Just another reason why America is bankrupt

"Free" cellphones from the government.

No wonder America is in decline.

You pay for these welfare phones through the Universal Service Fund charge on your phone bill.

I suppose it could be argued that USF charges aren't technically taxes because no one is forcing you to get a telephone, but come on...

Citizens Against Government Waste's wonderful "Chinese Professor" video

Citizens Against Government Waste has a delightful video that drives home the point that the U.S. needs to get its spending under control -- or else.

Here it is:

Endorsements of Subversion Inc.

Below are the endorsements as of today, March 30, 2011, of my upcoming book Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Further endorsements are, of course, welcome!

Here is the list:

"Knowing what I know about the 'zombie armies' of youth brainwashed by Team Obama, it's chilling to read Subversion Inc. Eye-opening and shocking, Matthew Vadum warns us of the danger still posed by ACORN." --Jason Mattera, New York Times bestselling author of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation

"Thanks to Matthew Vadum's extensive research there is no way liberals will be able to whitewash the evils of ACORN. History will not be kind to America's most notorious pressure group. I dare anyone to defend ACORN, and its radicals, after reading this book." --Hannah Giles, investigative journalist

"It's dynamite with a short fuse." -- G. Gordon Liddy, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

"Matthew Vadum has created a well-researched, irresistibly written book that every American should read. The criminal enterprise called 'ACORN' is the largest, most elusive, and most dangerous radical organization in America. If you are wondering about the operations and influence of a vast left-wing conspiracy, this is it, with tentacles that reach right into the heart of the Obama White House.” -- David Horowitz, author of The Shadow Party

"Matthew Vadum’s book, Subversion Inc., rips the cover off the cover-up and tells how much of America’s Ruling Class (Barack Obama, George Soros, the Catholic church, Hollywood, the media, unions, etc., etc.)  collaborated to bring socialism to America. P.S. Be forewarned – you’ll be so outraged you’re likely to buy more copies for friends and insist they read it." -- Richard Viguerie [Viguerie pioneered political direct mail and has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (Nation magazine), one of the “conservatives of the century” (Washington Times), and one of 2008’s “top 25 influencers” among Republicans (NewsMax magazine).] 

"Subversion Inc. is a riveting journey through the tangled web of ACORN. Vadum exposes the depth of this corrupt criminal enterprise with the clarity and precision of an invested author. This is one of the most comprehensive compilations of evidence against ACORN available. ACORN's continued existence, under any guise, puts the integrity of our electoral system and the sanctity of America's ballot box are at risk." --Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa)

"In his expose of the nefarious history of ACORN, Matthew Vadum has definitively revealed how socialist and ideological  partisanship was manipulated, twisted and ultimately destroyed by the evil of unscrupulous 'community organizers,' whose driven ambitions knew no bounds of restraint and whose compatriots involved some of the most powerful names in American politics, up to and including the president himself." --John J. Tierney Jr., Walter Kohler Professor of International Relations at Institute of World Politics; Faculty Chairman; Former Special Assistant and Foreign Affairs Officer, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

"For too long the institutional left has been allowed to operate under cover of darkness because the Democrat-media complex refuses to hold them accountable. But these radicals who have been sticking it to Americans for decades scatter like cockroaches under the harsh spotlight of Matthew Vadum’s great new book, Subversion Inc." --Andrew Breitbart, Internet news entrepreneur

"Through his careful research, Matthew Vadum shined a light that exposed ACORN’s corruption. For months I fought to cut off the flow of tax dollars to ACORN. In Subversion Inc. Vadum warns that despite the defunding of ACORN, the group has only feigned death." --Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota)

James Madison Institute Wins Award

Congratulations to the James Madison Institute for winning State Policy Network's SPNovation Award for its "Celebrate Freedom" High School Curriculum Supplement. (Note: I am a research fellow at the Florida-based think tank.)

Here's the text from the press release that SPN sent out:

To help social studies teachers throughout Florida teach founding principles in a meaningful way, The James Madison Institute created a 12-page supplemental curriculum called, "Celebrate Freedom," in conjunction with the News-in-Education department at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Last September, nearly 60,000 high school students received this special curriculum during "Celebrate Freedom Week" which, in Florida, is the week after Constitution Day. These colorful 12-page booklets, which closely examine key passages from the Declaration of Independence (that Florida students are expected to recite), use a variety of tools and “thought experiments” to help students gain a greater understanding of America’s founding principles.

“The James Madison Institute's Celebrate Freedom booklets for high school students are a tangible approach to reaching young people,” said SPNovation judge Lindsay Young Craig. “Learning about why freedom is key to how our country works is fundamental to becoming a young engaged citizen who is proud of our country.”  JMI's "Celebrate Freedom" booklets have been very well received by students, teachers, state and local education officials, and JMI supporters.

Books I'm quoted or cited in (as of Feb. 13, 2011)

I've been keeping a running tab of the books that reference my work and/or quote me.

Note that authors on the left, such as Arianna Huffington and Center for American Progress visiting fellow Shirley Sagawa, have given my work a vote of confidence by relying on it. And this is just a list of books that reference my work. :)

Here is the list as of Feb. 13, 2011:

* asterisk indicates New York Times bestseller

In reverse chronological order:

25) The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan's Principles Can Restore America's Greatness Today, by Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Thomas Dunne Books, 2011, 340n17.

24) Breaking the System: The Obama Team’s Strategy for Changing America, by David Horowitz and Liz Blaine, David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2010, 24n51

23) The Marxist Goliath Among Us: The David We Need To Be, by Ronald J. Lawrence, Xulon Press, 2010, 316

*22) Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Destroying the American Dream, by Arianna Huffington, Crown, 2010, 259n141

21) Dissed Trust: America's Crisis of Truth, Faith, and Freedom, by William DeMersseman, WestBow Press, 2010, 58n192-3

20) Wake Up, America! We're Headed in the Wrong Direction, by Suzanne Vergotte, iUniverse.com, 2010, 17

19) Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents, by Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss, Harper Paperbacks, reprint edition, 2010, 359n282

18) The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer, Threshold Editions, 2010, 359n21-2

17) The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers Are Transforming America, by Shirley Sagawa, Jossey-Bass, 2010, 195n22

*16) To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, by Newt Gingrich and Joe DeSantis, Regnery Press, 2010, 113 (and 2011 revised updated edition in paperback,131)

*15) The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists, by Aaron Klein with Brenda J. Elliott, WND Books, 2010, 144, 146, 201, 303n78, 304n85, 313n36 and 38, 339

Race-Baiting Van Jones Buddy Blesses Agitprop Studio With Billionaire Backing

(originally posted at NewsReal)

Radical philanthropist George Soros's billionaire socialists club that wants to turn America into Greece has formally entered the propaganda business. Soros, by the way, has openly embraced Chinese Communism and has been lending moral and financial support to glorifying left-wing terrorist attacks against the United States.

A Soros-led group, the secretive Democracy Alliance, which is a donors' collaborative that brokers funds for groups that want to destroy America as we know it, has started up a new project called New Media Ventures. (Democracy Alliance was created to fund a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofit think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups to compete with the conservative movement.)

This is its self-description from the “about” page on the New Media Ventures website:

New Media Ventures is the first national network of early stage investors who are investing their time and money into new, cutting edge, start-ups focused on building progressive change. Members join to learn more about opportunities that they couldn’t find anywhere else. It is a pilot project of the Democracy Alliance, a partnership of changemakers committed to strengthening democracy by investing in and fostering collaboration among progressive leaders and institutions. Launched in 2005, the Democracy Alliance has emerged as one of the largest drivers of progressive activist funding in the country.
New Media Ventures is directed by Christie George. The advisory board consists of:
• John Johnson, Co-Founder, Buzzfeed.com
• Mike Mathieu, Founder, FrontSeat.org
• Rob McKay, Democracy Alliance Board Chair
• James Rucker, Co-Founder, Citizen Engagement Lab
• John Schwartz, Founder, Free Speech TV
• Felicia Wong, Senior Vice President Investment Services, Democracy Alliance
Ultimately, New Media Ventures aims to help investors support projects that increase citizen engagement and participation, creating lasting social change.

Ahem. I think radical agitators changemakers mean socialist change.

James Rucker (pictured above), by the way, co-founded the vicious race-baiting group Color of Change with self-described "communist" and eco-charlatan Van Jones. After more than a year the group has failed, despite vigorous efforts, to get Glenn Beck dumped by Fox News -- but they keep on trying.
But Color of Change did manage to get Andrew Breitbart booted from the coveted front page of the Huffington Post gossip and girls-in-bikinis-photos website in recent days. After Breitbart was invited to blog at the site --which he actually helped to design years ago when Arianna Huffington's brain chemistry was a tad more stable-- Color of Change attacked by urging its supporters to deluge the HuffPo with complaints.

First review of Subversion Inc.

The Barnes & Noble website now displays the first customer review of my book, Subversion Inc., that I'm aware of.

Read the review here.

The Left thinks Wisconsin teachers are as bad off as textile workers in 1911!

The left is trying to use the hundredth anniversary of the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (which happened March 25, 1911) to score political points, according to the esteemed historian Ron Radosh. Radosh writes at Pajamas Media that

The real reason is the Left’s hegemonic control of the culture industry in this country. Looking back at Triangle gives them a new opportunity to use the event for one reason—to try and ignite a new movement on behalf of unionization of public sector employees-and to argue that the condition of Wisconsin teachers, let us say, is the equivalent of that of the women who worked in the Triangle factory one-hundred years ago!

George Soros assault on U.S. Constitution: See which White House officials involved in rewriting nation's founding document

Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily has a great piece today.

At least three White House advisors and officials, including President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, have ties to an effort funded by billionaire George Soros to push for a new, "progressive" U.S. Constitution. WND first reported last week that Sunstein's wife, Samantha Power, has been a champion of a Soros-funded doctrine, entitled "responsibility to protect," which was used by Obama to justify engaging in an international military alliance to bomb Libya. As the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, Power reportedly influenced Obama in his decision.Now it has emerged that Sunstein has maintained extensive ties to Soros' funding, particularly with regard to a movement that openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020.Also, Attorney General Eric Holder sat on the board of a Soros-funded group pushing the same "progressive" constitution. [...]

Read the whole article here.

Smearing Patriots Like Pamela Geller Is Just Another Day At The Office At The Southern Poverty Law Center

(originally posted at NewsReal blog)

Jeff Dunetz detailed the repulsive, malicious, counterfactual attack on the prolific blogger Pamela Geller by the character assassins at the fundraising firm and phony watchdog group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center. I've been studying the megabucks slime factory for years. Among many other things, the SPLC is effectively pro-Islamic terrorism. Why else would it consider the Muslim Brotherhood front group, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), upon which it bases its attack on Geller, to be credible and trustworthy? Something's going on there that neither group is talking about.

The SPLC argues that opposition to totalitarian Islam is racist and un-American. And who's out in front railing against this danger? You guessed it: Geller.

But the SPLC does so much more than shill for America's enemies. If it is good and decent, chances are the SPLC is against it. And if it conflicts with the ultra politically correct, unintelligible identity politics-infused Marxism of its leaders, it must be annihilated.

It habitually tries to incite hatred against good, law-abiding Americans who hold traditional American views, e.g. respect for the Constitution, limited government, and enforcing immigration laws and protecting the border. If you stand up for these things you are a drooling monster. It's all part of the ongoing leftist effort to stigmatize and delegitimize the views of everyday Americans who love their country and its free institutions.

Rush Limbaugh reads Matthew Vadum's work on air

An oldie but a goodie.

On the June 18, 2009 edition of the "Rush Limbaugh Show" host Rush Limbaugh read aloud from my June 19 blog post at the American Spectator blog. And yes, he did pronounce my surname correctly. The point of the blog post was that radical activist group ACORN and AmeriCorps --which at the time was embroiled in scandal after President Obama fired Gerald Walpin, its inspector general-- go way back.

Here's the video clip:

Andrew Breitbart: Courts an Instrument of Leftist Thuggery

Audrey Hudson of Human Events quotes me in a new article:

Politicians and their supporters use interesting tactics to intimidate and silence their critics, from rumor-mongering to editorial cartoons, even dueling pistols.
But the target of a high-profile lawsuit who is also a relentless investigator of the Obama administration says the judicial system is being used to retaliate against him.
“The President of the United States has an unprecedented and uncanny desire to silence those who report the truth about him,” says media mogul Andrew Breitbart. [...]
Exhibit B, Breitbart says, is how the Left used the apparatus of the mainstream media to target other enemies, such as author David Freddoso and commentator Stanley Kurtz.
Freddoso, who wrote The Case Against Barack Obama, a New York Times best seller, “was called a hack, and whatever else they could think of,” Matthew Vadum [...] tells HUMAN EVENTS.
In an American Spectator article Vadum penned during the campaign season, he outlined an Obama campaign memo he obtained urging followers to stir up trouble for Freddoso.
Vadum told HUMAN EVENTS that “leftist radicals don’t really like free speech unless it goes their way.”  The courts, it appears, are their final option to shut down the opposition.
“When they don’t like what you stand for, they want the police to harass you or they take you to court.  That’s not supposed to happen in a constitutional Republic like the United States,” Vadum said.
“This is thug politics straight out of Chicago,” Vadum said.  “Al Capone would have been pleased.” [...]

The Left's Libya Schizophrenia

Up to and during the Iraq War, leftists across America cheered an outspoken lawmaker who characterized the administration’s latest intervention in the Middle East as reckless military adventurism that would backfire on the United States.
“Us rushing headlong into a war unilaterally was a mistake and may still be a mistake,” Illinois state senator Barack Obama said in late 2002 as President Bush readied Operation Iraqi Freedom. “What’s our long term commitment there? How much is it going to cost?”
“It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war,” Obama said to adoring crowds on the presidential campaign trail in 2007.
But that was then and this is now. The angry protests of the Left against the Iraq war have dissipated into the ether now that their man is in the White House.
Rushing headlong into Libya’s civil war at the behest of the United Nations is now official policy.
The “no-fly zone” the U.S. and allied countries are enforcing in Libyan airspace is an aerial blockade, which is of course an act of war. President Obama gave his blessing to this undeclared war without even having the courage to seek congressional approval.
There was no fireside chat. No live address from the Oval Office.
Obama almost literally phoned in the attack on Libya, announcing it to his fellow Americans on March 19 via an audio-taped message while he was vacationing in beautiful Brasilia, the picturesque capital of Brazil. Yes, putting Americans in harm’s way was so important to the proverbial leader of the free world that he forced himself to hold off on his next caipirinha for a few minutes.
The president could have made some kind of an argument that Libya, which President Ronald Reagan said under Qaddafi had become a “synonym for barbarism,” is currently a threat to U.S. national security (and Israel) but Obama hasn’t yet taken time from his busy schedule to make it. [...]
(Read the whole article at FrontPage Magazine)

Socialist Thom Hartmann never lets reality get in the way of a good narrative

Thom Hartmann, a socialist and 9/11 truther, isn't exactly an honest guy. I was on his radio show this week and conceded a point to him and he went on as if I hadn't done so.
Listen to the scatterbrained stream-of-consciousness style in which he conducted an interview with me:



Or maybe Hartmann isn't nearly as bright as he thinks he is. Decide for yourself.

It's time to go Galt: Atlas Shrugged movie is a winner

Finally a movie comes along that sticks it to the ruling class that is deliberately and maliciously driving America into the ground. The message of the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s 1,200-page opus, Atlas Shrugged, is that the productive should be able to go about their business without being hindered by the nonproductive and the anti-productive mischief makers of government. It is a celebration of the many virtues of capitalism, a topic I editorialized about previously at NewsReal.
And it turns out it’s surprisingly good! I saw the movie Wednesday at a special advance screening kindly provided by the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
This is not to knock the feature-length film unduly, but given its subject matter it’s amazing that it works as a movie. There is so much information, so much political economy and philosophy, packed into so little movie. The novel simply doesn’t translate easily to the silver screen and yet the movie is a pleasure to watch.
If at times the dialogue seems a bit wooden, a bit unnatural, like in a soap opera where the players are constantly referencing a large cast of characters and a multitude of events outside the frame, it’s because the screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole is more or less faithful to the complex, wordy novel.
The movie, directed by Paul Johansson, keeps moving forward relentlessly without a mountain of distracting side plots. It has wonderful photography and excellent production values.

Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin a "twat"

On his TV show non-comedian Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a "twat," Hollie McKay of FoxNews.com reports.


Of course the National Organization for Women (NOW) was nowhere to be found. NOW only defends women it agrees with. (I profiled NOW here.)


FoxNews.com quotes me on the subject:

Matthew Vadum, Senior Editor at the Capital Research Center in Washington DC, said Maher’s insults spotlight hypocrisy in the media.
"Bill Maher feels he can get away with such jaw-droppingly offensive verbal attacks on Sarah Palin because virtually the entire media-academia-entertainment complex agrees with him,” Vadum said. “Clinging to their political correctness and disdain for her quintessentially American values, the left-wing cocktail circuit regards Palin as a punch line.”

[...]

"I suspect NOW hasn't come to Palin's defense because the group agrees with Maher,” added Vadum. “After all, NOW didn't have a problem with someone on California Gov. Jerry Brown's campaign staff calling his Republican opponent Meg Whitman a 'whore.' NOW really ought to change its name to National Organization for Liberal Women because as far as it's concerned conservative women aren't real women at all.”

Economic Terrorism: Alinskyites, union goons plan downfall of capitalism

Yes, they actually said that according to an audio clip featured at The Blaze.


I had this story a year ago.


George Goehl of ACORN wannabe group National People's Action foreshadowed this economic sabotage at a Washington confab last summer put together by the leftist Campaign for America's Future.


I wrote this in the American Spectator:

As Congress considers the Democrats' unprecedented legislative assault on Wall Street, radical leftists say the bad economy gives them new opportunities to push America even farther down the road to socialism.

"The banking crisis is the next big thing," said George Goehl, executive director of the Chicago-based group National People's Action.

National People's Action has been participating in a nationwide campaign with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Jobs With Justice, Americans for Financial Reform, and other groups called the "Showdown in America," which consists largely of loud street protests. NPA and SEIU have also been using angry mobs to invade banks and terrorize bank executives in their homes.
"The banking crisis is the way to build a big economic justice movement in this country," Goehl said during a panel discussion this week at the left-wing "America's Future Now" conference in Washington, D.C. The confab was hosted by the Campaign for America's Future and its sister organization, the Institute for America's Future.

"People are questioning capitalism. People are asking, Will this economy ever work for me or will it work for my kids? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity as progressives to engage millions of Americans in a big conversation around serious economic restructuring, not around eking out some victories around the margins, not about making life a little less worse for people, but about big time transformative change."

If you build a platform for revolution, they will come, Goehl said.

"If we create a space for people to come out they want to come out. People are ready to move to the streets, some because they're angry, some because they want justice right now, and some because they're tired of hearing about the tea party coming out, and we as leaders in the progressive movement -- we're failing if we don't create that room for people." [...]

For this we have to thank small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. I explain the Cloward-Piven Strategy in detail in my upcoming book Subversion Inc.

Chronicle of Philanthropy weighs in on James O'Keefe's NPR undercover video sting

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a new article on the fallout from James O'Keefe's skillfully engineered undercover video takedown of NPR.

Here's the passage that quotes me:

But some conservatives see Mr. O’Keefe and his associates as “folk heroes” for helping to put Acorn out of business, says Matthew Vadum, senior editor at Capital Research Center, a right-leaning philanthropy watchdog. While Acorn helped some people over the years, he says, its leaders followed a leftist philosophy of “attack the system by any means necessary,” he says. (The group often staged confrontational protests against banks and other businesses.)

Mr. O’Keefe’s video stings are “politically motivated,” he adds, “but I would still consider them to be journalism.”

Even in bankruptcy, ACORN is still scamming its members

Although ACORN is in the process of being dissolved in bankruptcy court, the notorious group continues to deduct membership dues from the bank account of Kerry Sheldon of Delaware.


The article at FoxNews.com quotes me:

Matthew Vadum ... said historically ACORN has made it difficult for people to quit their memberships.
“People decide they don’t want to be members anymore, but the membership deductions kept going,” he told FoxNews.com.
“The question is if they did it intentionally or if it was an honest mistake,” he added.
Sheldon said that she made contact with the former ACORN employee who set up her membership and has been assured that the withdrawals would be discontinued. She’s now waiting to see whether any withdrawals shows up on her next bank statement.
Former ACORN representatives contacted by FoxNews.com refused to comment.

Gee, I wonder why ACORN isn't commenting.

Wall Street Journal pushes lie that debtors’ prisons have returned to America

Another day, another leftist lie. This time it is an attack on the financial system that left-wing policies crippled over time. The lie is that bankers are conspiring against innocent people and having them rounded up and put in jail. It is complete and utter hogwash motivated by an abiding hostility toward markets.

Unfortunately, from time to time conservatives need to be reminded that apart from its op-ed pages the Wall Street Journal is not a conservative newspaper. Not even close.
Take this drivel by Jessica Silver-Greenberg whose virtually fact-free hit piece suggests that debtors' prisons have returned to America. It might as well have been written by ACORN propagandist Jeff Ordower whose "new" ACORN successor group Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) is pushing similar propaganda in an effort to make the current financial crisis worse. (If banks can't foreclose, they fail.)


Silver-Greenberg writes:

More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to be jailed. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties with a total population of 13.6 million people, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of filings in those counties. Nationwide figures aren't known because many courts don't keep track of warrants by alleged offense. In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.

Capitalism-hater Michael Moore himself couldn't have written a more misleading paragraph. That's because there is no such thing as imprisonment for debt in the United States. It simply does not happen and is not allowed by law. It is not a crime to owe money. Not ever.
Debtors can be imprisoned for failing to honor an order to appear in court or for a debtors' examination or for some other legitimate legal purpose. Americans cannot be put in jail simply for owing money. There is no doubt that some creditors have abused the people who owe them money but this article is abject nonsense calculated to stip up anger against the banking system. (It is a pale imitation of a much better written but equally bizarre article by Greg Beato that ran in Reason in November.)
If someone doesn't appear when a court orders him to appear and the person has been properly notified, he can go to jail. There is nothing unfair about it --and the capitalist system would collapse without such compulsory legal process-- but left-wingers love using debtor sob stories to score points against the supposedly unfeeling, oppressive capitalist system.
Creditors have to be able to enforce contracts and collect debts. Debtors have every legal right to their day in court -- but they have to actually show up when their day in court arrives! The Wall Street Journal and Reason articles defend these devil-may-care scofflaws who can't even be bothered to show up in court to explain themselves. Ironically, many of the debtors would be able to obtain more favorable repayment terms if only they managed to spend an hour or so in court. Judges typically don't like foreclosing on people's homes and try to help a homeowner to keep his home.
But the left's narrative requires that bankers be vilified so we can expect more of this garbage as the Great Obama Depression continues.


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(originally posted at NewsReal blog)

Death of a Venezuelan storm trooperette

I had a piece recently in Front Page Magazine about a vicious communist hoodlum in Venezuela who died. Her name was Lina Ron and this is what I wrote about her:

History has shown that female fanatics on the left can be every bit as bloodthirsty and nihilistic as their male counterparts.
Elena Ceausescu was keen on political murder and repression. She helped to steal from the Romanian people in order to feed her megalomaniacal husband’s edifice complex. During China’s grotesquely brutal Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong’s homicidal wife Jiang Qing did her bit to ideologically purify the People’s Republic. She aspired to obliterate all art and literature that deviated from official policy.
Stateside, the relentless anti-American zealotry of Lynne Stewart, Bernardine Dohrn, Angela Davis, and the alleged ladies of Code Pink is well-known among those who study politics.
Not surprisingly, socialist Venezuela has more than a few of its own homegrown Madame Defarges cheering on state-sanctioned terrorism.
Until a heart attack silenced the middle-aged Lina Ron on March 5, she served Hugo Chavez as a chavista storm trooper in the oil-rich Bolivarian Republic. Upon her death the leftist caudillo hailed his favorite paramilitary leader as a “true soldier of the people” and tweeted that she was “A Complete Revolutionary. Let’s follow her example!”
And, dressed in a red, appropriately ACORN-like tee shirt, what an example she set.
Ron’s reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks differed only slightly from that of self-described “communist” Van Jones whose Maoist group held a vigil on Sept. 12, 2001, “mourning the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world.” She burned an American flag at a rally in Caracas and cheered on al-Qaeda, saying the attacks gave “Americans a taste of their own medicine.”
Comandante Lina, as some supporters called her, periodically vowed to drown her nation in blood. She summed up her philosophy as “With Chavez, everything, without Chavez, bullets.” [...]

Read the whole article here.

Why do some conservatives still assume Obama and the Left are acting in good faith?

(originally posted at NewsReal blog)


Why is it so difficult for some conservatives to accept the idea that the left is hellbent on destroying America as we know it? It’s not like it’s a far-out conspiracy theory. It’s a well documented ongoing process. These people have been at it for decades. The Cloward-Piven Strategy, which is one piece of the subversive puzzle, is real. We’ve proven it here at NewsReal and I’ve proven it in my upcoming book Subversion Inc. Since the culturally catastrophic 1960s elements within the left have been more or less open about their movement’s desire to overthrow the American system of government and capitalism it’s not a secret. Read a Noam Chomsky book –if you can do so without throwing up– and feel the anti-American venom leap right off the page and splash you in the face.
Yet Bill O’Reilly and the more libertarian John Stossel don’t think that malice lurks in the hearts of American leftists. Courtesy of my favorite clipping service, Media Matters for America (their motto might as well be “We clip everything cool that conservatives say on TV and radio.”), here’s a discussion O’Reilly and Stossel had on Fox News last night:



In the clip above O’Reilly bashes conservative talk radio for accusing the left of malice and Stossel just shrugs and says leftists just like spending other people’s money too much. Move on: Nothing to see here, folks. Why the assumption of good faith? Are they afraid to call out people who hate America because it might be impolite? Is it Polite Company Conservative syndrome? (See a great piece by the coiner of the phrase Tunku Varadarajan.)
A more egregious offender is Michael Medved who stridently denounces his fellow conservatives for questioning the intentions of leftists. Just a few days ago Medved lectured conservatives for daring to think that President Obama may not mean this country well. Medved can’t even bring himself to use the word radical to describe Obama. He opined that

Republicans—especially in the tea party faction of the GOP—frequently charge that the current incumbent counts as an unprecedented, frightening fanatic with an alien, un-American agenda. But this view of Obama can’t possibly survive an honest examination of the record of his Democratic predecessors. Newt Gingrich, as a former professor of history, ought to know better than to characterize Obama (fatuously) as “the most radical president in American history.”
In what sense does Obama count as more radical than FDR, the patron saint of the modern Democratic Party?
Where does he advocate government intervention and expansion more sweeping, costly or constitutionally questionable than the programs of the New Deal—or, for that matter, of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society?
President Obama not only conforms to the big government, tax-and-spend traditions that have characterized his party for nearly a century; he stands squarely in the center of the Democrats’ current coalition.

Does Obama advocate more expensive, more sweeping programs than Franklin D. Roosevelt did? You betcha. Look at Obamacare, the wealth redistribution program that will bankrupt the nation — unless entitlements such as Social Security beat it to the punch. And Medved suggests Obamacare is constitutional. How can forcing people to buy a product that might not want possibly be consistent with the nation’s great charter?
The only part on which Medved has a bit of point is where he argues that Obama is in the center of the Democrats’ current coalition. It’s not exactly true but there is at least a grain of truth to it. Today’s Democratic Party isn’t much different ideologically than the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs.
Nevertheless, the typical Democrat nowadays is far to the left of most Americans. Democrats from previous generations would be embarrassed by today’s Democratic Party which is where radicals who are serious about getting political power hang out in America.

How many more of America’s free institutions will have to be destroyed before Medved and company finally get it?
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The Left’s Assault on Democracy in Wisconsin

A few days ago Front Page Magazine published an article of mine called The Left’s Assault on Democracy in Wisconsin. Here are the top paragraphs:

Leftist radicals don’t believe in democracy in the way the term is used in America. If they win, it’s democracy in action, a noble rendering of the wise judgment of the people. If they lose, democracy has been undermined and usually some cabal of corporate villains in a smoke-filled backroom somewhere is to blame for the injustice. 

The union goons and paid protesters wreaking havoc in Madison, Wisconsin believe in the radical left-wing un-American conception of democracy.They’re being cheered on by the Rev. Jesse Jackson who dropped by to outrageously compare the ongoing disruptions to the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. “This is a Martin Luther King moment, this is a Gandhi moment,” he said without chuckling.

They’re also being praised and encouraged by the nation’s foremost leftist guru, professor Noam Chomsky. Chomsky told Democracy Now! recently that he hopes the protests begin to resemble the violent demonstrations in Egypt. “It was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day in fact. I mean that’s the beginning maybe of what we really need here, a democracy uprising. Democracy’s almost been eviscerated.”It should surprise no one that the Democrat-labor-academia-media complex agrees with Chomsky. That brotherhood has already written the narrative in deficit-riddled Wisconsin, anointing selfless, public-spirited, criminally underpaid educators as the heroes in a David-and-Goliath struggle against a mean, tightfisted Republican governor who is the tool of special interests. 

Would that it were true. [...]

Read the whole thing here.

The Left's hate campaign against an American hero intensifies, love affair with traitors grows

The New York Times has retracted its smear of Brandon Darby yet the character assassination campaign against this American hero is only just beginning.


By way of background, Darby is the former left-wing community organizer who risked his life to prevent leftist terrorists from firebombing the GOP national convention in Minnesota in 2008. The Times falsely reported that he had "encouraged" the conspiracy even though one of the now-imprisoned terrorists admitted he lied about Darby's complicity (and the trial judge made a specific finding that Darby was blameless -- and then added extra time to the terrorist's sentence for lying).


Over the weekend a particularly vile George Soros-funded propaganda film premiered at the South By Southwest film festival (SXSW) in Darby's hometown of Austin, Texas. The movie is called "Better This World." It paints Darby as someone who betrayed radical leftists everywhere for daring to love his country. The film, which could be considered anarchist porn, argues that Darby was a loathsome agent provocateur who somehow brainwashed two nasty, violent young men into doing something they otherwise would not have done. This flies in the face of all credible evidence including but not limited to the findings of the court that sent these two traitors to the hoosegow.

James O'Keefe plugs my book on CNN's Reliable Sources

ACORN slayer James O'Keefe gives my book, Subversion Inc., an unexpected plug on CNN's "Reliable Sources" show today:

Politico disguises hit piece on Cong. Michele Bachmann as fact-checking

People who get paid to talk for a living are bound to make a lot of innocent mistakes when they talk. This includes our elected representatives.

But mistakes made by conservatives almost always generate more media coverage than mistakes by liberals.

And so yet another dreary left-wing hit piece on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) emerges. This time it is disguised as a fact-checking exercise. (Of course Bachmann's misstatements are trifling compared to those of Barack "57 States" Obama and Joe "Stand Up For Chuck" Biden.)

The phony fact-checkers are Jonathan Martin and Kendra Marr of the Politico.

They say Bachmann was wrong when she said that the Founding Fathers worked to get rid of slavery in the United States. Bachmann is quoted saying, "The very Founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." (Note: Founders is spelled with a lower-case F in the article. This is incorrect. When referring to the American Founding Fathers the upper-case must be used on the initial letters.)

Martin and Marr write

While some of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in favor of abolishing slavery, they were, of course, dead when the institution was ended following the Civil War.

Bachmann singled out John Quincy Adams as someone who “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”

But John Quincy Adams, the sixth president who went on to campaign vigorously against slavery while serving in the U.S. House, was not yet 9 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776; he died in 1848 — nearly two decades before the 13th Amendment was ratified abolishing slavery.

This is a typical Media Matters-style lawyering of a statement. Although some Founders did tirelessly work to kill off slavery, I suspect Bachmann was advancing the view that the seeds of slavery's destruction as an institution were sewn into the very fabric of the Constitution. This used to be the dominant view before the awful 1960s and political correctness came along.

If Martin and Marr had bothered to actually read the Constitution they might have discovered that it contained clauses designed to cripple slavery. Those provisions were inserted by Framers opposed to slavery and over the vigorous opposition of slave states.

Hero sues New York Times for accusing him of complicity in terrorism

I have an article up on the Daily Caller about former far-left activist Brandon Darby. Darby helped to undermine an anarchist plot to attack the 2008 Republican national convention yet a New York Times article accused him of being part of the plot.


It's a lie and today Darby filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper. Read my article here. I provide more details about the plot and its aftermath in my new book, Subversion Inc.

Congratulations to James O'Keefe III for another successful video expose!

Congratulations to James O'Keefe and Veritas Visuals on another job well done.


O'Keefe, who along with Hannah Giles slew ACORN in 2009, has generated another uproar at the conduct of the left. O'Keefe's latest video shows a then-NPR executive spewing the most uninformed, bigoted views about the Tea Party and middle America.


I associate myself with the comments Rush Limbaugh made today about the NPR sting:

Subversion Inc. now listed on Amazon

Now that Subversion Inc. is listed on Amazon.com, you can pre-order the book by clicking here. Release date is May 10, 2011.

Here is the promotional writeup from Amazon:

Review

"A riveting journey through the tangled web of ACORN ... This is one of the most comprehensive compilations of evidence against ACORN available." -Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa)


"A well-researched, irresistibly written book that every American should read. The criminal enterprise called 'ACORN' is the largest, most elusive, and most dangerous radical organization in America. If you are wondering about the operations and influence of a vast left-wing conspiracy, this is it, with tentacles that reach right into the heart of the Obama White House." - David Horowitz, author of New York Times bestseller The Shadow Party


"I dare anyone to defend ACORN, and its radicals, after reading this book." - Hannah Giles, Investigative Journalist


"It's dynamite with a short fuse." - G. Gordon Liddy, Nationally Syndicated Talk Show Host


"Through his careful research, Matthew Vadum shined a light that exposed ACORN's corruption. For months I fought to cut off the flow of tax dollars to ACORN. In Subversion Inc. Vadum warns that despite the defunding of ACORN, the group has only feigned death." - Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota)

Product Description

Do you ever get the feeling America's mounting problems are too grave to have happened by accident? You're far from alone. America is under siege as radicals determined to pulverize the U.S. Constitution deliberately bankrupt the nation, destroy the electoral system, and drive the economy into the ground.

The Great Fraud: Public Sector Bargaining Rights

I have a piece at Front Page Magazine today called The Great Fraud: Public Sector Bargaining Rights.

Media Matters Videotapes Vadum at CPAC 2011

Apparently Media Matters for America thought I said something scandalous or ridicule-worthy at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) here in Washington, D.C., last month.

Here’s is a short video from the panel on the activist left:

 
Another video was shot by two Media Matters videographers who posed as young conservatives. They interviewed me in hopes I would say something nasty about Glenn Beck. Here's the video (the blog post they wrote is here):

The Future Isn’t NOW

Townhall magazine has kindly granted permission to post my profile of the tedious National Organization for Women. The article appears in the current issue.


Click on the following link to read the article: The Future Isn’t NOW.

When Vadum educated Glenn Beck about the Cloward-Piven Strategy and the Tides Foundation

According to Nexis (no link available) I was the guest who introduced Glenn Beck to the Cloward-Piven Strategy on his TV show almost two years ago. The show was aired on May 13, 2009.

Here are the video clips:





And according to the left-wing Media Matters for America, on the same show I was also the guest who introduced Beck to the shadowy, radical Tides Foundation.

Vadum interviewed by Arizona blogger Barbara Espinosa

Blogger Barbara Espinosa of "Hair on Fire" radio fame interviewed me about Subversion Inc. on the morning after CPAC 2011 wrapped up in Washington, D.C.


And here's the interview:



(hat tip: Barbara Espinosa)

Welcome.

Welcome to my blog.

My book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, will be published May 10.