Another Hero in the Army of Davids

I’m adding another fellow to my hero list.  You may have run into this video, in which a Wall Street Occupier explains how great things are in North Korea.  I thought it had gone more viral, but it’s only at 38-thousand-and-change as of today.

Thanks to Judge Napolitano, we learn that the videographer is Vladimir Jaffe:  Russian-born American, small businessman, and Tea Partier.  The combination of a Russian accent with the swift exposure of his subjects’ ignorance gives Jaffe’s videos an amusing Borat vibe.

Mr. Jaffe has been steadily uploading new clips for several months, and I have enjoyed following him on his journey to educate the lost leftists of New York City.  Some clips are on the long side, so I’ve culled and annotated a few of my favorites for your expedited viewing pleasure.

Skip right to 2:00 in the next video.  Two young leftists inform Mr. Jaffe that Cuba has the highest standard of living for all the nations in the Caribbean.  “That I’ve heard,” the young lady adds as a bit of an escape clause.

Then, at 3:00, the young lady declares with a straight face that a doctor should not necessarily be paid more than a street sweeper if that doctor’s education was free (I have to assume she means free to him–somebody has to pay for that education).  A person’s hard work, time, dedication, brains and talent mean nothing, apparently.

At about 9:20, the young lady says well, I don’t defend the system that existed in the USSR, so Jaffe asks, then why is the hammer and sickle on this table then?

On to the next clip.  Start about :50, when an old commie guy defends Trotsky.  Then at 2:05 he claims that Lenin’s revolution was bloodless.  (Note to all you Occupiers out there:  don’t try to school a Russian on Russian history, it makes you look really dumb.)

He tries to blame first Stalin, and then the isolation of Russia for the failings of that particular glorious revolution.  Then, at 4:25 he is forced to fold:  “Alright, well, you are welcome to read through the books that we have . . . .”  Just leave me alone, you horrible man with your facts and your logic.

Mr. Jaffe presses:  “You are promoting all of this.  It’s my country you want to change.”  At 5:34, he asks Old Commie Guy for an example of a successful socialist country.

Cuba.

Old Commie admits that he couldn’t set up a table and promote capitalism if he were in Cuba.  Yet, he refuses to back down.  Having revealed his totalitarian core, he walks away.  What more is there to say?

A pattern emerges in these video clips:  through language or imagery the subjects associate themselves with the likes of Stalin, Lenin, Che, Castro, until they are called out by an actual victim of one such regime.  Then, they distance themselves.  They claim that “wasn’t really communism/socialism.”  They insist that they are in the vanguard of a new system.

I have to applaud Mr. Jaffe for his patience.  Unlike Borat, he never descends into simple mockery.  He is actually reaching out to these maddeningly misinformed malcontents.  The folks above remain unmoved, undeterred.  In other clips, however, he may actually be making a lasting impression.  Watch as this poor fellow runs out of talking points.  Skip to 4:00 for the best part:

The awkwardness is palpable as the interviewed fellow admits “he doesn’t know which companies we invest in.”  Mr. Jaffe points out, well, since you are sitting at this table as a representative, I assume you are familiar.  He presses the young man on the question of what is so wrong with coal, and the man folds completely.  He lamely refers Mr. Jaffe to the “research department” in a brochure and gives up on the conversation.

The next video clip is the longest, because the subject interviewed is actually willing to listen.  Skip to 7:50, where the young man makes an outlandish claim about Israel.  Mr. Jaffe then leads him by the proverbial hand down a path of logic and history.  Watching his discomfort as he tries to wiggle off this path is both comical and gratifying.  Because he can’t.  He can’t escape the logic.

“I think there’s a lot of sh** behind that, that we have no idea about,” he mutters lamely at 12:09, but Mr. Jaffe rolls his eyes.  “Why are you rolling your eyes at me?” he says reproachfully.  Look, Mr. Jaffe says, these are simple facts.  If you don’t believe the facts, then I don’t know what to else to say.

The last clip is short and sweet.  A representative of the Freedom Socialist Party dives into a helpful explanation of socialism, until Mr. Jaffe asks her whether Che was a socialist.

Immediately uncomfortable, she refuses to answer.  At 1:50 he asks, how are you going to make socialism different now?  “Russia and the movements in the past also lacked international support,” she offers.  Jaffe runs through a long list of countries with which Russia had relations, both the friendly and the forced, and asked her to help him understand why socialism didn’t work in those places, but will work here.

“I’m sorry, are you filming this? I would prefer that you didn’t.”

Yep.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed these videos.  Aside from the amusement factor, they serve as an important lesson for me:  go ahead.  Call them out.  It feels like a waste of time, but it isn’t.

What would happen if we all got out and pressed the loudest propagators of Leftist Lunacy?  As Mr. Jaffe demonstrates, they quickly run out of words.   If leftists were confronted by an Army of Jaffes and Breitbarts and other assorted Davids every time they stood up to bleat something stupid, how many of them would finally, and at long last, shut up?

Hmm.  I think I’m off to Facebook to see if I can pick a fight.

 

From ‘Hope and Change’ to ‘Doom and Gloom’

A recent poll from ‘The Hill’ newspaper shows voters in a very pessimistic mood about Obama and his policies.  Is it time to bring back the ‘misery index’?

 

Tom Hanks, George Clooney, and Elle McPherson can glow on and on about their magnificent boy prince all they like, but they aren’t affected by the price of food, oil, an economy in the tank and devastating unemployment. 

As for normal Americans….

On economic issues, 62 percent of voters say Obama’s policies will increase the debt, while 25 percent think they will cut it, and by a 48-percent-to-38-percent margin, voters believe those policies will increase joblessness rather than put people back to work.

 On energy, 58 percent say Obama’s policies will result in gasoline prices increasing, while just 20 percent expect them to cut prices — and by a 46-percent-to-36-percent margin, voters believe they will cause the United States to become even more dependent on foreign oil. 

The thing that always amazes me about these polls are the 20-25% that answer contrary to the majority opinion.  What about Obama’s policies would make you believe that the result will reduce the debt or decrease  energy prices and our dependence on foreign oil?

What color is the sky in their world?  People this ignorant should not allowed to vote.  Unfortunately, it’s their right, much to our national detriment.

 

Obama’s new Corporate Tax Cut. Did I say “Cut”? I meant “Hike”

The latest strategy from Obama is to sell his new Corporate Tax Cut, lowers the overall rate from 35% to 28%, but as with all Obama parlor tricks, it eliminates many deductions that allow corporations to pay less than the 35% rate under the current system.

Also, brand new to the table is the provision that profits that are made from overseas will now be taxed even if the money is never brought back to the United States.

This is going to have devastating impact on companies like Ford, IBM and Caterpillar, to name but a few.

That means that many businesses that slip through loopholes or enjoy subsidies and pay an effective tax rate that is substantially less than the 35 percent corporate tax could end up paying more under Obama’s plan.

Obama, acting like the common street hustler that he is, is perpetrating an election year class envy hoax on the gullible and this is nothing but a con designed to whip up class envy and finally punish the successful by advancing his socialist wealth redistribution scheme.

The Republican candidates need to pound this and pound it loudly and without end.

Exit question: If this new corporate tax proposal actually comes into being, and it is admittedly a long shot at best, will General Electric and Government Motors finally have to pay taxes?

 

Occupy Unmasked: Green, Yellow, Red

This was another fascinating observation from the CPAC event that Citizens United and Andrew Breitbart held on Thursday regarding their new movie project, “Occupy Unmasked”.  As I indicated earlier, rather than approaching this from the mentality of the right, they went out and found people who were once deeply connected and embedded within the leftist movement to understand the mentality and tactics involved.

One such former leftist community organizer is Brandon Darby.  He explains that what appears to be disorganized mayhem is really very well orchestrated and not all of the players know that they are being manipulated into playing a role in a play about which they are totally unaware.

What we saw on Friday and Saturday at CPAC were mostly players from the Green Team working under orders from puppet masters. 

As the panelists were speaking, two Occupy protesters walked up to the stage and unrolled a big banner attacking Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas. Kobach is a very smart lawyer who worked at the Bush Justice Department and was elected secretary of state in 2010. He has raised the ire of liberals because of his support for common-sense election reforms like voter-ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for individuals registering to vote, both of which were passed by the Kansas legislature.

However, Kobach has also worked on immigration issues and helped Arizona legislators draft their immigration law that has been attacked by the Obama Justice Department. That law has served as a model for many other states, such as Alabama, that have passed similar measures in the wake of the Obama administration’s non-enforcement policy. Kobach was at CPAC to speak on an immigration panel.

There was only one problem for the protesters — they were in the wrong room (LOL!). Kobach’s panel was going on elsewhere in the hotel and he was not on the panel that David Keene was moderating or the one that was about to start. When Keene told the protesters that, everyone in the room started laughing at them and they sheepishly folded up their banner and left. They apparently never made it to the actual room where Kobach was speaking.

That was obviously a puppet master FAIL executed by mindless Greenies.

Brandon Darby’s talk on Thursday made me wary that these kinds of distractions were being employed to do something even more nefarious.  Fortunately it didn’t turn out to be anymore than bluster this time.

This time. 

 

 

What am I to believe? The Chatter about an Improving Economy or my Lyin’ Eyes?

It is being spoken and respoken.  The Economy is in recovery.

For many years I commuted in and out of Richmond, VA’s far West End, but for economic reasons my Florida company decided that it would be best to close down our little office and have us work from home.  And I thank my lucky stars that I still have a job and a company that is reasonably solvent due to severe layoffs and belt tightening, even if it is in a dying industry.

But because my Internet provider had a malfunction, I temporarily lost Internet access today and had to find somewhere in town to log on to do my job. 

But that’s not the story.  Well, the layoffs and belt tightening, the austerity are PART of the story, but let’s move on.

When I left for home today at my old commute timeI was shocked at the light volume of traffic. 

When Circuit City corporate was here, this commute was extremely heavy and it took 5 or more traffic light cycles to make a left from Cox Rd. northbound onto Nuckols Rd., but then Circuit City died in Feb. 2009 and the traffic lessened considerably. 

Our office closed about 2 years ago, but still, it was a 3 traffic light cycle to get through that intersection.

Today, on a Monday in non-vacation season, it took only 1 light cycle and the turn lane wasn’t even half way filled.

There just weren’t that many commuters anymore. 

OK.  Maybe I was just lucky.  It was peculiar.  I was prepared for the usual vehicular combat from the days of old and I found myself with no competition to speak of.

Are other companies becoming more enlightened and allowing more and more of us to work from home thereby lessening the traffic flow? 

I’m thinking not. 

These are the everyday things that both distress me AND give me comfort that in spite of the spin from the White House and Clint Eastwood and the Obamasseuses from NBC et al.  You can’t escape the fact that the economy simply sucks and everyday people can’t help but notice the closing stores, the defunct retail chains, and the lessening job opportunities.  Properties, both residential and commercial are becoming increasingly vacant.  Prices for energy, food, and essentials are sky rocketing.

Couple all of this empirical evidence with all the people you know personally that have been devastated and it’s a pretty damning picture that’s hard to ignore and all the spin in the world can’t convince a recent victim of a business failure that the president and the Democrats have done them anything but harm.

This is Obama’s fundamental transformation of America.

You know what to do come November.

 

The NLRB and Labor Unions, The Unholy Alliance Continues

Each and every day for the past two weeks, I’ve seen the following message when I log into the website of our company’s payroll and benefits provider:

Please note that the NLRB recently communicated the following information regarding a new posting requirement.
Mandatory Federal (NLRB) Update – Poster Pending

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a Final Rule requiring most private-sector employers to notify employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act by posting a notice.

Employers must also post the notice on an intranet or an internet site if personnel rules and policies are customarily posted there. The rule will take effect on November 14, 2011.

The posting has not yet been released; the NLRB states it will be released on or before November 1, 2011. When the posting is released, posters will be made available to all clients. Further details to follow.

For those of you who haven’t stepped foot inside the employee lounge or personnel office lately, let me clarify this for you. No doubt you’ve seen the numerous posters covering topics from Minimum Wage to Employee Rights, etc. (Now in both English and Spanish for those of you who refuse to speak the language of the country that you are living and working in). But let me not get off topic here. This is nothing more than the National Labor Relations Board, a FEDERAL GOVERNMENT entity, working hand-in-hand with the Unions that put Barack Hussein Obama and the vast majority of Democrats into their Senate and Congressional offices, both nationally and locally. This is the NLRB doing their part to reward the Unions for their continued support of Leftist Progressive Liberal Agendas by PROMOTING and ENCOURAGING private sector employees to rise up and form a Union in their workplace.

What Obama cannot get passed in Congress (Card Check comes immediately to mind), he will find a way to pass through some other backdoor method. The Unions are failing everywhere except for in the Public Sector. Why? Because everyone with an IQ over 11 knows that the Union does nothing for them while lining the pockets of the Union Leaders and ensuring that Liberals continue to win elections and perpetuate the cycle of Union dues paying for Liberals’ campaigns, Liberals win and reward the Union leaders with more legislation and regulation favorable to Unions. What about the Union members that don’t support those Liberal candidates or incumbents? No soup for you!

 

Not everyone is happy with the outcome of the last election

I live in a very conservative area, very near the home of Patrick Henry, but there are some liberals bespoiling my idyllic paradise.  This is the third time someody has snapped the Gadsden Flag off of my mailbox over the last year, but this time they also broke the pole it in half and shoved it in inside my mailbox.

Thank you, Mr. or Miss Liberal for proving my point.  You are a child and your henchmen do not deserve to lead.

Vandalism.  Destruction of Private Property.  Is the fact that it was put in my mailbox make this a federal crime?   Not sure.

I’m considering my next option.  It will be replaced.   Maybe with a LARGER one.

 

Socialism is Cool – Perriello Supporters Told Us So!

I would call them useful idiots. Are they so totally detached from reality that they don’t understand the consequences of favoring such rule?

Are they so ignorant that they refuse to see that Socialism but is just a stepping-stone to Communism?

Let’s name a few perpetrators shall we? Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Chavez, Guevara, Engels, Stalin, Castro, Kim Jong Il. I wish Ben had asked these people to explain how Socialism was cool under these monsters.

“The only important difference between Nazi-ism, Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, and Liberalism is the spelling; and that the last group hasn’t got the brains to figure it out.” – Bill Vance 

“The problem with socialism is that sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher

Pathetic, but more proof that American Universities are bastions of liberal progressivsm who have lost all sense of reasonable discourse.