mandela to explain his praise for Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Moammar Qaddafi. The questions were prompted by Mandela hailing Castro’s Cuba in May: “There’s one thing where that country stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in its love for human rights and liberty.” A week later in Libya, he praised Qaddaf’s “commitment to the fight for peace and human rights in the world.” These statements, which appeared in The New Republic, were never quoted on the networks when he said them, or when he visited here.

The networks barely reported Mandela’s ABC remarks until Jewish and Cuban groups and print outlets made them an issue, mentioning the controversy in 26 stories. ABC, which taped the Koppel special in the afternoon on June 21, didn’t find the remarks worth including in a story on that night’s newscast summarizing the “town meeting.”

The next morning, Good Morning America did one story on the remarks, but left it out of its three other newscasts. NBC’s Today aired three stories without mentioning the remark. Harold Dow left it out of the one story on CBS This Morning. In fact, NBC and CBS dropped the Mandela story from its morning news for the next two days. On the Evening News, CBS gave the remarks brief mentions on June 22, 25, and 28. NBC Nightly News spent 45 seconds on the remarks on June 22, and included brief mentions on June 24 and 26. But the show ignored Mandela from June 27 to 29, when Mandela was greeted by thousands of protesting Cubans in Miami.

ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to question Mandela’s contentions. Reporter James Walker noted: “Many find it a paradox that Mandela asks Americans to involve themselves in South Africa’s internal affairs while he refuses to pass judgment on the internal affairs of Libya or Cuba, or to involve himself in America’s racial problems.” But Peter Jennings dampened the impact with his remark on Castro: “The Cuban President has long been a leading supporter of liberation movements in southern Africa.”

Puerto Rican Assassins. The networks never reported some other terrorists Mandela praised. He welcomed to his Harlem speech platform three of the four Puerto Rican terrorists who shot and wounded five U.S. Congressmen in 1954. “We support the cause of anyone who is fighting for self-determination, and our attitude is the same, no matter who it is. I would be honored to sit on the platform with the four comrades you refer to.” The quote appeared in the early local edition of The New York Times June 25, but the Times dropped it from later local editions and the national edition.

ANC Antics. The networks have repeatedly failed to report recent events that give the Mandela legend a less lyrical ring. When a South African court implicated his wife Winnie in the beating and murder of a 14-year-old, only CNN PrimeNews briefly noted the incident. ABC, CBS and NBC have ignored it. On June 11, ANC members murdered Sipho Phungulwa in apparent retribution for Phulungwa’s public allegations that the ANC tortured and killed dissident members. The networks have never mentioned it.

ABC’s Don Kladstrup was the only reporter to put Mandela’s importance in South Africa in context: “Mandela is not the undisputed leader of all South African blacks.” Kladstrup reported that more than six black organizations are fighting apartheid, and interviewed black activists who said “Heaven help us if the ANC takes over here” and “If you do not go along with them, they will run roughshod over you.” Kladstrup reported: “Many complain: why does Nelson Mandela talk with President de Klerk, but refuse even to meet with Chief Buthelezi, leader of South Africa’s Zulus?” Kladstrup wondered whether a multi-racial democracy would emerge: “Many fear not until blacks remove the wall of intolerance that now divides them.”

I’m not saying that we should not have representatives at Mandela’s Funeral.  He was a noted World Leader. However, as Reporter Maxwell Scott said in the John Wayne/Jimmy Stewart Classic, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence”

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Mandela is an iconic figure to the American Left, and is thus being portrayed as such by the Obama Administration and the MSM.

I predict that t-shirts honoring him will soon be as popular as those honoring Che, and, for the same dubious reason.

A final observation: I thought that Barack Hussein Obama was supoosed to be the “First Post-Racial President”?

Until He Comes,

KJ