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Adolf Hitler

2012-02-17T06:17:37Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 962198 by Tokimo2 (talk)

{{Dictator bio
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]
| name =Adolf Hitler
| birth =April 20, 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) Klara Pölzl
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)
| spouse =Eva Braun
| children =none
| death =April 30, 1945 Berlin, Germany
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot
| education =Realschule Linz, Austria
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment Imperial German Army (1914-1918)
| rank =Corporal
|burial = none, burned.
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]] [[National socialism]] (Nazism)
| party =German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1920–1921) National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1921–1945)
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933
| war =[[World War II]]
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether

Rummel: 21,000,000
}}
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor and President of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933 until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader (German: ''Der Führer'') of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker.

==Early life==
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.

When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] </ref>

==Who And What He Was==
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote>

{{Clear}}

==Beliefs==
Although there have been many attempts to slander [[Christianity]] by claiming Hitler to be a Christian, Hitler was actually an atheist. While he may have said some things during speeches to make him sound like he was a Christian for political reasons, historians agree that the evidence points to him being an atheist. It is not just parts of his speeches, and text from his book ''Mein Kampf'' that prove this, but it was also proven by his actions as well. No true Christian would slaughter the Jews like Hitler did. That is the kind of hatred of a religion that could only come from atheism; that and his [[Evolutionary racism]]. <ref>http://www.doxa.ws/social/Hitler.html</ref> This is an excellent example of the corruption that atheism can cause to the morals of a person.

=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===

''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]

[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}

=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]

[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following:
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}

Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}

Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref>
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}

Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" />

[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.

There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}

[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref>

== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==

''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto
![[Nazi]] Party Platform
!Analysis
|-
|1
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.
|-
|2
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.
|-
|3
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished."
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.
|-
|4
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.
|-
|5
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."
|Central control of the financial system.
|-
|6
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.
|-
|7
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.
|-
|}

==War==
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.

==Path to power==
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the Army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors who sought to lay hands on the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.

After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September, 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member; he left the army soon after and devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.

Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out endless propaganda. His meetings where he spoke grew from handfuls to hundreds, and then on to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Göring, and Rudolf Hess.

Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, Ernst Röhm, a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists and communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army called the ''Sturmabteilung'', abbreviated to S.A.

==The Beer Hall Putsch==
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail.

The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".

===''Mein Kampf''===
{{main|Mein Kampf}}
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[atheist]] and [[evolutionist]] ideas.

Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”

From "Mein Kampf":
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}

{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref>
}}

==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==

[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg‎ |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.

A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.

The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.

==In power==
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.

===Night of the Long Knives===
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the million-plus men of the S.A. and their leader, Ernst Röhm, who wanted nothing less than the merger of the S.A. into the army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of S.A. leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref>
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the S.A. leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of S.A. members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.

===Beginnings of expansion===
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.

While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.

The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.

==Anschluss==

Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.

While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia.

==Poland==
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.

On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.

Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.

Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.

==Barbarossa==
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.

In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref>

==Beginning of the end==
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg‎ |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.

But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.

===Assassination attempt===
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.

On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.

[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler:
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}

All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.

== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==

''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]

In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}

== External links ==
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]

==Further reading==
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.

{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}}

[[Category:Dictators]]
[[Category:Atheists]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Evolutionists]]
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]
[[Category: Lunatics]]

American Heroism

2011-11-23T08:11:24Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 939658 by AleXD (talk) removed murderer

'''American heroes''' are men who represent American values.

==Heroes==
*[[Buzz Aldrin]]
*[[John Ashbrook]]
*[[John Ashcroft]]
*[[Glenn Beck]]
*[[Pat Buchanan]]
*[[William F. Buckley, Jr.]]
*[[George W. Bush]]
*[[Claire Chennault]]
*[[Dick Cheney]]
*[[Frederick Douglass]]
*[[Newt Gingrich]]
*[[Barry Goldwater]]
*[[Billy Graham]]
*[[Sean Hannity]]
*[[Herbert Hoover]]
*[[Mike Huckabee]]
*[[Jack Kemp]]
*[[Robert E. Lee]]
*[[Rush Limbaugh]]
*[[Abraham Lincoln]]
*[[Charles Lindbergh]]
*[[Chuck Norris]]
*[[Bill O'Reilly]]
*[[George Patton]]
*[[Rick Perry]]
*[[Ronald Reagan]]
*[[Pat Robertson]]
*[[Karl Rove]]
*[[Donald Rumsfeld]]
*[[Michael Savage]]
*[[User:Aschlafly|Andrew Schlafly]]
*[[George Washington]]
*[[John Wayne]]

==Heroines==
American heroines are women who exemplify American values while maintaining their traditional role in the home.
*[[Sharron Angle]]
*[[Michele Bachmann]]
*[[Anita Bryant]]
*[[Megyn Kelly]]
*[[Michelle Malkin]]
*[[Christine O'Donnell]]
*[[Sarah Palin]]
*[[Phyllis Schlafly]]
[[Category:United States of America]]

Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?

2011-11-19T22:04:19Z

EdwinLerch: rv more

Conservative principles are based on reason. So why do non-conservatives still exist? Here are some reasons:

== Statistical Analysis ==

(Estimates)

:* 20%: did not hear about conservative principles until ''after'' they made up their mind and, perhaps due to pervasive societal bias, refuse to reconsider
:* 10%: genuinely lack of desire to find the truth, and instead desire attention, praise by liberal teachers, getting along by going along, and not standing up to liberal bullies
:* 10%: refuse to forgive themselves and let go of their past mistakes and image
:* 10%: believe myths created around government programs like the "New Deal" that liberal policies create jobs instead of destroying them and depriving people of liberty through government control.
:* 10%: fooled by the demonizing of conservatives and mistakenly feel that conservative benefits are available only to those who are from an intact family or privileged background
:* 10%: refuse to rise above their personal temptations, often self-destructive, and hate conservatives who criticize their self-indulgent behavior
:* 10%: feel that they deserve to make more money than they do, as in public school teachers and university professors, and refuse to rise above self-interest
:* 10%: harbor a grudge against a conservative, typically a parent but sometimes an ex-spouse, and refuse to forgive or rise above the animosity
:* 5%: like an anarchist, genuinely want to believe in and propagate destructive ideas
:* 5%: are susceptible to marketing and suggestion to an overlarge degree.

== What Triggers Reconsideration of [[Liberal]] Beliefs? ==

What triggers reconsideration of liberal beliefs? Here are some estimates:

:* 25%: raising or teaching children, and realizing how destructive liberal values are to many of them
:* 15%: a religious conversion followed by taking the [[Bible]] to heart
:* 10%: a loss of a loved one that resulted from accepting or promoting liberal values, as in losing a loved one to crime caused by pornography, drug addiction, gambling, etc.
:* 10%: a new friendship with someone who is conservative, and realizing how much good flows from the conservative values<ref>''See, e.g.'', the conversion of [[Ronald Reagan]] based in his friendship with his [[conservative]] father-in-law, Loyal Davis.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921293,00.html]</ref>
:* 10%: simply by maturing and seeing liberalism's impact around them, and realizing what they were taught as youth was wrong
:* 5%: a desire to learn the truth, and a dislike for those who mislead
:* 5%: a genuine divine experience that can not be explained.
:* 5%: using conservative values to overcome an addiction, and then realizing the benefits of conservative values in many other ways
:* 5%: taking a truthful course in [[economics]], or learning it in the workforce<ref>''See, e.g.'', the conversion of Nobel Laureate [[Ronald Coase]].</ref>

== Cultural indoctrination ==

*Brainwashing and deceit:
:* They pride themselves on doing well in school or reading the newspaper, can't accept that what they were taught was incorrect or biased.
:* Dangerous professors who impose their opinions upon vulnerable youth.
:* Television programs posing as comedies, such as [[South Park]], [[Family Guy]], and [[The Simpsons]], which inject liberal beliefs and mock conservative values
:* Exposed to incorrect liberal ideas throughout education. Standard American kindergartens up to the fourth grade. Wastes the potential of most children—does not expose them to foreign languages and other learning tasks their minds are obviously and mysteriously suited for. All helping to make them think they need liberal man-made structures that in fact limit their potential in a self-defeating sort of cycle.
:* Indoctrination by liberal churches which have a disproportionate focus on biblical passages that appear to support liberal positions, eg. the adulteress story, the disciples holding everything in common, etc.
:* A blind obsession to be famous, act and imitate the ways of their famous idols, to absorb their ideals as their own.
:* Failure to realize that modern science and modern wealth are the result of historical processes set into motion by God-fearing Christian Conservatives like [[Blaise Pascal]], [[Robert Boyle]], [[Isaac Newton]], and [[James Maxwell]]. (When the obvious importance of Christianity to these scientific figures' everyday lives comes up in an academic situation, dangerous professors—[[liberal]] historians and [[liberal]] scientists—have been known to label it as "some mental disorder".)
:*Elementary through high school textbooks having appalling and reprehensible omissions on the basic facts of American life (religion, marriage, politics, and business)<ref> ''Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's textbooks'', [[Paul C. Vitz]], Servant Books, 1986, ISBN 0-89283-305-X, (this book contains the results of a federally funded research project analyzing children's textbooks) </ref>
:*For decades Universities have discriminated against hiring conservatives, especially social conservatives and religious believers.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=zGOuAAAACAAJ A Student's Guide to Religious Studies], D. G. Hart, ISI Books, 2005, ISBN 1932236589, 9781932236583, 108 pages; see page 38 and note on page 107. </ref> This has resulted in most college graduates being exposed to liberals prejudiced against conservatives and conservative thought. These graduates become the teachers and other professionals who are unwitting soldiers in liberalism's battle against a Christian Reformed, Roman-Catholic/Anglican/Orthodox, obedient-to-God reality.

*No exposure:
:* Current fashions in American professional behavior make expressions of Christian faith awkward in the workaday world.
:* Increasing zone of publicly funded anti-religious fanaticism (e.g., no prayer in public schools)
:* Spectacle of entertainment industry (e.g., movies and T.V.) cuts into traditionally popular Christian church social activities
:* Most universities and hospitals have forgotten or have been forced to deny (to get various grants and even retirement benefits for their professors) their religious roots. Catholic affiliated institutions remain one of the few exceptions (few or possibly no other body of Christians can make legitimate claims of offering modern [[Pastoral care]] as the Roman Catholic church)

*Peer Pressure:
:* They have liberal friends, and want their approval or acceptance.
:* They live in a predominantly liberal state or community and fear rejection from said community.

*Systemic bias:
:* Some people are [[The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness|inherently irrational]], and are thus driven to liberal ideology.
:* Their job and salary, such as working for public schools, depends on keeping conservatives out of power.
:* Media bias acts to caricature conservatism, making it seem unpalatable, conditioning people to reject its teachings.
:* Schools reward politically correct, liberal answers on tests.
:* Negative focusing by the media highlights personal flaws of conservatives, driving people to choose to identify with liberals rather than be categorized with those traits.

*See also: [[Mystery:Why Do Black Americans Vote For Liberal Candidates?]]

== Liberal characteristics ==
*Poor abstract thinking:
:* They have trouble understanding some of the slightly abstract concepts in conservatism, such as "more guns, less crime," and "less taxes, more revenue."
:* They are more comfortable discussing simple issues like race and poverty than complex issues like globalism.
:* Intellectual myopia - failure to heed the long-term consequences of ideological positions that seem beneficial in the short term.
:* Stereotyping: They knew a conservative whom they disliked for some reason, and tar all others with the same brush.
:* Ignorance: politics isn't a priority for some people. Without any wish to learn to think for themselves, some liberals don't bother to think through what's right, and just go with what's "cool."

*Closed-minded:
:* They made up their mind before hearing conservative principles, and will not reconsider their views.
:* They have something criticized by conservatives in their personal background, and feel compelled to defend it rather than let it go.
:* Slavish adherence to the ideals of liberal parents

*Naivety:
:* Non-conservatives demonstrate just how prone mankind is to arrogance.
:* An admiration for historical figures whom liberals claim were liberals.
:* A desire for large government inculcated by personal weakness and reluctance to take personal responsibility.
:* Impressionable individuals buying into [[Bush derangement syndrome]], and reacting with emotion rather than reason.
:* Reliance on charisma: Charismatic leaders trading on image, rather than experience, can dupe the unsuspecting.

*Self-destructive or contrarian behavior:
:* Some choose to do what is irrational.
:* Use of mind-altering drugs, which encourages one to become a liberal to reconcile the cognitive dissonance, or dulls mental acuity resulting in mindless conformity.
:* Sexual experimentation to make up for lack of self-esteem, often with multiple partners, with partners of the same gender, or in public places
:* Unthinking rebellion against conservative parents.
:* Determined to prove their "independence of mind" by denying authority

== References ==

<references/>

[[Category:Mystery]]

Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?

2011-11-19T22:03:50Z

EdwinLerch: rv

Conservative principles are based on reason. So why do non-conservatives still exist? Here are some reasons:

== Statistical Analysis ==

(Estimates)

:* 20%: did not hear about conservative principles until ''after'' they made up their mind and, perhaps due to pervasive societal bias, refuse to reconsider
:* 10%: genuinely lack of desire to find the truth, and instead desire attention, praise by liberal teachers, getting along by going along, and not standing up to liberal bullies
:* 10%: refuse to forgive themselves and let go of their past mistakes and image
:* 10%: believe myths created around government programs like the "New Deal" that liberal policies create jobs instead of destroying them and depriving people of liberty through government control.
:* 10%: fooled by the demonizing of conservatives and mistakenly feel that conservative benefits are available only to those who are from an intact family or privileged background
:* 10%: refuse to rise above their personal temptations, often self-destructive, and hate conservatives who criticize their self-indulgent behavior
:* 10%: feel that they deserve to make more money than they do, as in public school teachers and university professors, and refuse to rise above self-interest
:* 10%: harbor a grudge against a conservative, typically a parent but sometimes an ex-spouse, and refuse to forgive or rise above the animosity
:* 5%: like an anarchist, genuinely want to believe in and propagate destructive ideas
:* 5%: are susceptible to marketing and suggestion to an overlarge degree.

== <s>What Triggers Reconsideration of [[Liberal]] Beliefs?</s> More Numbers Andy Schlafly Pulled Out of His Ass ==

What triggers reconsideration of liberal beliefs? Here are some estimates:

:* 25%: raising or teaching children, and realizing how destructive liberal values are to many of them
:* 15%: a religious conversion followed by taking the [[Bible]] to heart
:* 10%: a loss of a loved one that resulted from accepting or promoting liberal values, as in losing a loved one to crime caused by pornography, drug addiction, gambling, etc.
:* 10%: a new friendship with someone who is conservative, and realizing how much good flows from the conservative values<ref>''See, e.g.'', the conversion of [[Ronald Reagan]] based in his friendship with his [[conservative]] father-in-law, Loyal Davis.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921293,00.html]</ref>
:* 10%: simply by maturing and seeing liberalism's impact around them, and realizing what they were taught as youth was wrong
:* 5%: a desire to learn the truth, and a dislike for those who mislead
:* 5%: a genuine divine experience that can not be explained.
:* 5%: using conservative values to overcome an addiction, and then realizing the benefits of conservative values in many other ways
:* 5%: taking a truthful course in [[economics]], or learning it in the workforce<ref>''See, e.g.'', the conversion of Nobel Laureate [[Ronald Coase]].</ref>

== Cultural indoctrination ==

*Brainwashing and deceit:
:* They pride themselves on doing well in school or reading the newspaper, can't accept that what they were taught was incorrect or biased.
:* Dangerous professors who impose their opinions upon vulnerable youth.
:* Television programs posing as comedies, such as [[South Park]], [[Family Guy]], and [[The Simpsons]], which inject liberal beliefs and mock conservative values
:* Exposed to incorrect liberal ideas throughout education. Standard American kindergartens up to the fourth grade. Wastes the potential of most children—does not expose them to foreign languages and other learning tasks their minds are obviously and mysteriously suited for. All helping to make them think they need liberal man-made structures that in fact limit their potential in a self-defeating sort of cycle.
:* Indoctrination by liberal churches which have a disproportionate focus on biblical passages that appear to support liberal positions, eg. the adulteress story, the disciples holding everything in common, etc.
:* A blind obsession to be famous, act and imitate the ways of their famous idols, to absorb their ideals as their own.
:* Failure to realize that modern science and modern wealth are the result of historical processes set into motion by God-fearing Christian Conservatives like [[Blaise Pascal]], [[Robert Boyle]], [[Isaac Newton]], and [[James Maxwell]]. (When the obvious importance of Christianity to these scientific figures' everyday lives comes up in an academic situation, dangerous professors—[[liberal]] historians and [[liberal]] scientists—have been known to label it as "some mental disorder".)
:*Elementary through high school textbooks having appalling and reprehensible omissions on the basic facts of American life (religion, marriage, politics, and business)<ref> ''Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's textbooks'', [[Paul C. Vitz]], Servant Books, 1986, ISBN 0-89283-305-X, (this book contains the results of a federally funded research project analyzing children's textbooks) </ref>
:*For decades Universities have discriminated against hiring conservatives, especially social conservatives and religious believers.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=zGOuAAAACAAJ A Student's Guide to Religious Studies], D. G. Hart, ISI Books, 2005, ISBN 1932236589, 9781932236583, 108 pages; see page 38 and note on page 107. </ref> This has resulted in most college graduates being exposed to liberals prejudiced against conservatives and conservative thought. These graduates become the teachers and other professionals who are unwitting soldiers in liberalism's battle against a Christian Reformed, Roman-Catholic/Anglican/Orthodox, obedient-to-God reality.

*No exposure:
:* Current fashions in American professional behavior make expressions of Christian faith awkward in the workaday world.
:* Increasing zone of publicly funded anti-religious fanaticism (e.g., no prayer in public schools)
:* Spectacle of entertainment industry (e.g., movies and T.V.) cuts into traditionally popular Christian church social activities
:* Most universities and hospitals have forgotten or have been forced to deny (to get various grants and even retirement benefits for their professors) their religious roots. Catholic affiliated institutions remain one of the few exceptions (few or possibly no other body of Christians can make legitimate claims of offering modern [[Pastoral care]] as the Roman Catholic church)

*Peer Pressure:
:* They have liberal friends, and want their approval or acceptance.
:* They live in a predominantly liberal state or community and fear rejection from said community.

*Systemic bias:
:* Some people are [[The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness|inherently irrational]], and are thus driven to liberal ideology.
:* Their job and salary, such as working for public schools, depends on keeping conservatives out of power.
:* Media bias acts to caricature conservatism, making it seem unpalatable, conditioning people to reject its teachings.
:* Schools reward politically correct, liberal answers on tests.
:* Negative focusing by the media highlights personal flaws of conservatives, driving people to choose to identify with liberals rather than be categorized with those traits.

*See also: [[Mystery:Why Do Black Americans Vote For Liberal Candidates?]]

== Liberal characteristics ==
*Poor abstract thinking:
:* They have trouble understanding some of the slightly abstract concepts in conservatism, such as "more guns, less crime," and "less taxes, more revenue."
:* They are more comfortable discussing simple issues like race and poverty than complex issues like globalism.
:* Intellectual myopia - failure to heed the long-term consequences of ideological positions that seem beneficial in the short term.
:* Stereotyping: They knew a conservative whom they disliked for some reason, and tar all others with the same brush.
:* Ignorance: politics isn't a priority for some people. Without any wish to learn to think for themselves, some liberals don't bother to think through what's right, and just go with what's "cool."

*Closed-minded:
:* They made up their mind before hearing conservative principles, and will not reconsider their views.
:* They have something criticized by conservatives in their personal background, and feel compelled to defend it rather than let it go.
:* Slavish adherence to the ideals of liberal parents

*Naivety:
:* Non-conservatives demonstrate just how prone mankind is to arrogance.
:* An admiration for historical figures whom liberals claim were liberals.
:* A desire for large government inculcated by personal weakness and reluctance to take personal responsibility.
:* Impressionable individuals buying into [[Bush derangement syndrome]], and reacting with emotion rather than reason.
:* Reliance on charisma: Charismatic leaders trading on image, rather than experience, can dupe the unsuspecting.

*Self-destructive or contrarian behavior:
:* Some choose to do what is irrational.
:* Use of mind-altering drugs, which encourages one to become a liberal to reconcile the cognitive dissonance, or dulls mental acuity resulting in mindless conformity.
:* Sexual experimentation to make up for lack of self-esteem, often with multiple partners, with partners of the same gender, or in public places
:* Unthinking rebellion against conservative parents.
:* Determined to prove their "independence of mind" by denying authority

== References ==

<references/>

[[Category:Mystery]]

User talk:StevenH

2011-11-19T00:21:22Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 938344 by Booobeez (talk)

Welcome to Consarvapedia. --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:00, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Thanks a lot.
:Are you a liberal? --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:16, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

No, I am not American. I am english and a conservative [[User:StevenH|StevenH]] 17:18, 3 September 2011 (EDT)
:'Conservative' in England means Liberal here. The political paradigm is quite different over here. I assume you still support your liberal 'National Health Service' and support your little 'welfare state'. Well I'll have none of it! USA! USA! --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:21, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

No, I am english and conservative, as I don't want an idiotic scotsman in my country in charge after what he did, nor do I think Nick Clegg has enough intelligence. I also vote conservative as opposed to a minority because my local politician is pro-selling off a lot of the local assets.
:I take personal offense from that. My lineage is of a Scot, and I make no bones about it. --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:25, 3 September 2011 (EDT)
Sorry, Gordon Brown is an idiot. He couldn't live up to Tony Blair, and I am not letting political correctness getting in the way of it. His reforms were ridiculous, and his economic genius from his experience as a Shadow Chancellor of the exchequer led him to reforms that wanted to bring Britain into bankruptcy. Look at Margaret Thatcher, that's all I am saying on this issue. Of course, i do not mean to insult you for being scottish. Just defining him as a scot (it'd be like a kenyan being in charge of the U.S.A if you catch my subtlety). [[User:StevenH|StevenH]] 17:32, 3 September 2011 (EDT)
:I don't think Tony was so good either! And it's my understanding that Scotland is a part of the UK, so it is more analogous to a Puerto Rican being in charge of the USA. And anyone who think Obama is from Kenya is almost as bad as a liberal hack. I think Obama is a real doofus, but challenging his patriotism is a low blow. --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:34, 3 September 2011 (EDT)
::Well, I feel that you haven't read up much about British politics then. I think you need to understand that Tony Blair had very good diplomatic connections, and although he misunderstood his statesmen, at least he ****** off to Israel. However, Gordon Brown just fell for PR stunts, making him an irritating blot on the great british politics. Specifically, look up his time as a chancellor of exchequer, he mostly failed us. [[User:StevenH|StevenH]] 17:46, 3 September 2011 (EDT)
:::Tony got you stuck in the Iraq War, and I, as a Ron Paul Conservative think that was a huge money pit! --[[User:WilliamMoran|WilliamMoran]] 17:40, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

So did all of your politicians, except Tony Blair couldn't tell the difference between diplomacy and following your lead. So yes, Tony got me stuck in the Iraq war, and rightly so, but your politicians kept us there! With what Tony Blair knew, according to brilliant liberal american sources, there were weapons of mass destruction, and we should have left, and that's why we have 10 times less commitment than you do. However, the liberals of your country kept us there. Thanks a lot.

But seriously, I agree that it is a money pit (which is why commitment in england is reducing constantly). [[User:StevenH|StevenH]] 17:49, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

::William, I'm sure there are some real [[conservatives]] in [[Britain]], and perhaps (like the U.S.) growing in numbers. Welcome, Steven.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 17:28, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

And hello, Shlafly (ashlafly, fly, ash, what shall I call you?). [[User:StevenH|StevenH]] 17:32, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

User:Aortuso

2011-11-15T22:18:18Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 937234 by EdSmells (talk)

{{Userboxtop|Aortuso}}
{{kiwi}} 
{{Userboxbottom}}
When it comes to tech "stuff" I am hopeless, so you know.

I am a fairly conservative (by American standards) Christian New Zealander living in Australia. I am here because I have found a like minded community, for the most part, and look forward to great debates, these of which I have already seen. Also generally contributing with grammar and spelling, at least till I lose those "wiki" training wheels..

Thanks for your time.

For those watching, I really am a wiki "first starter".

Barack Hussein Obama

2011-11-13T22:07:57Z

EdwinLerch: rv vandal

{{Officeholder
|name=Barack Hussein Obama
|image=President Barack Obama.jpg
|party=[[Democrat]]
|spouse=[[Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama]]
|religion= [[Barack Obama's Muslim Heritage|Allegedly]] Christian
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=44th
|terms=January 20, 2009-Present
|vp=[[Joe Biden]]
|preceded=[[George W. Bush]]
|former=n
|succeeded=
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Illinois
|terms=January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008
|preceded=Peter Fitzgerald
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Roland Burris]]
}}
}}

'''Barack Hussein Obama II''' also known by the alias '''Barry Soetoro''' during his time in Indonesia<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQPXVJuT2vY Barry Soetoro the muslim - YouTube]</ref><ref>[[Barack Obama's Muslim Heritage]]</ref> (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the [[United States]] and the controversial recipient of the 2009 [[Nobel Prize|Nobel Peace Prize]]. Overcoming a short political career, Obama defeated [[Republican]] nominee [[John McCain]] for the presidency in 2008, campaigning on promises of "hope" and "change". In effect, that change has been an embrace of [[socialism]], [[Marxism]], and [[liberal]] policies. Barack Obama has been widely criticized by the American [[business]] community and others for his anti-business policies that are killing American jobs during a period of high unemployment.<ref>
*[http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/07/16/obamas-anti-business-policies-are-our-economic-katrina Obama's Anti-business Policies are our Economic Katrina]
*[http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/619dvjlm.asp An Anti-Business President]
*[http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/08/small-businesses-are-not-hiring-why.html Small Businesses are not hiring. Why should they?]
*[http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/dear_mr_president_why_we_are_n.html Dear Mr. President: Why we are not hiring]
</ref> Trend forecaster [[Gerald Celente]] indicates that [[Obama administration]]'s response to the the failed American economy is more war and the creation of misleading [[economics|economic]] statistics.<ref>[http://www.opednews.com/articles/Washington-s-Response-to-a-by-paul-craig-roberts-110728-724.html Washington's response to the failed economy: More war]</ref>

Under President Obama's mismanagement of the economy, the United States Government's credit rating has, for the first time in it's history, been downgraded from AAA to AA+, and [[poverty]]<ref>http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2009/pov09fig04.pdf</ref> has increased markedly. By and large his policies to combat the recession, unemployment, slow growth, the deficit, and expanding [[national debt]], have failed.<ref>"The vast majority (73%) of respondents reported the fiscal stimulus enacted in February 2009 has had no impact on employment to date. While 68% also believe a jobs bill, such as the one recently enacted into law, will have no impact on payrolls, 30% do believe it will boost payrolls moderately". ''Industry Survey'', National Association for Business Economics, April 2010, [http://www.nabe.com/press/ind1004.pdf p. 2 pdf].</ref> Also on the domestic front, Obama passed an expensive [[health care]] bill in 2009 with no [[bipartisan]] support and 34 Democrats dissenting. In foreign policy Obama has escalated the [[Afghanistan War]] and, against his own Defense Secretary's advice, [[Libyan uprising 2011|attacked Libya]] - a possible violation of the [[War Powers Act]]. After he announced the killing of [[September 11th]] mastermind and terrorist [[Osama bin Laden]], the [[U.S. State Department]] warned of the increased risk to the lives and safety of Americans around the world.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=8273909</ref> Bin Laden's death had negligible long term impact on Obama's approval ratings.

==Early life==
:''Main article : [[Early life and career of Barack Hussein Obama]]''
:''See also : [[Barack Obama's Muslim Heritage]]''
Obama was born in Hawaii to Stanley Ann Dunham and [[Barack Obama Sr.]] - who had married just six months prior - on August 4, 1961 in [[Honolulu, Hawaii]]. The couple divorced in 1964. Barack Obama Sr. was not a [[Natural born citizen|citizen of the United States]]. Dunham remarried Lolo Soetoro, an [[Indonesia]]n student. When Obama was six, Soetoro returned to Indonesia, and Dunham and Obama followed.<ref name="db mother">{{cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-03/a-singular-woman-by-janny-scott-review-by-stacy-schiff/#|work=The Daily Beast|format=HTML|language=English|title=Dreams of His Mother|author=Stacy Schiff}}</ref> He spent four years in Indonesia before returning to Hawaii to be raised by his grandparents, Madelyn and WW2 veteran Stanley Armour Dunham. He would later attend Occidental College, [[Columbia University]] and then [[Harvard University]] for law school, where he would become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. It has been disputed by some groups whether Obama was actually born in the United States; some people allege that he was born in Kenya. On April 27, 2011 Obama officially released his long form birth certificate, which many experts have determined to be a fake and no legal body has determined its authenticity.

==Illinois State Senate career==
[[File:O-2002-antiwar-rally-davidson.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Obama speaking at the October 2002 rally in Chicago organized by [[Carl Davidson]].<ref>Davidson is a longtime [[Mao]]ist and champion of the ''Thought of Mao Tse Tung.'' Davidson's anti-Trotskyite polemic, [http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=10925 ''Left in Form, Right in Essence''] defends Maoist doctrine. Retrieved from 对当代托洛茨基主义的批判：英文论集百花齐放 - 中国文革研究网, March 15, 2010.</ref> ''"[H]e is a brutal man who butchers his own people,"'' nevertheless Obama opposed ''"dumb wars".'']]

In 1995 Obama openly sought and obtained the endorsement of the [[Marxist]] [[New Party]] in his quest to be elected to the Illinois State Senate.<ref>[http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7434 NEW PARTY (NP)], discoverthenetwork.org.</ref><ref>Rick Moran. [http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/06/obamas_alliance_with_marxists.html Obama's Alliance with Marxists], ''American Thinker'', June 03, 2008.</ref> He became the [[Democrat]] nominee and ran unopposed to win the election. Obama entered the Illinois Senate promising change to a corrupt system. He mixed often radical votes with more pragmatic agreements. Possibly one of his most radical votes was against requiring medical care for aborted children who survive [[abortion|the procedure]] - in fact the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council ascribed him a 100% rating for his consistently pro-choice votes.<ref name="cbs illinois">{{cite web|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/17/politics/main2369157.shtml|title=Obama Record May Be Gold Mine For Critics|work=CBS|format=HTML|language=English|last=Clark|first=Amy S.|date=Jan. 17, 2007}}</ref> He was criticized for using the statehouse as a stepping stone for a more illustrious career: Steven J. Rauschenberger, a [[Republican]], said prior to Obama's election as president: “He is a very bright but very ambitious person who has always had his eyes on the prize, and it wasn’t Springfield. If he deserves to be president, it is not because he was a great legislator.”<ref name="nyt illinois">{{cite web|work=The New York Times|title=In Illinois, Obama Proved Pragmatic and Shrewd|last=Scott|first=Janny|format=HTML|language=English|date=July 30, 2007|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/us/politics/30obama.html}}</ref>

The statehouse was majority Republican, so the Senator was sometimes forced to compromise. He formed allegiances across party lines to pass [[campaign finance]] reform that banned most gifts by lobbyists, prohibited spending campaign money for legislators’ personal use and required electronic filing of campaign disclosure reports.<ref name="nyt illinois"/> Obama also helped pass a so-called “driving-while-black bill”, which required the police to collect data on the race of drivers they stopped as a way to monitor [[racial profiling]].<ref name="nyt illinois"/>

Obama established himself as a chief spokesperson in opposition to the [[War on Terror]] during an October 2002 rally at Federal Plaza in Chicago<ref>The rally was organized by Chicagoans Against War in Iraq (CAWI) later renamed Chicagoans Against War and Injustice. [http://www.noiraqwar-chicago.org/?page_id=2 About CAWI] by Carl Davidson, Nov 02 2006. Retrieved from Chicagoans Against War and Injustice, March 15, 2010.</ref> [[community organizing|organized]] by veteran [[Mao]]ist and webmaster of [[Progressives for Obama]],<ref>[http://www.linkedin.com/in/carldavidson Carl Davidson,] LinkedIn.com, retrieved March 13, 2010.</ref> [[Carl Davidson]].

===Radical foundation and connection to William Ayers===
{{main article|Radical roots of Barack Hussein Obama}}
In 1995 a cadre of like minded individuals gathered in the home of [[Weather Underground]] (WUO) [[terrorist]]s [[Bernardine Dohrn]] and [[William Ayers|William "Bill" Ayers]]. Dohrn,<ref>Georgie Anne Geyer and Keyes Beach "Cuba: School for U.S. Radicals", ''Chicago Daily News/Chicago Sun-Times'' five part series October 1970, excerpted in [http://foia.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/weather/weath1c.pdf FBI file Weather Underground Organization (Weatherman),] Part 1c pp. 5-7 pdf (113-115 in original). [http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/clandestine-agents-of-the-cuban-government-ayers-dohrn-myers/]</ref> along with Carl Davidson, are veterans of [[guerrilla warfare]] training in [[Cuba]] prior 1968 Democratic National Convention riots. Ayers and Dohrn have taken credit for, and never denied, bombing the [[U.S. Capitol]], the [[Pentagon]] and the [[State Department]].

Ayers and Dohrn used their celebrity status among [[leftist]]s to launch Obama's career. Ayers, Dohrn and [[Jeff Jones]]<ref>[http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106653 ''Obama's 'green jobs czar' worked with terror founder] Van Jones served on board of activist group where ex-Weatherman serves as top director'', By Aaron Klein, [[WorldNetDaily]], August 13, 2009.</ref> are authors of ''[[Bill_Ayers#Prairie_Fire_Organizing_Committee_and_Maoist_thought|Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism]],'' the title taken from ''The Sayings of Mao Zedong.''<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/]</ref> The book declares "we are [[communist]] men and women."<ref>Harvey Klehr, ''Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today'' (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1988), 109.</ref> Ayers later jokingly, publicly admitted to ghostwriting Obama's book, ''Dreams From My Father''<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/ayers_affirms_he_wrote_dreams.html</ref> and Obama was to appoint several openly avowed Maoists to prominent White House and Executive Branch positions.<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487431322664964.html</ref>

==U.S. Senate career==
:''See also: [[Early_life_and_career_of_Barack_Hussein_Obama#U.S._Senate_.282004-2008.29|Barack Obama:U.S. Senate (2004-2008)]]''
[[Image:obama.jpg|thumb|left|Senator Barack Obama]]

Following a failed campaign for the U. S. House of Representatives, Obama ran for the open Senate seat from Illinois in 2004 against Republican candidate Jack Ryan. He won the seat after Chicago media outlets The Chicago Tribune newspaper and Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV; together with candidate Jack Ryan's Republican Primary opponents, sought and obtained the release of the confidential and personally embarrassing records in his California divorce from actress Jeri Ryan, forcing him to end his campaign. Ryan was replaced by the out-of-state candidate [[Alan Keyes]]. Obama won over Keyes 70% to 27% in the general election. Obama spent very little time in the Senate - "frustrated by his lack of influence and what he called the 'glacial pace' ... [he began] running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol’s corridors."<ref name="nyt senate">{{cite web|work=The New York Times|publisher=The New York Times, Inc.|format=HTML|language=English|title=Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role|author=Kate Zernike and Jeff Zelleny|date=March 9, 2008|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/politics/09obama.html}}</ref>

Obama frequently used the [[filibuster]] to obstruct the operations of government,<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020303801_pf.html</ref> voted against the [[minimum wage]]<ref>[http://uspolitics.about.com/od/legislatio1/a/HR2206.htm HR 2206 - Emergency Appropriations], Kathy Gill, Your Guide to U.S. Politics: Current Events. May 26 2007.</ref><ref>[http://more.gov.mtopgroup.com/2007/05/votes-hr-2206-iraq-supplemental.html Votes - H.R. 2206: Iraq Supplemental], May 28, 2007. Retrieved from Deeper Inside the Mountain, June 4, 2007.</ref> and debt ceiling increases,<ref>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/obama-once-opposed-debt-ceiling-hike/237129/</ref> and recieved more than $126,000 in campaign contributions from [[Fannie Mae]]. The ''[[National Journal]]'' ranked him the most liberal senator in 2007.<ref name="ranked">{{cite web|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-502163_162-3775451-502163.html|title=National Journal: Obama Most Liberal Senator In 2007|author=Brian Montopoli|date=January 31, 2008|work=CBS}}</ref>

==Presidential Election==
{{main article|Barack Hussein Obama 2008 Presidential campaign}}
Democrats began calling for an Obama candidacy after liberals lauded his 2004 [[Democratic National Convention]] speech.
===Campaign to be the Democratic nominee===
The race for the Democratic ticket originally seemed [[Hillary Clinton]]'s to lose, but was ultimately a close race between Clinton and Obama. Clinton would take a slim advantage in the popular vote, while Obama would carry significantly more states and territories. Obama's advantage with super-delegates over Clinton was about 2-to-1.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Superdelegate endorsements for Friday 6/6|work=Democratic Convention Watch|url=http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/superdelegate-endorsements-for-friday.html}}</ref> Obama was able to attract the support of [[liberals]] by pointing out that he had come out against the [[Iraq War]] "from the beginning" whereas Clinton had voted in favor of the war in 2002.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-01-31-democrats-debate_N.htm|title=Obama, Clinton stress differences on Iraq, issues|author=David Jackson|work=USA Today|format=HTML|language=English}}</ref>
===Campaign for the Presidency===
Obama campaigned against Senator [[John McCain]] in the general election. To the chagrin of Clinton supporters, he selected Senator [[Joe Biden]] to be his running mate, whereas McCain selected [[Governor]] of [[Alaska]] [[Sarah Palin]]. The Obama and Biden ticket would win the election, and Obama would become the nation's first [[African American]] president.

====Jeremiah Wright====
:''See also: [[Barack Obama and Liberation Theology]]''
One major dilemma that arose for Obama during his campaign was his connection to his preacher [[Jeremiah Wright]]. Obama and his wife (raised a Baptist) were members of the Trinity [[United Church of Christ]]<ref>http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1776246/posts</ref> in Chicago, a chruch that embraced [[black liberation theology]] and its emphasis on empowering so-called "oppressed groups" against "establishment forces". This denomination was the first in America to ordain gays as ministers.<ref>http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/31079.html, Obama's church pushes controversial doctrines, March 20, 2008</ref> Church pastor Jeremiah Wright had been making inflammatory comments and posting his sermons online for sale. These include the statement "G-d damn America," and in describing the September 11th attacks, "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."<ref>[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4443788 Obama's Pastor: G-d Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11]</ref> In addition, Rev. Wright blamed America saying "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being [[anti-Semitic]]."

In April 2008, after 20 years in the church, candidate Obama made public statements poised to set him at odds with the man who conducted his wedding and baptized his children. With the negative publicity persisting, a month later Obama ended the friendship, left Wright's church, and blamed the media.<ref>[http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/31/obama-resigns-church-membership-in-chicago/], Obama Drops Church Membership in Chicago, May 31, 2008</ref> Obama claimed “It’s not fair to the other members of the church who seek to worship in peace...", and distanced himself from Wright's sermons as "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in the truth."<ref>USA TODAY, ''Obama breaks with former pastor, Candidate cites rants on U.S. role in terror, AIDS'', by Kathy Kiely and David Jackson [http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080430/1a_offlede30_dom.art.htm]</ref><ref>''Obama Says He Is Outraged By Wright's "Rants"''[http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080430.htm]</ref>

==Presidential career==
{{main article|Obama administration}}
[[File:Obama and George H. W. Bush.jpg|thumb|right|300px|President Barack Obama meets with former President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office, Feb. 15, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).]]
Under Obama's stewardship the United States has suffered the largest [[Federal budget deficit|deficit]]s<ref>http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/107xx/doc10708/11-06-mbr.htm</ref><ref>http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/118xx/doc11873/NovemberMBR.pdf</ref> in history and a credit downgrade from the rating agency Standard & Poor. Most observers attribute the deficits to increasing benefits and welfare paid out on account of the Recession he inherited and has failed to end along with decreasing tax receipts. Standard & Poor decided to downgrade U.S. government deby after the debt ceiling debate debacle, where Congressional leaders refused to pass a bill authorizing borrowing to pay for the budget they had passed with much debate and controversy earlier in the year. Cynics have argued that rhetoric directed at the rating agencies about the issuance of AAA ratings to junk real estate bonds spurred the downgrade as a form of retribution. Ironically, the investor scare led to the flocking of investors to the safe haven of the Treasury bonds which had been downgraded, resulting in lower interest rates. As there are very few AAA bond markets, investors will likely continue to buy U.S. government debt for the foreseeable future. <ref>http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/04/18/the-sp-outlook-and-obama/</ref> When his [[economic stimulus]] program was adopted unemployment rose and stagnated in the 10% range, <ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439172480870774.html?mod=googlenews_wsj</ref> leaving tens of millions without [[hope]] of finding a job.<ref>[http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS11300000&years_option=specific_years&include_graphs=true&to_month=1&from_month=2 United States Department of Labor], Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data extracted on: July 19, 2010 (4:31:11 PM).</ref>

Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, writing in the [[Wall Street Journal]], noted, "Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship." The commentators also note Obama's approach to governance has encouraged radical leftists to pursue a similar strategy on his behalf. Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, acknowledged that the [[Obama administration]] has taken to polarizing America around the issue of race as a means of diverting attention from other issues, saying, "Having one's opponent [[race card|rebut charges of racism]] is far better than discussing [[Unemployment|joblessness]]."<ref>http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Mary_Frances_Berry_91E3D9D5-C40D-440C-9D48-1C50CBC60C87.html</ref> Caddell and Schoen, who worked for President Carter and Clinton, respectively, further stated, "Mr. Obama has also cynically [[class warfare|divided the country on class lines]]. He has taken to playing the populist card time and time again. He bashes Wall Street and insurance companies whenever convenient to advance his programs, yet he has been eager to accept campaign contributions and negotiate with these very same banks and [[corporation]]s behind closed doors in order to advance his political agenda... President Obama's divisive approach to governance has weakened us as a people and paralyzed our political culture."<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703700904575391553798363586.html</ref>

===Domestic policy===
====Popular bills====
Obama's first act of office was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - effectively nullifying the [[Supreme Court]] case ''Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'', which ruled that Ledbetter had to have filed a pay [[discrimination]] suit within 180 days of the first time Ledbetter was payed less than her male peers;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30ledbetter-web.html|work=The New York Times|format=HTML|language=English|title=Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation|author=Sheryl Gay Stolberg|date=January 29, 2009}}</ref> the law made corporations subject to suit within 180 days of each time the employee was unfairly paid.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20090213.html?=features|work=FindLaw|author=Joanna L. Grossman|date=Feb. 13, 2009|format=HTML|language=English|title=The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009}}</ref>

On January 2, 2011, Obama signed the James Zadroga [[9/11]] Healthcare and Compensation Act.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/jan/02/obama-signs-zadroga-act-law/|publisher=New York Public Radio|title=Obama Signs Zadroga Act into Law|author=Fred Mogul|date=January 02, 2011|work=wNYC|format=HTML|language=English}}</ref> The act, which afforded 9/11 first responders who were sickened by the dust from the collapse of the [[World Trade Center]] health care and compensation, passed [[Congress]] after its sponsored agreed to scale down the pricing from 7.4 to 4.2 billion dollars.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/dec/22/zadroga-911-bill-passes-senate/|publisher=New York Public Radio|work=wNYC|format=HTML|language=English|title=Congress Approves 9/11 Health Bill|date=December 22, 2010}}</ref>

====Economic plan====
[[File:Keynes.jpg|thumbnail|right|190px|[[Barack Obama]] advocates the use of [[Keynesian economics|Keynesian economic concepts]] despite the fact that [[John Maynard Keynes]] was incompetent and a fraud.<ref>
*[http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/fabian-john-maynard-keynes-the-stealthy-enemy-of-human-freedom/ John Maynard Keynes the stealthy enemy of human freedom]
*[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-02-22/deathbed-of-keynesian-economics-will-be-in-u-k-matthew-lynn.html Deathbed of Keynesian Economics will be in the UK]
*[http://www.iwf.org/inkwell/show/23102.html Will the G8 Repudiate the Philosophy of Living Beyond Our Means?]
*[http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/KeynesatHarvard-ch09.html KEYNES AT HARVARD Economic Deception as a Political Credo BY ZYGMUND DOBBS]
</ref> ]]
{{see also|Obamunism|American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009}}
Critics of the Obama administration have coined the word "[[Obamunism]]" to describe Barack Obama's [[socialism|socialistic]] and "[[fascism]] light" [[economic planning]] policies.<ref>[[Benito Mussolini]] defined fascism as the wedding of state and corporate powers. Accordingly, trend forecaster [[Gerald Celente]] labels [[Obama administration corporate bailouts|Obama's corporate bailouts]] as being "fascism light" in nature.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/daily-intel/2009/07/20/obamunism-inc|work=The Big Money|publisher=WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC|format=HTML|language=English|title=Obamunism, Inc.|author=David Sessions|date=July 20, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/small-business-interviews/gerald-celente-6944|author=Jim Blasingame|title=Is the government creating a bailout bubble?}}</ref> Obamunism can also refer to Obama's [[Obama administration fiscal policy|ruinous fiscal policies]] and [[Obama administration monetary policy|reckless monetary policies]].<ref name="gerard">{{cite web|url=http://seekingalpha.com/article/120883-monetary-policynot-obama-s-stimulusis-what-needs-watching|title=Monetary Policy-Not Obama's Stimulus-Is What Needs Watching|author=Gerard Jackson|date=February 16, 2009|work=Seeking Alpha}}</ref><ref name="bam">{{cite web|work=New York Post|date=May 17, 2009|url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/05172009/postopinion/editorials/bams_wise_words_169731.htm|title=BAM'S WISE WORDS}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/|title=Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures|work=The Foundry|publisher=The Heritage Foundation|author=Conn Carroll|date=March 24th, 2009}}</ref> As seen in his own actions, Barack Obama instructed his advisors to find loopholes that would enable the president to act as a [[dictator]] by pushing through legislation and increases in spending without congressional authority.<ref>http://www.theblaze.com/stories/executive-dictatorship-obama-instructs-advisers-to-push-through-stimulus-projects-without-pesky-congressional-authorization/</ref>

[[Wall Street]] firms and banks that were bailed out were among Obama's biggest campaign supporters.<ref>http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638</ref> Therefore, the Obama administration bailouts of corrupt, unproductive, and reckless Wall Street firms was hardly surprising, and many argue that it was not helpful in making the United States economy more productive and prosperous by encouraging more risk taking through letting banks off with a slap on the wrist. Others argue that bailing out the banks kept credit flowing and prevented a much deeper recession and a total collapse of the financial system. The government will recoup some though not all of its capital infusions over time. A 2005 study found that government corporate bailouts are often done for mere political considerations and the economic resources allocated exhibit significantly worse economic performance than resources allocated using purely business considerations.<ref>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=676905</ref> Proponents of [[free market]] capitalism said Bernanke should not have bailed out failing firms and instead should have allowed free market capitalism to quickly recover as it did in the depression of 1920 without government intervention (free market capitalists assert that government intervention drags out economic recessions and depressions).<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI</ref>

Top trend forecaster [[Gerald Celente]] predicts that the corrupt economic policies of the Obama administration will lead to a second [[Great Depression|great depression]] (Celente predicted the 1987 US stock market crash, the dot.com crash, the US 2008/2009 recession, and the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s) and may lead to a "second [[American Revolution]]" (Celente predicted the [[Tea Party Movement|tax protests]] that are now occurring in America).<ref name="celente1">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MMX3SKzrfU&feature=channel_page</ref><ref name="celente2">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy9bfw1ebgw&feature=response_watch</ref> Celente also asserts that the costly and inefficient temporary short term methods that the Obama administration is using to alleviate economic problems in the short term (which is causing massive increases in [[Obama administration deficit spending]]) is only making matters worse and will not prevent the worse economic depression in United States history from occurring.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C8K7rWkGGw</ref><ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LBffdIW0XA&feature=response_watch</ref>

The Obama administration has been sharply criticized for [[Obama administration deficit spending|its massive deficit spending]] and [[Obama administration monetary policy|its reckless monetary policy]] via vast increases in the [[money supply]], although inflation under Bernanke has been below the historic mean.<ref name="gerard"/><ref name="bam"/><ref>http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/</ref> Celente predicts that if a "second American Revolution" occurs in a peaceful and productive manner, it may include a [[Third Party System|third party movement]] of governance that will advocate a more [[free market]] [[capitalism]] approach to the American economy and a more strict interpretation of the [[United States Constitution|United States constitution]] as far as the authors' [[original intent]].<ref name="celente1"/><ref name="celente2"/>

During what the [[White House]] billed as [[Recovery Summer]], one half million workers per week continued losing their jobs. His signature legislative achievement, [[ObamaCare]],has been found to be [[unconstitutional]]<ref>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-13/u-s-health-care-law-requirement-thrown-out-by-judge.html</ref> by several judges and constitutional by others, and is credited as a major cause of uncertainty, high [[unemployment]],<ref>http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33220</ref> lagging job creation,<ref>http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/05/it%E2%80%99s-official-medicare%E2%80%99s-finances-shadowed-by-uncertainty/</ref> and risk of a credit default crisis.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/28/AR2010032802353.html</ref><ref>http://www.thestreet.com/story/10703361/cramer-obamacare-will-topple-the-market.html</ref>

His 2012 Budget plan has been roundly criticized in the mainstream and liberal press as not a serious effort to deal with the nation's economic crisis.<ref>[http://republican.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=blogs.view&blog_id=1551d6f5-2ac9-4b8d-97ab-74def354024e Newspapers Call Out White House: ‘What Would That Path Be, Mr. President?’]</ref>

=====Healthcare=====
{{main article|Obamacare}}
On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The act had originated in the House of Representatives and passed September 17, 2009. The act was amended and passed the Senate prior to [[Democrat]] [[Ted Kennedy]]'s passing along party lines - just a filibuster-proof majority at 60-39. In what can be construed as a de facto rejection of the bill, [[Massachusetts]] voters elected a [[Republican]] candidate, [[Scott Brown]], who promised to vote against the bill,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/scott-brown-wins-massachusetts-senate-race.html|work=The Washington Post|author=Chris Cillizza|date=January 19, 2010|title=Scott Brown wins Massachusetts Senate special election race|language=English|format=HTML}}</ref> but another Senate vote would not occur. Scott Brown was also an excellent campaigner and judged to be a better candidate than his rival, Martha Coakley. He has since achieved one of the most moderate senate voting records, likely to avoid the anger of his mostly liberal constituency. After Obama made a promise to issue an [[executive order]] that would ultimately prohibit the use of taxpayer subsidies to pay for [[abortion]] services,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/22/nation/la-na-healthcare-passage22-2010mar22/3|work=The Los Angeles Times|format=HTML|language=English|title=House passes historic healthcare overhaul|date=March 22, 2010|author=Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook}}</ref> the [[House of Representatives]] would pass the bill as it left the Senate 219-212, with 34 Democrats and all other parties dissenting.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-21/politics/health.care.main_1_health-care-entire-house-democratic-caucus-pre-existing-conditions?_s=PM:POLITICS|date=March 21, 2010|author=Alan Silverleib|work=CNN|format=HTML|language=English|title=House passes health care bill on 219-212 vote}}</ref>

Amongst other things, the act mandates that the population purchase health care coverage or face punitive tax measures, and on this basis has been constitutionally challenged in the federal courts, with mixed results (three courts have upheld the act, two have declared it unconstitutional); thus, the Act is likely destined for [[Supreme Court]] reviewal. Plans originally proposed involved instituting a universal public insurance program, that is, extending Medicare to everyone. The universal mandate included in the act was originally a conservative idea that was enacted in Massachusetts under Republican Mitt Romney. Its supporters note that having health insurance results in reduced costs in paying for treatment of uninsured and forcing people to take responsibility for their healthcare. Due to ethical constraints, doctors cannot deny care to poor patients, resulting in the hospital and the healthcare system at large bearing the cost.

====Gulf oil spill====
{{main article|Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster}}
President Obama authorized offshore oil drilling in the [[Gulf of Mexico]]<ref>[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0430/Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-imperils-Obama-s-offshore-drilling-plan Gulf of Mexico oil spill imperils Obama's offshore drilling plan,] By Mark Clayton, ''Christian Science Monitor'', April 30, 2010.</ref> stating, "oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills"<ref>White House Press Release, [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-discussion-jobs-and-economy-charlotte-north-carolina Remarks by the President in a Discussion on Jobs and the Economy in Charlotte, North Carolina,] Office of the Press Secretary, April 02, 2010. Retrieved from whitehouse.gov 3 May 2010.</ref> and was widely criticized for his mishandling of the "[[Gulf oil spill disaster|worst environmental disaster]] in US history."<ref>[http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m4d29-Worst-environmental-disaster-in-US-history-Oil-slick-in-Gulf-of-Mexico-is-set-on-fire Worst environmental disaster in US history,] Maryann Tobin, ''Examiner'', April 29, 2010.</ref><ref>[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/the-oil-spill-is-obamas-fault/?src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman Conscience of a Liberal: The Oil Spill Is Obama’s Fault,] Paul Krugman, ''New York Times'', April 30, 2010.</ref>

====Don't Ask Don't Tell====
{{main article|Don't Ask Don't Tell}}
Candidate Obama promised to repeal a policy that originated in the Clinton era that prohibited inquiries into military personnel's [[sexual orientation]] while also barring "out" [[homosexuals]] from serving in the military. [[Liberals]] expressed anger when time passed and no effort to repeal the law was seen;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/21/obama-to-delay-repeal-of-dont-ask-dont-tell/|work=The Washington Times|format=HTML|title=Obama to delay ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal|language=English|author=Rowan Scarborough|date=November 21, 2008}}</ref> in fact, Obama's [[justice department]], as part of their duty to defend all laws passed by any administration, filed a brief arguing against the [[Supreme Court]] granting a [[writ of certiorari]] to a gay soldier challenging the law (the writ was not granted). In response, the soldier, James Pietrangelo II, a former Army infantryman and lawyer, said, “[Obama's] a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar. This is a guy who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo, and playing with him on the White House lawn than he has working for equality for gay people."<ref>{{cite web|work=Time Magazine|publisher=Time Inc.|format=HTML|url=http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1903545,00.html?imw=Y|title=Dismay Over Obama's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Turnabout|author=Mark Thompson|date=Jun. 09, 2009}}</ref>

On December 15th, 2010, a bill was introduced in the [[House of Representatives]] to repeal the law - it passed a day later by a vote of 250-175;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll638.xml|title=FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 638|format=HTML|work=Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives}}</ref> it passed the Senate three days later 65-31.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00281|work=The U.S. Senate|title=U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress - 2nd Session|format=HTML|language=English}}</ref> Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 on December 22nd.<ref name="g dadt">{{cite web|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/obama-repeals-dont-ask-dont-tell|work=The Guardian|format=HTML|language=English|title='Don't ask, don't tell' repealed as Obama signs landmark law|date=22 December 2010}}</ref>

The [[Pentagon]] itself could not immediately implement the repeal and questioned whether it would hurt combat readiness.<ref name="g dadt"/> Senator [[John McCain]], the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, opposed the bill, saying "It may be premature to make such a change at this time and in this manner, without further consideration of this report and further study of the issue by Congress – for of all the people we serve, one of our highest responsibilities is to the men and women of our armed services, especially those risking their lives in combat.”<ref>{{cite web|url=http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/mccain-on-dont-ask-dont-tell-dont-rush/|title=McCain on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: Don’t Rush|date=December 2nd, 2010|format=HTML|author=David M. Herszenhorn|language=English|work=The New York Times}}</ref>

===Foreign policy===
[[File:Western Wall Obama.jpg|thumb|left|320px|At [[Western Wall]], Jerusalem, 2008.]]
As Senator, Obama was highly critical of President Bush and promised change. As President, Obama has tripled down in Afghanistan, widened the war into Pakistan, multiplied drone attacks, bombed Yemen and Somalia, and started an undeclared NATO war in Libya. On presidential war powers, surveillance questions, Guantanamo, detention policy and habeas corpus, Obama has similarly stayed the course, or expanded Bush's precedents. In a speech on May 19, 2011 Obama fully embraced the [[Bush Doctrine]] of preventative war.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-news-in-obamas-speech/2011/05/19/AF4dFN7G_story.html</ref>

<blockquote>
The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 raids since the beginning of April, 2011, all but one in Pakistan’s tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. A June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area north of North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The drone program has become increasingly controversial as the Obama administration has expanded its use beyond the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Lethal missiles have been launched from unmanned aircraft in at least five countries in addition to Pakistan: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and, most recently, Somalia. The military’s Joint Special Operations Command used a drone last June to attack what officials said were two senior members of the Al Shabab militant group on the Somali coast. [http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/07/04/cia_halts_drone_launches_from_pakistan_base/]
</blockquote>

====Commander-in-chief====
By Obama's second year as Commander-in-Chief, 559 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan - significantly more than the 469 who died during Presisdent [[George W. Bush]]'s final year in office. And growing numbers of civilian contractors also have fallen. In the first half of 2010, 250 contractors reportedly died in Iraq and Afghanistan - more than the 235 military personnel who fell during the same period.<ref>http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/24/114662/what-price-war.html#ixzz1Nz07pg5O</ref>

=====Afghanistan=====
{{main article|Afghanistan War}}
Obama escalated troop strength<ref name="pbs">{{cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/themes/strategy.html#ixzz1LhWNImZp|title=Obama's New Strategy (March '09)|author=George Packer, Seth Jones, David Kilcullen, Rory Stewart, Andrew Exum, Col. Andrew Bacevich (Ret.)|work=PBS|language=English|format=HTML}}</ref> and defense costs in Afghanistan from $43.5 billion in George Bush's last year to $113.7 billion for 2011.<ref>Congressional Research Service, quoted in Gregory Anthony, ''What price war?''</ref> Adviser to General [[Stanley McChrystal]] David Kilcullen wrote, "One of the big strategic shifts is the use of language now which talks about Pakistan and Afghanistan as the same theater. Now we talked about Af-Pak long before the Obama administration came about, but the public use of that term, and the description of it as the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign, sends a new message to people about how the administration is going to think about Afghanistan and Pakistan."<ref name="pbs"/> This became evident when, under the orders of Obama, a military SEALs team killed September 11th mastermind [[Osama bin Laden]] in Abottabad, Pakistan.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/05/commander-in-chief.html|title=Commander in Chief|author=Daniel Romano and Daniel Klaidman|date=May 05, 2011|work=Newsweek|publisher=The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC|language=English|format=HTML}}</ref>

=====Iraq=====
{{main article|Operation Iraqi Freedom}}
Obama campaigned on a promise to end the War in Iraq, however 50,000 U.S. troops remain in the country.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-31/politics/obama.oval.office.address_1_iraq-requests-united-states-and-iraq-troop-surge?_s=PM:POLITICS|work=CNN|title=Obama: 'Time to turn the page' as Iraq combat mission ends|date=August 31, 2010|language=English|format=HTML}}</ref>

=====Guantanamo Bay=====
{{main article|Guantanamo Bay}}
One of Obama's campaign promises was that he would close the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - detainees would be flown to other countries while the ones awaiting trial would enter the American court system. Two days after taking office he signed an order directing the military to do so.<ref name="salon">{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/25/obama_guantanamo_rhetoric|work=Salon|title=The Obama/Gitmo timeline|author=Natasha Lennard|format=HTML|language=English}}</ref> But, in November 2009 Obama admitted that his self imposed deadline of January 2010 would be missed, and in March 2011 the president went back on his campaign promise, signing an executive order to create a formal system of indefinite detention for the prisoners.<ref name="salon"/>

=====Libya=====
{{main article|Libyan uprising 2011}}
In February 2011, the political unrest that had spread through the Arab world showed up as protests in Libya. Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi - dictator of Libya for 41 years - responded to the activism with a wave of violence.<ref name="nyt libya">{{cite web|url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/libya/index.html|work=The New York Times|publisher=The New York Times Inc.|format=HTML|language=English|title=Libya — Protests and Revolt (2011)}}</ref> The [[United Nations Security Council]] voted unanimously to impose [[sanctions]], and later authorized all members to take action to protect civilians. Obama, acting without approval from Congress and at the beckoning of the [[United Nations]], directed American forces to take out Libya's air defense system.<ref name="nyt libya"/> Obama later said, "[I]f we waited one more day Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."<ref>{{cite web|author=Barack Obama|url=http://www.npr.org/2011/03/28/134935452/obamas-speech-on-libya-a-responsibility-to-act|title=Obama's Speech On Libya: 'A Responsibility To Act'|date=March 28, 2011|publisher=National Public Radio ([[NPR]])|language=English|format=HTML}}</ref> [[Alan J. Kuperman]] - writing an editorial for the ''[[Boston Globe]]'' - suggested this statement was false, writing, "[I]ntervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents."<ref name="kuperman">{{cite web|author=Alan J. Kuperman|work=The Boston Globe|url=http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions|title=False pretense for war in Libya?|date=April 14, 2011}}</ref> Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas who authored a book called ''The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention'', further stated that the rebels had tricked the world into thinking a bloodbath was at hand and that Obama had lied to the American people in order to act on this theory.<ref name="kuperman"/>
<blockquote>
Gaddafi [never] threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’ <ref> [http://politicalcartel.org/2011/04/17/libya-and-the-obama-doctrine/ Libya and the “Obama Doctrine”.] </ref>
</blockquote>

However Gaddafi wrote to Obama:

<blockquote>
Gaddafi said he bore no ill will toward Obama. "We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you," he wrote. "Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the USA. We endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaign." The letter, dated 5 April 2011 in Tripoli, is signed "Mu'aumer Qaddaffi, Leader of the Revolution".<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/gaddafi-obama-nato-libya?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487]</ref>
</blockquote>

Critics point out the only thing worse than starting a "stupid, unnecessary war" against a madman is losing it.<ref>http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/271847/war-libya-dumb-and-dumber-victor-davis-hanson</ref>

==See also==

*[[Political positions of Barack Obama]]
*[[Barack Obama and uncharitableness]]
*[http://www.ontheissues.org/barack_obama.htm]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

{{USPresidents}}
{{2008 presidential candidates}}
[[Category: Barack Hussein Obama]]
[[Category:Obama Presidency]]
[[Category:Obama Administration]]
[[category:Nobel laureates in Peace]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Obama, Barack Hussein}}

Montgomery Bus Boycott

2011-11-13T07:51:50Z

EdwinLerch: fixed link

The '''Montgomery Bus Boycott''' was initiated in December 1955 and cancelled in December 1956. The reason for the boycott, which among others involved [[Martin Luther King]], was an [[Alabama]] law allowing bus companies to segregate black and white passengers. Finally, the [[United States Supreme Court]] decided that the segregation was violating the [[United States Constitution]].
[[Category:Civil Rights]]

Mario Lemieux

2011-11-13T04:52:35Z

EdwinLerch: citations, links

'''Mario Lemieux''' (born October 5, 1965) is a retired Canadian professional [[hockey]] player who is currently the majority owner of the [[Pittsburgh Penguins]], his former team. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest hockey players of all time. Although Lemieux initially retired in 1997 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame later that year, he staged a comeback in 2000 and played for several more seasons. He retired for the final time in 2006 after developing a heart condition.

Lemieux has won the [[Stanley Cup]] twice as a player and once as an owner.

==Career==
Mario Lemieux was selected first overall by the Penguins in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft. In his first season, he recorded 100 points and was awarded the Calder Trophy as the [[National Hockey League]]'s rookie of the year. Although Lemieux delivered consistently impressive play in his first few seasons, his performances weren't enough to overcome a lackluster supporting cast and the Penguins missed the playoffs in each of Lemieux's first four seasons. The Penguins finally reached the playoffs in the 1988-89 season, aided by an improved team and a career-best 199 points by Lemieux, a total surpassed only by [[Wayne Gretzky]].

Lemieux missed portions of the next two seasons with a back injury. Once healthy, he led the Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the 1990-91 and 1991-92 seasons and was named playoff MVP both seasons. During the 1992-93 season, Lemieux was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Despite missing two months of the season to receive radiation treatments, Lemieux returned before season's end and won his fourth scoring title. However, recurring back issues eventually led Lemieux to retire after the 1996-97 season. The Hockey Hall of Fame waived its traditional three-year waiting period and inducted Lemieux in November 1997.<ref>[http://www.post-gazette.com/Penguins/mario_hall.asp Lemieux Enters Hockey Hall of Fame]</ref>

The Penguins, meanwhile, were forced to declare bankruptcy in November 1998 as a result of years of overspending. Lemieux, who was owed over $30 million in deferred salary, was one of the team's biggest creditors. Lemieux presented a plan to convert his earnings into equity in the team, which would make him the majority owner. His plan was approved, and Lemieux took control of the team in September 1999.

Surprisingly, Lemieux emerged from retirement on December 27, 2000, becoming the first player-owner in NHL history. He continued to be a productive scorer upon his return, but in the following years his comeback would be hampered by continuing health issues and the NHL lockout. Citing frustration with his level of play, as well as concern over a recently diagnosed heart condition, Lemieux retired for a second time on January 24, 2006.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/sports/hockey/25lemieux.html Lemieux Retires, This Time for Good]</ref>

==References==
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://mariolemieux.org/ The Mario Lemieux Foundation]
*[http://www.nhl.com/ice/player.htm?id=8448782 Career statistics at NHL.com]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lemieux, Mario}}
[[Category:Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:NHL Players]]
[[Category:Canadians]]

Mario Lemieux

2011-11-13T01:46:32Z

EdwinLerch: revamp

'''Mario Lemieux''' (born October 5, 1965) is a retired Canadian professional [[hockey]] player who is currently the majority owner of the [[Pittsburgh Penguins]], his former team. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest hockey players of all time. Although Lemieux initially retired in 1997 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame later that year, he staged a comeback in 2000 and played for several more seasons. He retired for the final time in 2006 after developing a heart condition.

Lemieux has won the [[Stanley Cup]] twice as a player and once as an owner.

==Career==
Mario Lemieux was selected first overall by the Penguins in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft. In his first season, he recorded 100 points and was awarded the Calder Trophy as the [[National Hockey League]]'s rookie of the year. Although Lemieux delivered consistently impressive play in his first few seasons, his performances weren't enough to overcome a lackluster supporting cast and the Penguins missed the playoffs in each of Lemieux's first four seasons. The Penguins finally reached the playoffs in the 1988-89 season, aided by an improved team and a career-best 199 points by Lemieux, a total that was eclipsed only by [[Wayne Gretzky]].

Lemieux missed portions of the next two seasons with a back injury. Once healthy, he led the Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the 1990-91 and 1991-92 seasons and was named playoff MVP both seasons. During the 1992-93 season, Lemieux was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Despite missing two months of the season to receive radiation treatments, Lemieux returned before season's end and won his fourth scoring title. However, recurring back issues eventually led Lemieux to retire after the 1996-97 season. The Hockey Hall of Fame waived its traditional three-year waiting period and inducted Lemieux in November 1997.

The Penguins, meanwhile, were forced to declare bankruptcy in November 1998 as a result of years of overspending. Lemieux, who was owed over $30 million in deferred salary, was one of the team's biggest creditors. Lemieux presented a plan to convert his earnings into equity in the team, which would make him the majority owner. His plan was approved, and Lemieux took control of the team in September 1999.

Lemieux emerged from retirement on December 27, 2000, becoming the first player-owner in NHL history. He continued to be a productive scorer upon his return, but in the following years his comeback would be hampered by continuing health issues and the NHL lockout. Citing frustration with his level of play, as well as concern over a recently diagnosed heart condition, Lemieux retired for the second time on January 24, 2006.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lemieux, Mario}}
[[Category:Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:NHL Players]]
[[Category:Canadians]]

Che Guevara

2011-11-10T23:58:07Z

EdwinLerch: small reword

[[Image:cHEgUEVARA.jpg|thumb|right|The victims of Che poster]]
'''Ernesto "Che" Guevara''' (b. June 14, 1928, executed October 9th, 1967) was a sadistic [[Marxist]] guerrilla leader, with [[Fidel Castro]], during the [[Cuban Revolution]]. He has become a cultural icon for [[liberals]], [[leftists]], [[socialists]], [[communists]], illegal aliens<ref>[http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/05/illegal-immigrants-rally-in-support-of.html Illegal Immigrants Rally For Dead Marxist Che Guevara]</ref>, and white "hipsters".<ref>[http://www.che-mart.com/WhoisChe.php Che-Mart]</ref> The photogenic "Ernesto Guevara failed spectacularly at everything he attempted in his life--except at the [[mass murder|mass-murder]] of defenseless men and boys."<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=86DE50D7-E16B-42C6-B61E-035B6A1F541D Che Guevara: Mass Murderer and Coward]</ref> Despite being a terrorist, his image is still used as leftist propaganda which adorns millions of t-shirts and dorm room posters.

In the words of one of his former political prisoners, "There was something seriously wrong with Che Guevera."<ref>''Exposing the Real Che Guevara: and the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him'', By Humberto Fontova</ref>

== Early Life ==
Guevara was the eldest of five children born in Rosario, [[Argentina]]. His schoolmates nicknamed him "pig" (Chancho) because he rarely bathed, and smelled bad.<ref>[http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/189688.php Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Forty Years, Still Dead] The Jawa Report, October 8, 2007</ref> He also enjoyed enjoyed killing dogs (a trait common among psychopaths).<ref>''Exposing the Real Che Guevara: and the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him'', By Humberto Fontova</ref> He flunked out of medical school, never got his diploma, and still was chosen to be the medic for Fidel Castro's so called "revolution". The real Che was a "revolutionary Ringo Starr" who "fell in with the right bunch and rode their coattails to world fame."<ref>''Exposing the Real Che Guevara: and the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him'', By Humberto Fontova</ref>

== Cuba Revolution==
[[Image:Che Guevara por Alberto Korda.jpg|thumb|Portrait by Alberto Korda.]]
In 1955, while living as a hobo, Guevara met [[Raul Castro|Raul]] and Fidel Castro to plot the overthrow of the US-backed [[Fulgencio Batista]] government in Cuba. Their first revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from [[Mexico]]. During the war Castro promoted Guevara to commander status, and Guevara won the Battle of Santa Clara. This defeated Batista's forces and allowed the bearded guerrillas to march on towards [[Havana]]. On New Years Eve 1958, Batista's forces were defeated and on New Years day, Batista fled to the [[Dominican Republic]]. Castro and Guevara became Cuba's new socialist revolutionary leaders.

==Castro's Cuba==
Guevara was appointed commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison. He oversaw the trial and execution of many former Batista regime officials. Roberto Martin-Perez was imprisoned for 30 years in Castro's dungeon prison. Roberto says "Castro ordered mass murder ... in order to consolidate his power." Guevara, as Castro's chief executioner, relished the slaughter of defenseless men and boys.<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=86DE50D7-E16B-42C6-B61E-035B6A1F541D Che Guevara: Mass Murderer and Coward] Frontpage Magazine, June 13, 2007</ref> Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the 1961 [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion, Castro ordered Guevara to take up a command post in Western Cuba. He never saw any fighting and did not participate in the Cuban victory. However, he dropped his pistol and shot himself in the face. Guevara was the main proponent of missiles in Cuba and urged Khrushchev to nuke the United States.<ref>Hari, Johann [http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-should-che-be-an-icon-no-394336.html Should Che Be an Icon? No]</ref> In December 1964, he gave a speech before the [[United Nations|U.N. General Assembly]] mocking the [[imperialism]] of the [[USA]].

The number of executions he ordered is unknown, with conservative estimates ranging from 400 to 2,000 over his lifetime. Unfortunately, lack of records mean that the exact number will probably never be known. What is clear is that he was a violent Communist who thought nothing of killing anyone who opposed him. [http://www.amazon.com/Exposing-Real-Che-Guevara-Idolize/dp/1595230270/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-8236430-6806347?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180603569&sr=1-1 (Amazon)]

{{cquote|<big>'''''“Hatred as the central element of our struggle! Hatred that is intransigent…hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine...We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”''
</big> -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara speaking about Americans, April 1966 Message to the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba'''}}

==South America==
[[File:Guayasamin La Muerte del Che nº 2, 1978.jpg|thumb|Guayasamín, La Muerte del Che nº 2, 1978.]]
Guevara authored an insurgent booklet entitled ''Guerrilla Warfare''. <ref>[http://yaf.org/Che/?newsmax Mugshot of a Murderer] Yaf.org</ref> He left Cuba to lead a [[Communist]] guerrilla movement in [[South America]]. [[Bolivia]]n soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and [[CIA]] operatives,<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/index.html The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified] The George Washington University</ref> hunted him down in the Bolivian jungle where he was captured. He pathetically cried out "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." <ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/index.html The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified] The George Washington University</ref> However, the U.S. and Bolivia knew better. He was executed by Mario Terán 2 days later, and his hands were chopped off and put into a jar.

==Video==
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5g24XFTbXc The Victims of Che Guevara]
* [http://video.foxnews.com/v/3982573/the-cult-of-che Glenn Beck exposes the murderous Ernesto Che Guevara image]

==Books==
*''Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him'', [[Humberto Fontova]].
*''Exposing the Real Che Guevara: The [[Liberal Media]]'s Favorite Executioner'', Humberto Fontova, Sentinel, April 2007 ISBN-10: 1595230270 [http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Exposing_the_Real_Che_Guevara-ISBN_9781595230270.html?isrc=b-search]
*[http://www.newsmax.com/fontova/che_guevara_u.s./2007/11/21/51310.html ''Che Guevara Planned Attacks Against the U.S.''] Humberto Fontova, Newsmax.com, November 21, 2007

==References==
<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guevara, Che}}
[[Category:Communist Revolutionaries]]
[[Category:Terrorists]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]

Jerry Falwell

2011-11-09T20:53:32Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 935214 by Cormac (talk) rvv

[[Image:Jfalwell.jpg|thumb|250px|Right|The Reverend Jerry Falwell 1933-2007]]
'''Jerry Falwell''' (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was a politically active [[United States|American]] evangelical, and one of the biggest influences on the conservative movement in the late 20th century and a leader in gaining Christian Evangelical support for Israel. <ref>[http://www.cmep.org/Alerts/2004March31.htm Washington Post on Evangelical-Israeli connection,] Bill Broadway, ''Washington Post'', March 27, 2004.</ref> Falwell was born on August 11, 1933 along with his twin brother, Gene. Jerry and Gene were the youngest children in a family of 5. Young Jerry Falwell was recognized for his incredible intellect at a young age, skipping the second grade at Mountain View Elementary School. He held firm on this intelligence, even finding a way to obtain his driver's license at the age of 13 - 3 years before he was legally eligible.

==Early years==

During his teen years, Falwell excelled in athletic endeavors. During high school Falwell played [[football]], [[basketball]] and [[baseball]]. He valued athletics for their numerous benefits: teamwork, coordination, fitness and overall health.

Dr. Falwell became a committed Christian on January 20, 1952 while enrolled at [[Lynchburg College]]. He bought his first [[Bible]] the day after his [[baptism]], and carried it with him wherever he went. After graduating Lynchburg College, Falwell enrolled in [[Baptist Bible College]] in [[Missouri]], later joining the vaulted rank of [[clergy]]. [http://www.falwell.com/meet_dr_falwell.php] In 1956, he founded Thomas Road Baptist Church in an abandoned bottling plant, [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/jerry_falwell;_ylt=Av1Rxhr4jqj67i6szuF7386s0NUE] and today the church has 22,000 members.

==Ministry==

In 1971, Falwell founded [[Liberty University]] in Lynchburg, [[Virginia]]. The University provides an opportunity for students to gain the benefits of a rich and diverse academic environment while simultaneously offering the opportunity to become closer to [[God]].
==Moral Majority==
In June of 1979, Dr. Falwell organized the [[Moral Majority]], a coalition of groups whose mailing lists reached over 100,000 clergy representing over 7 million conservative, religious Americans. The Moral Majority, part of the [[Religious Right]], organized a series of voting drives and political demonstrations to advance their conservative point of view and enhance the moral and religious attitudes of the nation. It is best known for supporting [[Ronald Reagan]]'s election in 1980, and registering millions of voters to act on his behalf. The Moral Majority played little role during the Reagan years; Falwell stepped down as its leader in 1987 and it was disbanded in 1989.

==Controversy==
Falwell was best known for his beliefs in the benefit of public debate. At Liberty University, he hosted an annual undergraduate debate tournament that attracts schools all across the country. At the tournaments, he participate in a "question and answer" sessions. Falwell's rhetorical prowess shone at such events. Falwell also regularly appeared on news broadcasts, preaching the word of [[God]] and his conservative point of view. He refused to back down from positions that he realized were unpopular. Falwell was former prime minister of [[New Zealand]] David Lange's opponent in the Oxford Union debate with the moot "nuclear weapons are morally
indefensible".

== Obesity ==

[[File:Brain2.jpg|right|thumb|240px|Medical research indicates that excess weight impairs brain function.<ref>
*[http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/41/18/25.1.full]
*[http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2009/08/25/as-waistlines-widen-brains-shrink.html]
*[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167850]
*[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714112832.htm]
*[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/2568718/]</ref>]]
Despite being a Christian and knowing that the Bible declares gluttony to be a sin, Falwell had issues with being overweight. According to medical science, there are a significant number of physical and mental health related problems associated with being overweight.

== Personal Life ==

Reverend Falwell was married to Mrs. Macel Falwell. The two tied the proverbial knot on April 12, 1958. The couple had three children: Jerry Jr., Jonathan and Jeannie. Jerry is currently an [[attorney]] and Vice-Chancellor at Liberty University. Jonathan is an attorney and pastor in Lynchburg, Virginia. Jeannie is a [[surgeon]] in Virginia.

Reverend Falwell passed away on May 15, 2007.

{{Conservatism}}

==Reference==
<references/>

[[Category:Religious People|Falwell, Jerry]]

Al Gore

2011-11-09T20:52:17Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 935226 by Cormac (talk)

{{President
|image=Al Gore VP portrait 1994.jpg
|seq=45
|office=vice
|term_start=January 20, 1993
|term_end=January 20, 2001
|party=Democratic
|pres=Bill Clinton
|previous=Dan Quayle
|next=Dick Cheney
|birth_date=March 31, 1948
|birth_place=Washington, D.C.
|death_date=
|death_place=
|spouse=[[Tipper Gore]]
|spouse2=
|religion=[[Baptist]]
}}

'''Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.''' ( born March 31, 1948) was the 45th [[Vice President of the United States of America|Vice President]] of the [[United States]] (1993-2001), succeeding [[Dan Quayle]] and succeeded by [[Dick Cheney]], following service in the [[House of Representatives]] and the [[United States Senate|Senate]], spanning 1977-85 and 1985-93, respectively. He is a Nobel-prize winner for his work on [[global warming]]; Gore spreads [[alarmist]] [[propaganda]], proclaiming the end of the world. Gore likes to say that, "The Earth has a fever," <ref>http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/GlobalWarming/story?id=2110628&page=1</ref> and is making millions of dollars through his fraud scheme.<ref>http://newsbusters.org/node/11149</ref> He has no degree in atmospheric sciences, meteorology, physics, chemistry, biology, or climatology. Gore took two science classes as an undergraduate, scoring a "C+" in one and a "D" in the other. <ref>http://www.larryelder.com/Gore/goredubiousrecord.htm</ref> Among his notable achievements, the one he is least known for is casting the tie-breaking vote to [[tax]] elderly [[Social Security]] benefits who earn as little as $22,000 per year.

Gore was the [[Democratic Party]]'s candidate for President in the 2000 election, running on a ticket with Sen. [[Joe Lieberman|Joseph Lieberman]] of [[Connecticut]].

In his early life, Gore attended [[Harvard University]] and (briefly) [[Vanderbilt University]]. He also served in the [[United States Army]] and worked as a war correspondent during the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>Kennedy,William V. ''The Military and the Media: Why the Press Cannot Be Trusted to Cover a War''. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1993. <http://com.hilbert.edu/students/papers/carolina-1999/1999vietnam.html></ref> He is married to activist [[Tipper Gore]], but the two announced on 6/1/2010 that they were separating after forty years of marriage. <ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/01/al-tipper-gore-break-years-marriage/ Gore's Break Up After 40 Years of Marriage]</ref>

Gore is currently the chairman of liberal television network Current TV.
== Sexual Assault Accusations & Investigation ==

Not long after the split became public, Portland, Oregon police announced that they had investigated Gore on sexual assault charges over an encounter with massage therapist Molly Hagerty in October 2006. <ref>http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jdRlS1EbF66_3PpAvC9UlCbBtuqgD9GIKE580 AP; Police release tape from Al Gore sexual assault accuser's interview</ref>

Hagerty, a massage therapist to the stars, has accused the former vice president of repeatedly groping and kissing her during a late-night, alcohol-fueled attack in a [[Oregon]] luxury hotel suite in October 2006. Detectives investigated the claims in 2006 and 2009 but decided not to pursue the case. However Portland Police Chief Michael Reese said on July 1, 2010, that ''"we have determined there were procedural issues with the 2009 investigation that merit reopening the case." Officers took the accuser's statement but didn't proceed further and didn't clear that decision with higher-ups. In addition, prosecutors were not made aware of the 2009 investigation until recently."'' <ref>[http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/07/portland_police_mishandled_gor.html Portland police mishandled Al Gore sex-abuse case, Chief says.]</ref>

==Political Career==

[[Al Gore]] followed his father, [[Albert Gore, Sr.]] a prominent [[Democratic]] Senator from [[Tennessee]], into [[Congress]]. His father was a supporter of the [[New Deal]] who was finally defeated in 1970, despite having sent his son to [[Vietnam]] in order to bolster his campaign.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/gore/stories/gore/</ref>

Al Gore was initially somewhat [[conservative]] on social issues, supporting [[Clarence Thomas]] for the [[Supreme Court]] and, along with his wife, opposing offensive lyrics in rock music. But as his presidential aspirations grew, Gore became increasingly [[liberal]].

Gore ran for president in 1988 but was defeated in the primary by [[Michael Dukakis]]. Gore then continued to serve in the Senate.<ref>While serving in the Senate, Gore introduced the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, signed December 9, 1991, which his supporters claim helped develop the Internet and the National Research and Education Network. [http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:SN00272:@@@L&summ2=m&] [http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_90s.shtml] When Gore himself bragged about creating the internet, he was referring to prior legislation (see quotations below).</ref>

In the [[United States presidential election, 1992|1992 Presidential Election]], Democratic nominee [[Bill Clinton]] selected Gore as his running mate. They won the election, and Gore was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were elected to a second term in [[United States presidential election, 1996|1996]]. Gore had little influence in the Clinton Administration, and almost nothing of significance is attributed to him.

As is often the case for incumbent Vice Presidents, Gore was nominated as his party's candidate in the [[United States presidential election, 2000|2000 Presidential Election]]. He lost to [[George W. Bush]] in the [[Electoral College]] after a close vote, in which Gore received more popular votes than Bush, but fewer electoral votes. Gore contested the results in Florida. On December 13, 2000, after an extensive court battle ([[Bush v. Gore]]), Gore accepted Bush's election to the presidency.<ref>Leip, David. "2000 Presidential General Election Results." David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. 2005. 18 Mar. 2007 <http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2000>.</ref>

===Cast tie breaking vote to increase taxes on Social Security===
In 1993 President Clinton sought to increase taxes on [[Social Security]] benefits of the elderly and disabled.<ref>http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/seniorsd.txt</ref> The final version of the bill passed by the [[Democrat]]ically controlled Congress increased taxes on beneficiaries from the first 50% to 85%<ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20040408115747/www.ssa.gov/OACT/HOP/hopi.htm</ref> of benefits (or "annuity payments" as they were originally called). [[Vice President]] [[Al Gore]] cast the deciding tie-breaker vote in the Senate to make the tax increase law. The Clinton-Gore tax increase on Social Security benefits imposed a 70% [[income tax]] rate on a retired couple making as little as $22,000 per year.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=vLg4iJR0J9kC&pg=PA16593&lpg=PA16593&dq=Vice+President+Gore+cast+the+tie-breaking+vote%2Bsocial+security&source=bl&ots=-ImIDX6fHa&sig=ttWVUNAIVsLQoEg1ZhCntHB_02Y&hl=en&ei=dobVTMr9HoOglAe0iuX9CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Vice%20President%20Gore%20cast%20the%20tie-breaking%20vote%2Bsocial%20security&f=false Congressional Record, Comments by Rep. Christopher Cox,] July 27, 2000.</ref>

== Al Gore and uncharitableness ==

''See also'': [[Liberal politicians and uncharitableness]] and [[Barack Obama and uncharitableness]]

The political magazine the ''[[American Spectator]]'' declared:
{{cquote|The last two Democratic Party nominees for President have come up short on the charity scale. Al Gore has been famously stingy when it comes to actually giving his own money to charities. In 1998 he was embarrassed when his tax returns revealed that he gave just $353 to charity...<ref>http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c5_1238044126&c=1</ref>}}

==Supporters==
[[Image:20001025 xnjdo FredGoreFiny.jpg|thumb|180px|left|From left to right: Fred Phelps, Al Gore, and former Kansas Gov. Joan Finney.]]
In 1988 Gore courted the support of controversial [[activist]] [[Fred Phelps]] of the [[Westboro Baptist Church]] in Topeka, Kansas. In appreciation for Phelps' help and support of Gore, Phelps was provided tickets to the [[inauguration]] of [[President Clinton]] in 1992 and 1996.<ref>[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15559 Gore sought help from anti-homosexual group], 'God hates fags' creator preaches 'hate because the Bible preaches hate', By Jon E. Dougherty, ''WorldNetDaily.com'', October 25, 2000.</ref> Phelps has since changed his opinion about Gore when he joined Bill Clinton on the 1992 presidential ticket. Phelps turned on him and claimed Gore was a conservative icon of the Democratic Party that sold out on some critical social issues. Phelps also demonstrated against Clinton and Gore during the 1997 inaugural. <ref> http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={91058469-F6DE-4615-8B2A-73CDF3E8FCAC} </ref>
<ref> http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4179/is_20001104/ai_n11753681 </ref>

==Current activities==
Gore has started an [[Ponzi scheme|investment firm]] to invest in environmentally sustainable technology and industries and a cable channel (Current TV), and is an adviser to [[Google]]. He was also mentioned as a possible [[2008 presidential election|2008 presidential candidate]].
[[File:GoreFireBreathing.jpg|right|200px]]
Gore and the ''Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change'' shared the 2007 [[Nobel Peace Prize]] for his work on [[climate change]].<ref>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312024,00.html</ref>

Gore is the author of ''The [[Assault on Reason]]''. He also starred in the 2006 film about [[global warming]] entitled, ''[[An Inconvenient Truth]],'' which won an [[Academy Award]]. In 2007, the British High Court directed teachers to inform students to whom they show the film that it "is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument" and to draw attention to eleven specific inaccuracies. Furthermore, the court advised, "If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of ... the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political [[indoctrination]]."<ref>Sheppard, Noel. "Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’." [Weblog NewsBusters] 08 Oct 2007. Newsbusters. 9 Oct 2007 <[http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies-eleven-inaccuracies-al-gore-s-inconvenient-truth http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies -eleven-inaccuracies-al-gore-s-inconvenient-truth]>.</ref> Despite the errors, the judge also concluded "four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC.” <ref> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301067,00.html</ref>

Speaking in Manhattan to the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative, Gore wants to use "civil disobedience" to combat the construction of coal power plants without the ability to capture carbon. <ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,427421,00.html Al Gore Urges 'Civil Disobedience' Toward Coal Plants] Fox News, September 24, 2008</ref> Civil disobedience or the call for intentional violation of laws is an extremist point of view. It is believed that he was speaking in regards to Western nation coal plants. No mention of China and their coal production. The gravest threat from coal pollution comes from China, in which two plants are constructed per week and 500 more plants over the next 10 years. <ref>[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9947668 China's Coal-Fueled Boom Has Costs] NPR, May 2, 2007</ref>

==Quotes==
* Gore said, '''''"I took the initiative in creating the Internet."''''' <ref>Blitzer, Wolf. Transcript: Vice President Gore on CNN's 'Late Edition'. CNN. 9 March 1999. 2 June 2007 <[http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000 /transcript.gore/]></ref>

* Gore falsely claimed that he discovered problems in Love Canal and fixed them. He said:

:"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue."<ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/12/02/politics/main72638.shtml</ref>

:"That was the one that started it all. ... We made a huge difference and it was all because one high school student got involved."

:"I love [[Van Jones]]. I love his work. I love his heart and his commitment and his intellect. I love his mission. He has wisely picked a part of this set of interwoven challenges that should have been addressed much more forcefully by me and others long ago.”<ref>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/12/090112fa_fact_kolbert?currentPage=all</ref>

* During an interview with ''Slate'', regarding the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, a question was asked concerning a sense from the [[Climategate]] e-mails and from data that was "hidden and hoarded." These truths are the opposite of the case Al Gore made in his book about having an open and fair debate. Gore responded with a lack of command of the most basic details of anything related to Earth and climate. He said,
{{cquote|I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. [...] So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing [...] but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.<ref>http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/al-gore-cant-tell-time-thinks-most-recent-climategate-email-is-more-than-10-years-old/</ref><ref>http://www.slate.com/id/2237789/</ref>}}
:The most recent emails in Climategate were from November 12, 2009.

* In an interview aired on the ''[[CBS]]'' ''Early Show'', Al Gore read his global warming poem to Harry Smith.<ref>Noel Sheppard. [http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/15/al-gore-reads-poem-harry-smith-says-wow-i-m-happy-hear-it-your-voice Gore Reads Poem, Harry Smith Swoons: 'Wow...I’m Happy to Hear it in Your Voice'], ''[[NewsBusters]]'', December 15, 2009.</ref><ref>[[Rush Limbaugh]]. [http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_120709/content/01125109.guest.html Algore's Idiotic Poem and All the Latest from the ClimateGate Stack], RushLimbaugh.com, December 7, 2009.</ref>

{{Cquote|
:''One thin September soon''
:''A floating continent disappears''
:''In midnight sun''

:''Vapors rise as''
:''Fever settles on an acid sea''
:''Neptune's bones dissolve''

:''Snow glides from the mountain''
:''Ice fathers floods for a season''
:''A hard rain comes quickly''

:''Then dirt is parched''
:''Kindling is placed in the forest''
:''For the lightning's celebration''

:''Unknown creatures''
:''Take their leave, unmourned''
:''Horsemen ready their stirrups''

:''Passion seeks heroes and friends''
:''The bell of the city''
:''On the hill is rung''

:''The shepherd cries''
:''The hour of choosing has arrived''
:''Here are your tools''}}

==Criticism==
[[Image:Al and GW.png|thumb|400px|Cartoon by Greg Sheffield]]
[[Ann Coulter]] claims Gore exaggerated his military service record: "Al Gore endlessly bragged to the media about his service in Vietnam. 'I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later,' he told Vanity Fair. And then we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months."<ref>http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi</ref>

In 2007, Al Gore received criticism for his high electricity use. When it was discovered that Gore's electric utility bill is 20 times higher than the average American's<ref>[http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2007/02/26/al-gore-hypocrite/ Al Gore - Electric consumption bill]</ref> many of his detractors accused him of not living up to his own standards. In the year since the 2007 criticism, energy use at Gore's mansion increased 10%.<ref>http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200806/CUL20080619a.html</ref>
Gore's defenders claim that the majority of that power came from "green", or environmentally friendly, power sources such as solar and wind power. These power sources are much more expensive than traditional power sources such as coal and nuclear power.

Also, some conservatives have pointed to Gore's use of a private jet while spreading the message about the dangers of [[global warming]].<ref>[http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2332/More_Inconvenient_Truths_About_Al_Gore More Inconvenient Truths About Al Gore]</ref>

Attention has also been called to Gore's profits from mining royalties, specifically the mining of zinc adjacent to his property that he leased in Tennessee, which has released millions of pounds of potentially toxic substances into the environment.<ref>[http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770316074 Tennessee Mine Enriched Gore, Scarred Land]</ref> The mine has been closed since 2003. New owner Strategic Resource Acquisition is planning to re-open the mine. From ''The Tennessean'' (3/12/07):
<blockquote>
"Last week, Gore sent a letter asking the company to work with Earthworks, a national [[Environmentalist|environmental group]], to make sure the operation doesn’t damage the environment.

'We would like for you to engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices,' Gore wrote."
</blockquote>
However, this was after he had already made $500,000 from the mining operations.<ref>http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/3/17/93301.shtml?s=ic</ref>

Al Gore's fondness for using [[buzzword]]s became the focus of a prank played on Gore by students at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] in 1996. MIT students distributed a [[bingo]] card containing meaningless buzzwords Gore was known for peppering his speeches with, including "infobahn", "knowledge worker", "vector", "high confidence", and "information marketplace". Sure enough, during Gore's speech at MIT, a commotion erupted in the audience when enough buzzwords were said to complete the Bingo card.<ref>http://hacks.mit.edu/by_year/1996/gore/</ref>. Gore's current favorite buzzword is "unified national smart grid", which he promotes in conjunction with his catastrophic global warming prophecies, earning him ridicule as "The Goracle" in a ''[[Washington Post]]'' article by Dana Milbank.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR2009012803318_pf.html</ref> [[Bjorn Lomborg]] has additionally criticized Al Gore for framing global warming using buzzword terms as some sort of transcendent generational quest, as when Gore called the so-called "climate crisis" the "chance to experience...a generational mission, the exhileration of a compelling moral purpose, a shared and unifying cause, the thrill of...the restless human need for transcendence."<ref>Lomborg, Bjorn. ''Cool It''. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.</ref>

==Fabrications and blunders==
*On February 20, 2000, Gore claimed he has “always, always, always” supported [[Roe v. Wade]]. However, in 1977, he voted for the Hyde Amendment, which says that [[abortion]] “takes the life of an unborn child who is a living human being,” and that there is no constitutional right to abortion. He cast many other votes favorable to the pro-life cause and earned an 84 percent rating over the course of his entire U.S. House career (1977 to 1984) from the National Right to Life Committee.<ref>http://www.gargaro.com/lifequotes.html</ref>

*On February 4, 2000, Gore claimed, “We had a huge event with 3,000 people at [[Ohio State University]].” In reality, “Officials at that rally said the room where it had taken place did not hold more than 1,200 people, and, given the area needed for the staging erected for the occasion, they estimated the crowd at 500,” according to known [[liberal]] media source the ''[[New York Times]]''.

*On February 2, 2000, on [[Good Morning America]] Al Gore claimed, “We won in every single [[demographic category]]” in the [[New Hampshire]] [[primary]]. In reality [[Bill Bradley]] carried [[male]] voters and voters aged 18-29, according to exit polls.

Gore's comment that he "took the initiative in creating the [[Internet]]" was criticized in the ''St. Petersburg Times'' (Florida):

:This was not the first time Gore has overreached. A year ago Gore told reporters that he and his wife, [[Tipper Gore|Tipper]], at the time when they were college sweethearts, were the inspiration for the novel "[[Love Story]]." That came as news to the befuddled author, [[Erich Segal]]. [http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/]

Gore wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in which he said "[he] genuinely wishes [[global warming]] was an illusion," claiming it is very real. This despite mountains of fraud uncovered by [[ClimateGate]]. [[Fred Thompson]] replied, "Hey, Al... the genie says you still have two wishes left." <ref>[http://twitter.com/fredthompson/status/9876626632 Fred Thompson, Twitter feed, March 2, 2010</ref>

==See also==
*[[Previous Breaking News/Al Gore|Al Gore on Breaking News]]

==External links==
*[http://www.algore.com/ Official website]
*[http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=276476942822261 Al Gore, Ignoble Laureate], ''Investor's Business Daily'', October 5, 2007
*[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/al_gore/index.html Al Gore News and Commentary] from the ''New York Times''
*[http://www.aim.org/wls/author/al-gore/ What Liberals Say - Al Gore], [[Accuracy In Media]]
*[http://www.compeaus.com/frozen.html Yearly Frozen Gore Ice Sculpture In Alaska]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

{{USVicePresidents}}

[[Category:Environmentalism]]
[[Category:Nobel laureates in Peace]]
[[Category:Liberal Activists]]
[[Category:Democratic Party]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gore, Al}}

Andrew Schlafly

2011-11-09T20:51:37Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 935218 by Cormac (talk)

[[Image:ASchlafly.JPG|thumb|175px|right|Andrew Schlafly]]
'''Andrew Schlafly''' is a [[conservative]] lawyer and former [[engineer]]. Mr. Schlafly is also the founder of Conservapedia.

Andrew Schlafly is the fifth child of attorney John Fred Schlafly, Jr. and noted political activist [[Phyllis Schlafly]]. His great-grandfather, August Schlafly, was founder of the Union Trust and Savings Bank of East St. Louis, Ill., the First National Bank of Edwardsville, Ill., and other banks in Western states. <ref> [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DB1638F936A15752C1A962948260 Catherine Kosarek] Wedding news. November 25, 1984.
</ref>

He graduated from [[Princeton University|Princeton]] University with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and from Harvard Law School as an attorney. A magna cum laude graduate from [[Harvard]] Law School, he was an editor of the [[Harvard Law Review]]. <ref> [http://www.blogsforterri.com/archives/2005/03/medical_attorne.php Medical Attorney Andrew Schlafly] Posted on March 23, 2005. </ref>

He teaches one of the largest homeschool classes in the country, including one class in fall 2006 with 58 students in [[World_History_Lectures|World History]]. In spring 2007 he taught [[Economics_Lectures|Economics]].

Conservapedia developed as a result of his World History course. Andrew Schlafly and several of his top students continue to lead the project, and most of his students have contributed entries to it.

Andrew Schlafly has taught homeschoolers online since the late 1990s, and in person since fall 2002. Several of Andrew Schlafly's prior course materials are available on [http://www.eagleforumu.org Eagle Forum University].

== External links ==
[[Image:Img524 Andy.jpg|thumb|Andy Schlafly at Columbia University]]
*[http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html About CLEP] The College-Level Examination Program.
*[http://hbutler0.tripod.com/semmelweissocietytv/id52.html Andrew Schlafly], Esq.

{{Clear}}

== References ==

<references/>

[[Category:Lawyers]]
[[Category: Academics]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schlafly, Andrew}}

George W. Bush

2011-11-09T20:51:13Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 935233 by Cormac (talk)

{{Officeholder
|name=George W. Bush
|image=George_w_bush.jpeg
|party=Republican
|spouse=Laura Bush
|religion=[[United Methodist]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=43rd
|terms=January 20, 2001 – January 20, 2009
|vp=[[Dick Cheney]]
|preceded=[[Bill Clinton]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Barack Obama]]
}}
{{Officeholder/governor
|number=46th
|state=Texas
|terms=January 17, 1995 – December 21, 2000
|preceded=[[Ann Richards]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Rick Perry]]
}}
}}
'''George Walker Bush''' (born New Haven, [[Connecticut]] 1946) was the Governor of [[Texas]] (1995-2000) and served as the 43rd [[President of the United States of America]] from 2001 to 2009. Campaigning on a theme of "compassionate conservatism" and promising "to restore honor and dignity" to the office of President after the Clinton years,<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E3DC153FF931A2575BC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE TEXAS GOVERNOR; Bush Calls on Gore to Denounce Clinton Affair,] By Frank Bruni, The New York Times'', August 12, 2000. </ref> he won the office by a narrow margin in the decisive State of [[Florida]] in the [[United States presidential election, 2000|2000 Presidential election]]. Legal challenges to the certified vote count went all the way to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] when liberal Democratic contender [[Al Gore]] contested the outcome for weeks until the Supreme Court case [[Bush v. Gore]].

In the [[United States presidential election, 2004|2004 Presidential election]] Bush won re-election, helped in part by a 300,000 vote victory (5%) in the State of Florida, where the outcome had been so close in 2000.<ref>[http://election.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarchive/SummaryRpt.asp?ElectionDate=11/2/2004&Race=PRE&DATAMODE= Florida Election Records], ''[[Florida Dept. of State]]''</ref> [[Leftist]] Democratic candidate [[John Kerry]] conceded defeat the day after the election.

Bush's presidency was defined by [[foreign policy]] because of the [[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks]], which eventually resulted in the liberation of the countries of [[Iraq]] and [[Afghanistan]]. Bush named two conservatives to the Supreme Court. He reformed K12 education with a major new program, [[No Child Left Behind]], and pushed a series of major tax cuts through Congress. Conservatives cheered. All this happened in his first term, aiding his easy reelection. His performance in dealing with [[Hurricane Katrina]] in 2005 were widely ridiculed, though some Republicans argued that local Democrats did an even worse job.

As the [[Financial Crisis of 2008]] smashed into the banking system and the nation plunged into the [[Recession of 2008]], Bush responded by proposing a massive aid program of $700 billion to banks, and loan guarantees amounting to the trillions of dollars. Conservatives were dismayed as he proposed a traditional [[Keynesian]] [[stimulus]] which Democrats lauded. Above all, he made one of the most dramatic federal interventions in American history by his aid to the financial system. Bruce Bartlett, a Republican economist, says, "Bush clearly is not a Reaganite or "small 'c' conservative."

Conservatives and [[libertarian]]s have criticized Bush for greatly increased domestic spending, creating a new entitlement program for prescription drugs, failing to veto a single bill, and expanding both the size and scope of government. The man made extremely difficult decisions under extraordinary circumstances. Unlike any president before him, he was subjected to an all out attack by the terrorist group Al Queida. Bush's last year in office was a combination of Democrat [[Alinsky]] tactics and abandonment by his own Republican party. Lobbyists and Congress contributed greatly to the collapsing financial markets. Mistakes, questionable interests, Federal Reserve lack of transparency, Liberal Media, Unions, Homeland Security and you understand why the Bush team was to falter, they were in over their heads. Bush is a man with convictions that didn't cower from protecting America and putting America first. <ref>See www.honorfreedom.com</ref> George would engineer two government rebate checks, giving back to the people. Average unemployment over eight-years of the [[Bush Administration]] was 5.3%. <ref>[http://scottstanzel.com/2010/06/04/unemployment-rate-during-president-bush/ Scottstanzel.com, Unemployment During President George W. Bush’s Two Terms]</ref> and he can be credited for having the most [[pro-life]] policies of any president.

==Early Life==
[[Image:Bushfamily.JPG|left|thumb|275px|George W. Bush and his family in 1981]] George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, [[Connecticut]], and grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. <ref>http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html</ref> He earned a BA in history from [[Yale University]] and attended [[Harvard]] Business School as well. He later served in the [[Air National Guard|Texas Air National Guard]] as an F-102 Delta Dagger pilot. Bush grew up around politics, as his father [[George H. W. Bush]] had been a member of the [[U.S. House of Representatives]], American Ambassador to the [[United Nations]], Director of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]](CIA) and [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] of the United States under President [[Ronald Reagan]]. In 1988, George W. Bush worked for his father's successful presidential campaign. Afterward Bush purchased the Texas Rangers [[baseball]] franchise.

==Governor of Texas==
Bush declared his candidacy for Governor of Texas in 1994. He defeated incumbent [[Democrat]] Governor [[Ann Richards]] 53.5 percent to 45.9 percent. Bush advocated and signed the two largest tax cuts to date in Texas history, totaling over $3 billion. <ref>http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/40078/tsl-40078.html</ref> He supported and signed legislation emphasizing local control of [[school]]s, higher standards, and a revised curriculum. Bush was easily reelected Governor in 1998.

==2000 Presidential Campaign==
''Main Article: [[United States presidential election, 2000]]''

The Republican nominee for the 2000 Presidential nomination came down to Texas Governor George W. Bush and [[Arizona]] Senator [[John McCain]], a maverick Republican and ex-POW. Most social conservatives endorsed Bush. Despite early primary wins in [[New Hampshire]] and [[Michigan]] for McCain, Bush eventually won after sweeping 9 out of the 13 states on super Tuesday. McCain withdrew in March after a bitter primary fight. Bush then chose former U.S. Defense Secretary [[Richard Cheney]] as his running mate. Vice President [[Al Gore]] was the Democrat nominee. Consumer Advocate [[Ralph Nader]], a strong supporter of [[environment]]al protection and critic of large corporations entered the race in the [[green party]].

In a historically close race, Gore edged out Bush in the popular vote 48.4 percent to 47.9 percent. However, Bush won the majority of electoral votes, 271 to 266, because of Bush's victory in Florida, winning its 25 electoral votes that both candidates desperately needed. The race in Florida was so close that state law required a recount of the ballots. There were, however, thousands of thrown out ballots that were discredited because the counting machines could not discern them. After the machine recounts still showed Bush ahead, Gore asked for a hand recount of ballots in counties that favored Democrats. On November 26th, Florida officials certified that Bush won the state of Florida by 537 votes. Gore conceded December 13th.

==2004 Reelection Campaign==
''Main Article: [[United States presidential election, 2004]]''

In President Bush's reelection campaign in 2004, national security, the invasion of Iraq and social issues dominated the campaign. The Democrat nominee was [[Massachusetts]] Senator [[John Kerry]]. Bush won the popular vote, 51% to 48%. With 120 million Americans voting (15 million more then in 2000) Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. Among the swing states, Kerry took [[Pennsylvania]], [[New Hampshire]], [[Michigan]], [[Minnesota]], [[Wisconsin]] and [[Oregon]], while Bush took [[Ohio]], [[Florida]], [[Missouri]], [[Iowa]], [[Colorado]], [[New Mexico]], and [[Nevada]]. <ref>http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html</ref>

Republicans also picked up seats in both chambers of [[Congress]].

==Presidency (2001-2009)==

In foreign and security areas, his terms included the 9-11 terrorist attack, the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the invasion of Afghanistan (2001-present) and Iraq (2003-present), the expansion of NATO to the Russian border, financial aid to fight disease (especially AIDS) in Africa, and improved relations with India. The Iraq was was the focus of intense partisan debate.

The 2002 midterm election saw a GOP gain of seats in the House of Representatives and governorships, However the 2006 elections showed sharp GOP losses across the board, and loss of control of the House for the first time since its capture in 1994. He played a minor role in the 2008 election, which the GOP lost.

In domestic legislation he partnered with Sen. [[Ted Kennedy]] to pass the No Child Left Behind education act, and tried--but failed--to pass immigration reform. Early on he secured large-scale tax cuts, which helped the economic recovery in 2002. The boom (and later collapse) in real estate boosted the economy then pulled it down. Liberals criticized his handling of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina relief, and the dismissals of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. His proposed "Vision for Space Exploration" went nowhere, and he failed to make headway in Social Security reform. Conservatives hailed his appointments of conservatives to the Supreme Court and Federal Reserve chairmanship.

===Administration and Cabinet===

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Office
! Name
! Term
|-
| [[President]]
| George W. Bush
| 2001-2009
|-
| [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]]
| [[Richard Cheney]]
| 2001-2009
|-
| [[Secretary of State]]
| [[Colin Powell]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Condoleezza Rice]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| [[Secretary of Treasury]]
| [[Paul O'Neill]]
| 2001-2002
|-
|
| [[John W. Snow]]
| 2003-2006
|-
|
| [[Henry Paulson]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| [[Secretary of Defense]]
| [[Donald Rumsfeld]]
| 2001-2006
|-
|
| [[Robert Gates]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| [[Attorney General]]
| [[John Ashcroft]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Alberto Gonzales]]
| 2005-2007
|-
|
| [[Michael Mukasey]]
| 2007-2009
|-
| Secretary of the Interior
| [[Gale Norton]]
| 2001-2006
|-
|
| [[Dirk Kempthorne]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| Secretary of Agriculture
| [[Ann Veneman]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Mike Johanns]]
| 2005-2007
|-
|
| [[Ed Schafer]]
| 2008-2009
|-
| Secretary of Commerce
| [[Donald Evans]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Carlos Gutierrez]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Secretary of Labor
| [[Elaine Chao]]
| 2001-2009
|-
| Secretary of Health and Human Services
| [[Tommy Thompson]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Michael Leavitt]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Secretary of Education
| [[Rod Paige]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Margaret Spellings]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
| [[Mel Martinez]]
| 2001-2003
|-
|
| [[Alphonso Jackson]]
| 2003-2008
|-
|
| [[Steve Preston]]
| 2008-2009
|-
| Secretary of Transportation
| [[Norman Mineta]]
| 2001-2006
|-
|
| [[Mary Peters]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| Secretary of Energy
| [[Spencer Abraham]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Samuel Bodman]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Secretary of Veterans Affairs
| [[Anthony Principi]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Jim Nicholson]]
| 2005-2007
|-
|
| [[James Peake]]
| 2007-2009
|-
| Secretary of Homeland Security
| [[Tom Ridge]]
| 2003-2005
|-
|
| [[Michael Chertoff]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Chief of Staff
| [[Andrew Card]]
| 2001-2006
|-
|
| [[Joshua Bolten]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
| [[Christine Todd Whitman]]
| 2001-2003
|-
|
| [[Michael Leavitt]]
| 2003-2005
|-
|
| [[Stephen Johnson]]
| 2005-2009
|-
| Director of the Office of Management and Budget
| [[Mitch Daniels]]
| 2001-2003
|-
|
| Joshua Bolten
| 2003-2006
|-
|
| [[Rob Portman]]
| 2006-2007
|-
|
| [[Jim Nussle]]
| 2007-2009
|-
| Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
| [[John Walters]]
| 2001-2009
|-
| United States Trade Representative
| [[Robert Zoellick]]
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| Rob Portman
| 2005-2006
|-
|
| Susan Schwab
| 2006-2009
|-
| [[CIA]] Director
| [[George Tenet]]
| 2001-2004
|-
|
| [[John E. McLaughlin]]
| 2004
|-
|
| [[Porter J. Goss]]
| 2004-2006
|-
|
| [[Michael Hayden]]
| 2006-2009
|-
| FBI Director
| [[Louis Freeh]]
| 2001
|-
|
| [[Thomas J. Pickard]]
| 2001
|-
|
| [[Robert S. Mueller]]
| 2001-2009
|-
| National Security Advisor
| Condoleezza Rice
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| Stephen Hadley
| 2005-2009
|-
| White House Counsel
| Alberto R. Gonzales
| 2001-2005
|-
|
| [[Harriet Miers]]
| 2005-2007
|-
|
| [[Fred Fielding]]
| 2007-2009
|-
| White House Press Secretary
| [[Ari Fleischer]]
| 2001-2003
|-
|
| [[Scott McClellan]]
| 2003-2006
|-
|
| [[Tony Snow]]
| 2006-2007
|-
|
| [[Dana Perino]]
| 2007-2009
|-
|}

===Response to the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks===
The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks resulted in George W. Bush becoming a self-described war time President. On that morning President Bush had traveled to Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, [[Florida]] to promote his [[education]]al agenda, when 19 Islamic terrorists connected with [[al-Qaeda]] hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two of them crashed into the [[World Trade Center]] in [[New York City]], the third in [[The Pentagon]] in [[Washington, D.C.]] and the fourth in Somerset County, [[Pennsylvania]], after passengers of the flight successfully stopped the hijackers from hitting Washington D.C., possibly the [[White House]] or [[Capital]]. As a resulted over 3,000 Americans were killed, and over 6,000 injured, the largest terrorist attack in American history. After [[White House]] Chief of Staff [[Andrew Card]] had whispered in the President's ear that the United States was under attack, President Bush addressed the public in the Booker school's media center, saying a brief four paragraph statement that "Terrorism against our nation will not stand. This will not stand." Which was a formation that President George H. W. Bush used in August 1990 after [[Iraq]] invaded [[Kuwait]]. President Bush would later say that "This is my reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end. . . . I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people."

[[Image:20010912-4-1.jpg|left|thumb|300px|President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President [[Dick Cheney]] and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, talk with the press about the previous day's terrorist attacks during a cabinet meeting Sept. 12, 2001. White House photo by Tina Hager. ]] Although the attacks may have been an attempt from al-Qaeda to divide the United States, they were unsuccessful. Across the nation Americans had donated blood and raised money for reconstruction in New York City. Within weeks Americans had raised over one billion dollars. <ref>The American Vision from National Geographic, pg. 1033 </ref> On September 14th President Bush declared a national emergency. [[CIA]] Director [[George Tenent]] and the FBI identified the attacks from al-Qaeda and [[Osama Bin Laden]] in [[Afghanistan]]. As [[Secretary of State]] [[Colin Powell]] began to build an international coalition with over 90 countries to support the United States global [[War on Terrorism]], [[Secretary of Defense]] [[Donald Rumsfeld]] began to redeploy troops and aircraft's to the [[middle east]]. On September 24th, President Bush issued an executive order freezing all funding to financial assets to individuals and groups suspected of terrorism, and over 80 other nations soon followed. Bush then established the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate federal agencies working to prevent terrorism. The President appointed [[Pennsylvania]] [[Governor]] [[Tom Ridge]] to the office. In October President Bush signed into law the U.S. [[Patriot Act]], which allowed authorities to obtain a signal nationwide search warrant that could be used anywhere on suspected terrorists. It also made it easier to wiretap terrorists and track their [[email]]. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks—[[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]] has been captured.

On October 5th, a new [[anthrax]] scare from terrorists began. Anthrax—a deadly bacteria—had been sent in the mail to news organizations in New York City and Washington, D.C. and [[United States Senate|Senate]] Majority Leader [[Tom Daschle]]'s office. The FBI investigated the anthrax attacks, although no suspects were identified.

===War in Afghanistan===
(see [[Afghanistan War]])
Afghanistan housed and protected al-Qaeda as it planned the 9-11 attacks. It then refused to turn over al-Qaeda leaders. With UN and NATO approval, Bush went to war to overthrow the Taliban. On October 7th, 2001, he ordered bombing of al-Qaeda's camps and the [[Taliban]]'s military forces in Afghanistan. "We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail, freedom will prevail", President Bush explained. The attack quickly shattered the [[Taliban]]'s defenses, and by early December the Taliban regime had collapsed. The United States, its allies and the UN then helped Afghanistan create a new government under [[ Hamid Karzai]]. By March 2002, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were beginning to regroup again in the mountain's of the [[Pakistan]] border. President Bush responded by launching Operation Anaconda, where al-Qaeda troops were defeated. Al-Qaeda was largely destroyed, but the Taliban rebuilt using secure sanctuaries in Pakistan from which it launched terror attacks inside Afghanistan (and inside Pakistan as well)..<ref> Fred Barnes, ''Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush'' (2006); Seth Jones, ''In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan'' (2009)</ref>

As a candidate in 2008 Obama criticized Bush for neglecting the Afghanistan, and tripled the number of American troops from 31,000 when Bush left office to over 100,000 in early 2010

===2002 Mid-Term Elections===

Democrats wanted the focus of the 2002 mid term elections to be on the [[economy]], which was growing slowly after the September 11th terrorist attacks. However, because Congress voted to authorized military force in Iraq in mid-October, national security was the top issue. Republicans increased their majority in the [[U.S. House of Representatives]] and took back control of the [[United States Senate]].

===2002-2003 build up of the War in Iraq===
In his infamous January 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush declared an "Axis of Evil" made up of [[Iraq]], [[Iran]], and [[North Korea]], countries that posed a grave treat to the world and were suspected of supporting terrorism. Considering it a more dangerous and urgent treat then North Korea, President Bush began putting pressure on Iraq throughout 2002 for a regime [[change]]. Iraq's dictator [[Saddam Hussein]] had used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds, an ethnic minority in Iraq. Considering that Iraq may had been building Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) and was a treat to the United States and its allies, On September 12, 2002 President Bush tried to gain U.N. support for a U.S. led invasion of Iraq and asked for a resolution that Iraq gave up it's Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that demanded Saddam Hussein declare all of it's WMD's, stop supporting terrorism and oppressing his people, Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq. The United States, [[Great Britain]] and about 30 other countries began to prepare for war.

===Aftermath of the Invasion===
[[Image:20031127_dsc2048-515h.jpg|Right|thumb|300px|President George W. Bush meets with troops and serves Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bob Hope Dining Facility, Baghdad International Airport, Iraq,, Thursday, November 27, 2003. White House photo by Tina Hager.]] On March 23rd, 2003, U.S. led coalition forces began an attack on Iraq. Most of the Iraqi army dissolved and coalition forces quickly took control of the country. However, sectarian violence worsened through [[bomb]]ings and sniper attacks. On Thanksgiving 2003 President Bush and U.S. National Security Adviser [[Condoleezza Rice]] visited troops in Iraq to boost moral. Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003 while little evidence had shown that he had obtained Weapons of Mass Destruction.

On January 30, 2005 Iraq had it's first general election since the liberation. They voted for a 275-member Iraqi National Assembly which later drafted a constitution. In December Iraq elected a permanent 275-member Council of Representatives. There were low levels of violence during the voting. In a show down with Congressional Democrats after taking control of the [[U.S. House of Representatives]] and [[U.S. Senate|Senate]] in the 2006 Congressional Midterm elections, Democrats retreated on their pledge to end the [[Iraq War]] early and bring the troops home. Democrats had threatened to withhold funding for the troops unless a date certain for withdrawal was set. After the final vote, 280-142 in the House and 80-14 in the Senate, the anti-War movement was defeated. The deal cut with Democratic leaders in exchange for their acquiescing to fund the troops calls for the President to sign legislation raising the [[minimum wage]]. <ref>[http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070525-122215-4854r.htm Congress OKs war bill sans time-line,] By S.A. Miller, The Washington Times'', May 25, 2007. </ref> One commentator remarked, "Despite all the talk of standing up to George W. Bush, despite all the bravado about taking control of Congress, despite the so-called mandate to change direction, Democrats caved....They claim that the majority of Americans are with them on the Iraq issue, but...President Bush, at the weakest moment of his presidency, still bested his Democratic rivals." <ref>[http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/phyrillas/05292007.htm Democrats Show True Colors], Tony Phyrillas, ''New Media journal'', May 29, 2007, </ref>

===2007 Troop Surge===

[[Image:20061228-1_p122706pm-0144-515h.jpg‎|Right|thumb|300px|President George W. Bush meets with National Security team, from left to right, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, at Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. White House photo by Paul Morse]]
On January 23, 2007 President Bush ordered an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.

<blockquote>
In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we're deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq. The vast majority will go to Baghdad, where they will help Iraqi forces to clear and secure neighborhoods, and serve as advisers embedded in Iraqi Army units. With Iraqis in the lead, our forces will help secure the city by chasing down the terrorists, insurgents, and the roaming death squads. And in Anbar Province, where al Qaeda terrorists have gathered and local forces have begun showing a willingness to fight them, we're sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out.
</blockquote> <ref>http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/603653/the_iraq_war_troop_surge_one_year_later.html</ref>

The surge was opposed by a majority of the United States Congress. However, it has resulted in significantly reduced sectarian violence. According to U.S. Central Command [[General]] [[David Petraeus]], violence in Iraq by December 2008 was at a 5 year low. <ref>http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B86G720081209</ref>

===Humanitarian aid===
President Bush has worked to stop the spread of the [[HIV/AIDS]] epidemic in [[Africa]]. In the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) $15 billion dollars over five years (2003–2008) was spent on fighting global HIV/AIDS and improving treatment.

===Economy===

Upon gaining office in 2001, Bush signed into law a $1.35 trillion cut in taxes over 10 years. The plan included the objectives of doubling the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000, reducing the tax penalty on [[marriage|married couples]] and fully repealing the [[Estate tax|tax on estates]]. A [[United States Senate]] Finance Committee Report estimated that with all the planned reductions fully phased in, the average family of four making $50,000 would save $1,825 per year.<ref>[http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/06/07/bush.taxes/ $1.35 trillion tax cut becomes law], CNN, 21 June 2001</ref>

[[Image:20080919-2_p091908jb-0025-1-515h.jpg‎|Right|thumb|300px|President George W. Bush stands with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, left, SEC Chairman Chris Cox, right, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as he delivers a statement on the economy Friday, Sept. 19, 2008, in the Rose Garden. White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]] Since the tax cuts, IRS revenues increased from $1.78 trillion in 2003 to $2.56 trillion in 2007 with a 46.3% increase of individual income tax receipts. Surging $785 billion since the 2003 investment tax cuts, it is the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119189497675953035.html?mod=googlenews_wsj</ref>

During this same time period, spending mandated by Congress has also increased by more than 29% in inflation-adjusted dollars, representing an 11.4% increase in federal spending as a percentage of [[Gross domestic product|GDP]]. This spending has doubled the federal debt, increasing it from 58% to 66% of GDP. Defense spending increased 61%, and non-defense by 23% during the eight years since 2000. The largest non-defense spending increase has been for federally-funded medical expenses, at 54 percent.<ref>[http://www.aier.org/research/commentaries/750-big-government-under-the-bush-administration Big Government Under The Bush Administration], AIER, 16 November 2008</ref> In total, Bush has increased government expenditures by the largest percentage of any president since Lyndon Johnson.<ref>[http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/article944806.ece Some think Bush was too liberal], Wes Allison, Tampa Bay Times December 21, 2008 quoting Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University and author of a new paper, "Anatomy of a Divorce: Conservatives versus George W. Bush."</ref>

Bush presided over a period of unreal economic growth that reflected a bubble that burst in 2008. The [[housing bubble]] allowed people to cash in the rising value of houses; low interest rates that led to massive borrowing. Money flowed into the U.S. from around the world. The stock market that hit a record high in 2007, then plunged relentlessly downward, losing $8 trillion in value in 2008. Unemployment hit an all time low in March 2007, but started rapidly increasing after January 2008. Bush signed into law a minimum wage increase, one of the platforms for the Democrats in the 2006 Congressional elections, after the House and Senate included Bush's request of provisions for small-business tax breaks.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122001784.html</ref><ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001666.html</ref> Tax policies have been favorable to reducing the [[Capital Gains Tax]], with a subsequent surge in investment.

See [[Financial Crisis of 2008]] and [[Recession of 2008]],

===Supreme Court Appointments===

After the death of Chief Justice [[William Rehnquist]], President Bush nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge [[John Roberts]] to fill the vacancy. He was confirmed on September 29, 2005 by a 78-22 vote. To replace the retiring Associate Justice [[Sandra Day O'Connor]] Bush nominated Judge [[Samuel Alito]], after his original nomination of Chief White House Council [[Harriet Miers]] was withdrawn because of widespread opposition due to lack of experience. After an unsuccessful filibuster attempt from [[United States Senate|Senate]] [[liberal]]s, Alito was confirmed on a 58-42 vote and was sworn in on January 31, 2006. <ref>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5181091</ref>

===Involvement in the 2008 Presidential election===
In March 2008, Bush endorsed his one-time rival [[John McCain]] as the Republican candidate for President of the United States. However, due to the President's declining popularity in polls, McCain distanced himself from Mr. Bush on the campaign trail. At the same time, Democratic candidate [[Barack Obama]] tried to portray a McCain presidency as four more years of George W. Bush. The President spoke by videolink at the 2008 [[Republican National Convention]], while his wife Laura appeared on stage with McCain's wife [[Cindy McCain|Cindy]].
[[Image:George Laura Bush2008.jpg|thumb|left|300px|President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush pose for their last official holiday portrait, Dec. 7, 2008, in the Blue Room of the White House.]]

==Future Plans==
John McCain lost the election to Senator Obama, and President Bush met with the new president-elect to discuss the presidential transition between his administration and Obama's, which he promised would be efficient and without problems. George W. Bush's term ended at noon on January 20, 2009, at which point President-elect Obama was inaugurated. In an interview with ABC's [[Charles Gibson]] in December 2008, Bush said his retirement plans included moving back to his home state of Texas and writing a book. He also wants to build an institute at the Southern Methodist University to serve as a non-partisan public policy forum, to debate issues and run volunteer projects from.

== Family ==
George W. Bush is the son of [[George H. W. Bush]], who served as vice-president from 1981 to 1989 and as president from 1989 to 1993, and [[Barbara Bush]]. President Bush is married to [[Laura Bush|Laura Welch Bush]], a former teacher and librarian, and they have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, Neil Bush and Marvin Bush are his brothers. Dorothy Bush Koch is his only surviving sister, as Pauline Robinson Bush died at age four of [[leukemia]].

==Faith==

George W. Bush is a member of the [[United Methodist Church]], and most people feel that George W. Bush's faith is sincere and profound. ''The Faith of George W. Bush'', a non-political book by author Stephen Strang, made the [[New York Times]] best-sellers list. <ref>http://www.christianlifemissions.org/ministries/georgewbush.htm</ref>
When asked where he would be without the influence of family friend [[Billy Graham]], George W. Bush said "I wouldn't be president." "It was just a conversation," said the younger Bush about a talk with Graham in the mid-'80s that changed his life. During the pivotal conversation Bush recalled saying, "'You know, Billy, I'm longing for something.' And I know that he sent me a Bible I still have. All I can tell you is that as a result of being inspired by Billy Graham, I started reading the Bible and shortly after, I quit drinking." <ref>Billy Graham and the White House [http://religion.beloblog.com/archives/2007/08/billy_graham_and_the_white_hou_1.html]</ref> Bush's faith led him to veto a bill which would have provided for [[federal funding]] of immoral embryonic stem cell research.

In an interview with ABC's "Nightline" on 12/8/08, the president also said he probably is not a literalist when reading the Bible although an individual can learn a great deal from it, including the New Testament teaching that [[God]] sent his only son.

During his presidential career, George W Bush often consulted God when making important decisions. For example, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, reported that President Bush said that God told him 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan' and 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq' <ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa</ref> .
Asked about creation and evolution, Bush said: "I think you can have both. I think evolution can -- you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution."<ref>http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6418908</ref> <ref>http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/09/bush-says-creation-incompatible-evolution/</ref> <ref>http://www.onenewsnow.com/Business/Default.aspx?id=347242</ref>
He added:
{{cquote|<big><big>'''''I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life.'''''</big>}}

==Polls==
When Bush entered office, his popularity rating was near 50%. However, after the [[September 11]] attacks, his popularity rose significantly, reaching an all-time high of 90%.<ref>[http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/07/usatgallup-po-1.html USAT Gallup Poll]</ref> Since, then, though, it declined as some of his policies have become unpopular (largely due to the media's persistently negative -- and [[liberal bias|biased]] -- reporting on the [[Iraq War]] and misrepresentation of his policies).<ref> Historical Bush Approval Ratings from University of Minnesota [http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm] </ref> In 2007, Bush had an approval rating of only 24%. <ref>[http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1624620720071017?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true Voters unhappy with Bush and Congress], Reuters, October 17 2007</ref> The same poll gave the Democratic controlled Congress an approval rating of only 11%). <ref>[http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews]</ref>

== Farewell Speech ==
*''Delivered January 15, 2009 at the White House. His audience in the East Room included family, friends, Cabinet and some selected Americans President Bush had met in his eight years in office.''

'''Fellow citizens: For eight years, it has been my honor to serve as your President. The first decade of this new century has been a period of consequence – a time set apart. Tonight, with a thankful heart, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some thoughts on the journey we have traveled together and the future of our Nation.'''

[[Image:BushSpeech.jpg|Right|thumb|300px|President George W. Bush reaches into the audience to shake hands with invited guests and staff members following his farewell address to the nation Thursday evening, Jan. 15, 2009 in the East Room of the White House, where President Bush thanked the American people for their support and trust. White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]] '''Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of American democracy. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by you, the American people. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land. This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole Nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls.'''

'''Tonight I am filled with gratitude – to Vice President Cheney and members of the Administration; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have provided strength for a lifetime. And above all, I thank the American people for the trust you have given me. I thank you for ....'''

'''...the prayers that have lifted my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of courage, generosity, and grace that I have witnessed these past eight years. '''

'''This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house – September 11, 2001. That morning, terrorists took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock.'''

'''I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. I remember Arlene Howard, who gave me her fallen son’s police shield as a reminder of all that was lost. And I still carry his badge.'''

'''As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before Nine-Eleven. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our Nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.'''

'''Over the past seven years, a new Department of Homeland Security has been created. The military, the intelligence community, and the FBI have been transformed. Our Nation is equipped with new tools to monitor the terrorists’ movements, freeze their finances, and break up their plots. And with strong allies at our side, we have taken the fight to the terrorists and those who support them.'''

'''Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored al Qaeda and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school. Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.'''

'''There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to keep us safe – law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.'''

'''Our Nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend us in this time of danger. I have cherished meeting these selfless patriots and their families. America owes you a debt of gratitude. And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight: There has been no higher honor than serving as your Commander in Chief.'''

'''The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.'''

'''This is the belief that gave birth to our Nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to protect our citizens. When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism.'''

'''So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.'''

'''For eight years, we have also strived to expand opportunity and hope here at home. Across our country, students are rising to meet higher standards in public schools. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled. Every taxpayer pays lower income taxes.'''

'''The addicted and suffering are finding new hope through faith-based programs. Vulnerable human life is better protected. Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled. America’s air, water, and lands are measurably cleaner. And the Federal bench includes wise new members like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.'''

'''When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. All Americans are in this together. And together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America’s free enterprise system.'''

'''Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks. There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.'''

'''The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course.'''

'''While our Nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.'''

'''At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.'''

'''As we address these challenges – and others we cannot foresee tonight – America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.'''

'''Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This Nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.'''

'''President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” As I leave the house he occupied two centuries ago, I share that optimism. America is a young country, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in the toughest times, we lift our eyes to the broad horizon ahead.'''

'''I have confidence in the promise of America because I know the character of our people. This is a Nation that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of freedom. This is a Nation where citizens show calm in times of danger and compassion in the face of suffering. We see examples of America’s character all around us. And Laura and I have invited some of them to join us in the White House this evening.'''

'''We see America’s character in Dr. Tony Recasner, a principal who opened a new charter school from the ruins of Hurricane Katrina. We see it in Julio Medina, a former inmate who leads a faith-based program to help prisoners returning to society. We see it in Staff Sergeant Aubrey McDade, who charged into an ambush in Iraq and rescued three of his fellow Marines.'''

'''We see America’s character in Bill Krissoff, a surgeon from California. His son Nathan, a Marine, gave his life in Iraq. When I met Dr. Krissoff and his family, he delivered some surprising news: He told me he wanted to join the Navy Medical Corps in honor of his son. This good man was 60 years old – 18 years above the age limit.'''

'''But his petition for a waiver was granted, and for the past year he has trained in battlefield medicine. Lieutenant Commander Krissoff could not be here tonight, because he will soon deploy to Iraq, where he will help save America’s wounded warriors and uphold the legacy of his fallen son.'''

'''In citizens like these, we see the best of our country – resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, and there is more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great Nation will never tire … never falter … and never fail.'''

'''It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your President. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country and uplifted by the goodness of our people. I have been blessed to represent this Nation we love. And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than any other: citizen of the United States of America.'''

'''And so, my fellow Americans, for the final time: Good night. May God bless this house and our next President. And may God bless you and our wonderful country."'''

==Quotes==
* "Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear."

==Publications==
* [http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Points-George-W-Bush/dp/0307590615/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279195424&sr=8-1 Decision Points by George W. Bush], released November 9, 2010. ISBN 0307590615

==Further reading==
;Academic
* Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde. ''Change and Continuity in the 2004 and 2006 Elections'' (2007), 324pp [http://www.amazon.com/Change-Continuity-2004-2006-Elections/dp/0872894150/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206001659&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Allard, Scott W. "The Changing Face of Welfare During the Bush Administration." ''Publius'' 2007 37(3): 304-332. Issn: 0048-5950
* Barone, Michael. ''The Almanac of American Politics'' (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), highly detailed coverage of electoral politics and Congress.
* Berggren, D. Jason, and Nicol C. Rae. "Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush: Faith, Foreign Policy, and an Evangelical Presidential Style." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly.'' 36#4 2006. pp 606+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5018322436 online edition]
* Campbell, Colin, Bert A. Rockman, and Andrew Rudalevige, eds.. ''The George W. Bush Legacy'' Congressional Quarterly Press, 2007, 352pp; 14 essays by scholars [http://www.amazon.com/George-W-Bush-Legacy/dp/0872893464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206001536&sr=1-1 excerpts and online search from Amazon.com]
* Congressional Quarterly. ''CQ Almanac Plus'' highly detailed annual compilation of events in Congress, White House, Supreme Court, summarizing the weekly "Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report". (annual, 2002-2009)
* Conlan, Tim and John Dinan. "Federalism, the Bush Administration, and the Transformation of American Conservatism." ''Publius'' 2007 37(3): 279-303. Issn: 0048-5950
* Corrado, Anthony, E. J. Dionne Jr., Kathleen A. Frankovic. ''The Election of 2000: Reports and Interpretations'' (2001) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99208680 online edition]
* Daynes, Byron W. and Glen Sussman. "Comparing the Environmental Policies of Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush." ''White House Studies'' 2007 7(2): 163-179. Issn: 1535-4738
* Desch, Michael C. "Bush and the Generals." ''Foreign Affairs'' 2007 86(3): 97-108. Issn: 0015-7120 Fulltext: [[Ebsco]]
* Eckersley, Robyn. "Ambushed: the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush Administration's Climate Policy and the Erosion of Legitimacy." ''International Politics'' 2007 44(2-3): 306-324. Issn: 1384-5748
* Edwards III, George C. and Philip John Davies, eds. ''New Challenges for the American Presidency'' New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 245 pp. articles from ''Presidential Studies Quarterly''
* Edwards III, George C. and Desmond King, eds. ''The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush'' (2007), 478pp; essays by scholars; [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0199217971/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-4827826-5463040#reader-link excerpt and online search from Amazon.com]
* Fortier, John C. and Norman J. Ornstein, eds. ''Second-term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed'' (2007), 146pp [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0815728840/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-4827826-5463040#reader-link excerpt and online search from Amazon.com]
* Greenstein, Fred I. ed. ''The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment'' Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
* Greenstein, Fred I. “The Contemporary Presidency: The Changing Leadership of George W. Bush A Pre- and Post-9/11 Comparison” in ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' v 32#2 2002 pp 387+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000773171 online edition]
* Gregg II, Gary L. and Mark J. Rozell, eds. ''Considering the Bush Presidency'' Oxford University Press, 2004. 210 pp. British perspectives
* Hendrickson, Ryan C., and Kristina Spohr Readman, "From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Bush's NATO Enlargement." ''White House Studies.'' (2004) 4#3 pp: 319+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5008838303 online edition]
* Hilliard, Bryan, Tom Lansford, and Robert P Watson, eds. ''George W. Bush: Evaluating the President at Midterm'' SUNY Press 2004
* Jacobson, Gary C. “The Bush Presidency and the American Electorate” ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' v 33 #4 2003 pp 701+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002052614 online edition]
* Jacobson, Gary C. "Referendum: the 2006 Midterm Congressional Elections." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 2007 122(1): 1-24. Issn: 0032-3195 Fulltext: [[Ebsco]]
* Milkis, Sidney M. and Jesse H.Rhodes. "George W. Bush, the Party System, and American Federalism." ''Publius'' 2007 37(3): 478-503. Issn: 0048-5950
* Moens, Alexander ''The Foreign Policy of George W. Bush: Values, Strategy, and Loyalty.'' Ashgate, 2004. 227 pp.
* Rabe, Barry. "Environmental Policy and the Bush Era: the Collision Between the Administrative Presidency and State Experimentation." ''Publius'' 2007 37(3): 413-431. Issn: 0048-5950
* Sabato, Larry J. ed. ''The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency'' (2007), experts on the 2006 elections in major states
* Strozeski, Josh, et al. "From Benign Neglect to Strategic Interest: the Role of Africa in the Foreign Policies of Bush 41 and 43." ''White House Studies'' 2007 7(1): 35-51. Issn: 1535-4738
* Wekkin, Gary D. "George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush: Puzzling Presidencies, or the Puzzle of the Presidency?" ''White House Studies'' 2007 7(2): 113-124. Issn: 1535-4738
* Wong, Kenneth and Gail Sunderman. "Education Accountability as a Presidential Priority: No Child Left Behind and the Bush Presidency." ''Publius'' 2007 37(3): 333-350. Issn: 0048-5950

;Pro-Bush
* Barnes, Fred. ''Rebel-in-Chief: How George W. Bush Is Redefining the Conservative Movement and Transforming America'' (2006)
* Draper, Robert. ''Inside the Bush White House: The Presidency of George W. Bush'' (2007)
* Hughes, Karen. ''George W. Bush: Portrait of a Leader,'' (2005)
* Gerson, Michael J. ''Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't)'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Conservatism-Republicans-Embrace-Americas/dp/006134950X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206001391&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* [[Bob Woodward|Woodward, Bob]]. ''Plan of Attack'' (2003) on Iraq war [http://www.amazon.com/Plan-Attack-Bob-Woodward/dp/074325547X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206001508&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]

;Anti-Bush
* Bartlett, Bruce. ''Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy'' (2006), conservative attack by former aide
* Ferguson, Michaele L. and Lori Jo Marso. ''W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender'' (2007)
* Greenspan, Alan. ''The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,'' (2007), memoir by powerful chairman of the Federal Reserve
* Moore, James. and Wayne Slater. ''Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.'' 2003. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=107370497 online edition]
* Suskind, Ron. ''The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill'' (2004), complaints of ex Treasury Secretary [http://www.amazon.com/Price-Loyalty-George-Education-ONeill/dp/0743255461/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188802463&sr=1-1 excerpts and online search from Amazon.com]

;Bush aides
* Stephen F. Hayes. ''Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Cheney-Americas-Powerful-Controversial-President/dp/0060723467/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188802328&sr=1-1 excerpts and online search]
* Mabry, Marcus. ''Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power'' (2007)
; Primary sources
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistical tables
* George W. Bush. ''George W. Bush on God and Country: The President Speaks Out About Faith, Principle, and Patriotism'' (2004)

==See Also==

*[[Previous Breaking News/George W. Bush|Articles about '''George W. Bush''' from previous "Breaking News"]]
*[[Bush Derangement Syndrome]]
*[[Bush Doctrine]]
*[[Bush-hater]]
*[[Bushism]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Presidents of the United States]]
[[Category:Texas Governors]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bush, George W.}}
[[Category:Reagan Era]]
[[Category:Neoconservative]]
[[Category:Iraq War]]
[[Category:Terrorism]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
[[Category:The 100 Americans The Left Hates Most]]
{{USPresidents}}

==External Links==
* [http://www.bushcenter.com/ The George W. Bush Presidential Center]
* [http://warrioropen.com/ Warrior Open, Dallas, Texas, on October 10 and 11, 2011]
* [http://www.facebook.com/georgewbush George W. Bush on Facebook]
* [http://www.facebook.com/clintonbushhaitifund?v=wall Clinton Bush Haiti Fund]
* [http://www.honorfreedom.com HonorFreedom.com - a nationwide effort to correct the historical record about President Bush and the Bush foreign policy doctrine]

Valve Corporation

2011-11-04T23:37:30Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 933812 by Intolope (talk) vandal

The '''Valve Corporation''' is an [[United States of America|American]] video game developer which is based in Bellevue, [[Washington]]. They were founded in 1996, and were made famous in 1998, by their first product [[Half-Life]]. They primarily produce [[violence|violent]] first-person shooter games, such as [[Half-Life 2]], and the extremely popular [[Counter-Strike]].

They are also responsible for the content-delivery system [[Steam (software)|Steam]].

[[Category:Video Games]]

Michael Dukakis

2011-11-01T13:44:45Z

EdwinLerch: /* Defeat */ spelling

{{Image request|Iconic photo of Gov. Dukakis riding in tank|thumb|right|Governor Michael Dukakis}}
'''Michael S. Dukakis''' (born 1933) was a three-term [[Massachusetts]] [[governor]], who ran for [[President of the United States]] in 1988 as a [[Democrat]]. After obtaining the party's nomination, he lost to President [[George H.W. Bush]] Mostly due to his soft on crime policies. His running mate was Senator [[Lloyd Bentsen]] of Texas.

Dukakis is a US Army veteran, serving in South Korea from 1955 to 1957.

==Gubernatorial Career==
Dukakis was first elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1974. He was defeated in the 1978 Democratic primary by Edward J. King, but would return to defeat king in 1982 and be reelected Governor in 1986. He was Massachusetts' longest serving Governor.

==1988 Presidential campaign==
===Primary===
Dukakis finished third in the Iowa caucuses, but went on to win the New Hampshire primary by a considerable margin. From this point forward he led the field in the all-important accrual of delegates and managed to outlast the other Democratic hopefuls.

===Defeat===
Dukakis and Bentsen faced the GOP ticket of Vice President Bush and Senator [[Dan Quayle]] of Indiana. Dukakis' image and campaign were mortally wounded by his soft approach to crime as evidenced by the Willie Horton debacle. Horton, a convicted murderer, committed a violent rape and assault after being released from prison as part of a Dukakis-approved furlough program. Fueled by Bush strategist [[Lee Atwater]], the issue became a hot-button topic during the election.

Dukakis lost the election to Bush by a wide margin, winning only ten states.

==See also==
*[[United States presidential election, 1988]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dukakis, Michael}}

[[Category:Democratic Governors]]
[[Category:Massachusetts Governors]]
[[Category:Reagan Era]]
[[Category: Liberals]]

Heavy metal music

2011-10-31T20:24:48Z

EdwinLerch: /* Criticism */

'''Heavy metal''' is a musical genre that was developed mainly in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, heavy metal is primarily noted for an emphasis on distortion, palm muting, aggressive lyrical content, bass-heavy sounds, as well as the influence of blues scales and classical structures. Heavy Metal has also spawned numerous sub genres which omit or improve upon standard technique, or invent new one altogether, giving heavy metal as a genre an impressive variety of styles and sounds. Heavy metal's origins are both rooted in the cultural upheavals that occurred during the 1960s, such as the conflict in Vietnam and the reevaluation and mass rejection of previous social schema, and the enormous influence of bands such as [[The Jimi Hendrix Experience]], [[Led Zeppelin]], and [[Black Sabbath]] that are regarded as proto-metal as well as hard rock. Other musical influences include psychedelic rock, blues rock, and the still developing progressive rock genre. Though heavy metal initially borrowed heavily from the blues in terms of playing style, this was later largely discarded by future metal acts such as [[Judas Priest]].

The first style of rock which grew from this was distorted [[blues]] sound created by [[San Francisco]] based [[psychedelia]] band, '''Blue Cheer''', whose influence on electric blues bands could be seen from [[Cream (rock band)|Cream]] to [[Jimi Hendrix]] to '''ZZ Top'''. The second style was [[progressive rock]], which in 1968 was led by [[England|English]] band '''King Crimson''', combining jazz, classical, experimental, psychedelic and folk music. The precursor to this sound was [[The Beatles]], arguably the first band to leave the standard rock format, creating longer song structures, many of which were narrative or [[opera|neo-operatic]]. This was the main inspiration for later bands such as '''Camel''', [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] and [[Yes (band)|Yes]].

By 1969, the influence of these seminal artists had saturated those parts of the public consciousness which were focused on rock music as a developing art form, and contributed to the explosion of hard rock by, for example, [[Led Zeppelin]] and [[Deep Purple]] and the so-called "proto-metal" of '''Black Sabbath'''. This year is now seen as the watershed moment in the development of what soon became heavy metal.

Black Sabbath originally began as an electric blues outfit named "Earth", but after discovering there was already a band using that name, changed to Black Sabbath after the 1964 [[Boris Karloff]] movie of the same name. Developing a new sound that was born both out of a change in attitude and the loss of lead Guitarist Tony Iommi's finger tips, Black Sabbath are largely credited with developing the more heavily distorted and crunchy elements that later became staples of the heavy metal style.

==1970s==
In 1973 the leading exponents of heavy metal were undoubtedly Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, each having a technical prowess and a compositional inventiveness unseen before in mainstream popular music. This era also marked the beginnings of [[Satanism|Satanic]] imagery and of the spectacular, energetic live shows which became a hallmark of later heavy metal spin offs. Led Zeppelin's [[guitar|guitarist]] Jimmy Page had a strong personal fascination with the [[occult]], while many of Black Sabbath's lyrics dealt with it as well. Unlike many future bands, however, Black Sabbath never claimed to be Satanic. Singer Ozzy Osbourne claims that they were actually looking for a way to tap into the success and popularity of the horror genre, where people willingly paid to see a movie or read a novel intended solely to frighten them; to do so, they began to purposely write dark, ominous songs in an attempt to be music's answer to horror films.

Live shows were becoming bigger and more theatrical, notably Led Zeppelin's "rock till you drop" performances lasting two hours, and Alice Cooper's colossal shows following in the American tradition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, promising "The Greatest Show On Earth". Cooper's shows featured [[boa]] constrictors, horrific freak-show mannequins, and dramatic fake-beheading scenes. Other key artists that emerged at this time included High Tide, Black Cat Bones, Black Widow, Uriah Heep, UFO and Blue Oyster Cult, and glam rockers Kiss. Each of the four members of Kiss took the on-stage persona of a cartoon-like character using elaborate face make-up and a science fiction style clothing. Another American band, Aerosmith, took the basic R 'n' B and rock 'n' roll structures of bands such as the Faces and Rolling Stones and transformed them into a new harder form. The late 70s saw a decline in the popularity of heavy metal, as the Punk movement, beginning in 1976, dominated the musical counterculture.

==1980s==
During the early 1970s three British bands were formed that would arguably become the most dramatically influential of the genre during the 1980s: [[Judas Priest]], Motorhead, and [[Iron Maiden]]. The 1980s also gave rise to the American thrash metal movement with notable bands being [[Metallica]], [[Megadeth]], Anthrax, and Slayer. During the 1980s [[Glam Metal]] also became very popular with bands including Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and [[Stryper]].

==1990s==
The advent of Grunge in the early 90s is seen as the end of Glam Metal dominance. Nirvana's 'Nevermind' caused widespread public interest in alternative forms of music. [[Groove Metal]] became popular with Pantera's 'Cowboys from Hell' and Sepultura's 'Chaos AD'. The normally marginalized sub-genres of metal, that began forming in the early to mid 80s, soon enjoyed much wider exposure. [[Black Metal]], especially in the Scandinavian countries, began to see a huge rise in popularity<ref>fact</ref>. [[Marduk]], [[Mayhem]], and [[Burzum]] were see at the forefront of the early black metal scene, and continued to see popularity due to the controversies that surrounded the bands, such as Marduk's fascination with the Third Reich and anti-christian lyrical content; the murder of Mayhem's lead guitarist Euronymous by Burzum's Varg Vikernes, as well as the lyrical content and album themes of everything post 'Deathcrush'.

==Criticism==

Due to its association with the counter culture movement and the more extreme forms that it has taken over the years, heavy metal has faced criticism from parents groups, school administrators, politicians, music critics, and religious organizations.

A musicologist wrote:

:The development of heavy metal music in the '60s and its continuing popularity through the '70s, '80s, and '90s coincides, for one thing, with the period of the greatest popularity horror films and books have ever known. Both mark a transitional moment in our history: the end of Pax Americana; new economic crises; de-industrialization, the decline of unions and the rise of low-pay service jobs; revelations of corrupt leadership; powerful social movements challenging dominant policies on race, gender, ecology, and consumer rights; new challenges to the stability of social institutions such as the family; and redefinitions of political themes such as freedom. Much of the culture of the past twenty years has functioned to restore the sense of security undermined by these disruptions. Heavy metal, like horror films, has provided ways of producing meaning in an irrational society. <ref>[http://www.superseventies.com/stairway.html Dr. Robert Walser, Professor of Musicology, Dartmouth College] - author of ''Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music''</ref>

Heavy metal music has been known to glamorize anti-Christian practices such as Satanism, homosexuality, promiscuity, drug abuse, occultism, and bestiality.

==Etymology==
The term was first used in a musical context by [[Canada|Canadian]] rock band '''Steppenwolf''' in their 1968 hit record<ref>Billboard Hot 100 singles chart: highest position #2</ref> ''Born To Be Wild'', which contained the line: "I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder..." The song received worldwide exposure the following year when it was used in the soundtrack of the 1969 [[counterculture]] movie ''[[Easy Rider]]''. However, the phrase "heavy metal" had previously been used in 1962 by [[William Burroughs]] in his novel ''The Soft Machine'',<ref>ISBN-10: 0802133290 ISBN-13: 978-0802133298</ref> which contained a character named "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". In 1964, he used it to describe mass technological destruction to the point of biological toxicity in his novel ''Nova Express''.<ref>ISBN-10: 0802133304 ISBN-13: 978-0802133304 </ref>

==References==
<references/>

==See Also==
[[Black Metal]]

[[Category:Rock & Roll]]

Ron Paul

2011-10-31T14:35:30Z

EdwinLerch: Undo revision 932515 by KENxDExMEYER (talk)

[[Image:Ronpaul.jpg|right|250x250px|thumb|Ron Paul]]

'''Ronald Ernest “Ron” Paul''' (born 20 August, 1935) is a libertarian 10th-term Congressman, a former Air Force Flight Surgeon, a medical doctor (M.D.) and a 2008 presidential candidate from the U.S. state of [[Texas]]. As a [[Republican Party|Republican]], he has represented Texas's 14th congressional district in the [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]] since 1997, and had previously served as the representative from Texas's 22nd district in 1976 and from 1979 to 1985.

In Congress he has proposed doing away with personal income taxes, federal antitrust laws and the minimum wage. He advocated pulling the United States out of the United Nations, NATO and the International Monetary Fund. Republicans ignore him; most of his bills fail to attract a single co-sponsor.

However in 2009 he has attracted over 300 votes for his bipartisan proposal to subject the [[Federal Reserve]] to unprecedented scrutiny by allowing the Government Accountability Office to audit all central bank operations, including its decisions on interest rates, lending to individual banks and transactions with foreign central banks. He has a separate bill to abolish the Fed altogether. (He is the lone sponsor.)

==Paleolibertarian==
Paul is a [[pro-life]] states' rights [[libertarian]], also known as a [[paleolibertarianism|paleolibertarian]]. [[paleolibertarianism|Paleolibertarians]] advocate a limited role of government as well as supporting low taxes, free markets, strict construction of the [[U.S. Constitution]], and a return to monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He has earned the nickname "Dr. No" for voting against any bill he believes violates the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Paul is the "one exception to the Gang of 535" on Capitol Hill. He has never voted to raise taxes or congressional pay. He has always voted against the [[USA PATRIOT Act]], the [[Military Commissions Act of 2006]], and the [[Iraq War]].

==Congressional record==

Ron Paul is noted for his authorship of the We the People Act, an act which removed the ability of the US Supreme Court to hear cases involving discrimination based on sexual orientation or religion. He is also noted for submitting several bills banning [[abortion]], and somewhat controversially was the only person to oppose the Darfur Divestment Act of 2007, a bill which disallowed the US government, corporations, and individuals from sending money to or doing business with the janjaweed rebel group of the Sudan.

== Early life and education ==

Dr. Ron Paul was born in [[Pittsburgh]], Pennsylvania to Howard Caspar Paul and Margaret Paul.<ref>http://dailypaul.com/node/53</ref><ref>http://www.wargs.com/political/paul.html</ref> He graduated from Dormont High School in Dormont, Pennsylvania, in 1953. Paul attended Gettysburg College, receiving his [[Bachelor of Arts]] degree in 1957, and the [[Duke University School of Medicine]], receiving [[Doctor of Medicine|M.D.]] in 1961. He did his [[internship]] and [[Residency (medicine)|residency]] at [[Henry Ford Hospital]] in [[Detroit]], Michigan, from 1961 to 1962, and was a [[flight surgeon]] in the [[United States Air Force]] from 1963 to 1968. He and his wife Carol moved to Texas in 1968, where he began his medical practice in Brazoria County. As a specialist in [[obstetrics]]/[[gynecology]], Dr. Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He and Carol, who reside in Lake Jackson, Texas, are the proud parents of five children and have seventeen grandchildren.

Paul is a Baptist.

==Political affiliations and support==
Although a Republican, Paul remains on good terms with the [[Libertarian]] Party and addressed its national convention as recently as 2004.<ref>[http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-09-num-10.htm Liberator online archive] on Advocates for self-governing accessed at March 4, 2007</ref>

Paul served as the honorary chairman of and is a current member of the [[Republican Liberty Caucus]], a political action organization dedicated to promoting the ideals of individual rights, limited government and free enterprise within the Republican Party.<ref>[http://fl.rlc.org/ Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida] accessed at March 4, 2007</ref>

Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions (96.8% in 2005-2006), from individuals. <ref>http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.asp?CID=N00005906&cycle=2006/</ref>

==Political Views==

Paul wants to "reinstate the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]] and restore the [[Republic]]." He rejects a [[welfare state]] or [[nanny state]] role for the federal government, and advocates a strong [[non-interventionism|non-interventionist]] [[foreign policy]].

He voted against the [[Iraq War]] in 2002 and has offered alternatives such as granting the President authority to grant [[Letters of Marque and Reprisal]], and arming [[pilot]]s. He is the only Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War.

Paul's desire to secure U.S. borders remains a key topic in his 2008 presidential campaign. He opposes the [[North American Union]] proposition and its proposed integration of Mexico, the United States of America, and Canada. Paul voted "yes" on the [[Secure Fence Act of 2006]], which authorizes the construction of an additional 700 miles of double-layered fencing between the U.S and Mexico. Paul opposes illegal immigration as well as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In the May 3, 2007 GOP Debate, Ron Paul stated that as President, he would seek the immediate abolition of the [[Internal Revenue Service|IRS]] and the abolition of the income tax. As Congressman, he has long fought for the [[Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_9:_Limits_on_Congress|prohibition of direct taxes]] by repeal of the [[16th Amendment to the United States Constitution|16th Amendment]] which created the [[income tax]]. Ron Paul supports a return to the [[gold]] standard of currency particularly newer theorized pure strain gold.

On March 5, 2008, Ron Paul was the only member of the house to vote against a bill "Condemning the ongoing Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and for other purposes"<ref>http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll093.xml FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 93</ref><ref>http://pressmediawire.com/article.cfm?articleID=18214 Congressman Ron Paul's Statement on Gaza Bill</ref>

=== On Libyan civil war ===

<blockquote>
Why did the US intervene in a civil war in a country that has neither attacked us nor poses a threat? We are told this was another humanitarian intervention, like Clinton’s 1999 war against Serbia. But as civilian victims of the US-led coalition bombing continue to add up, it is getting difficult to determine whether the problem we are creating on the ground is worse than the one we were trying to solve. [http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-03-28/ron-paul-end-the-libyan-war/]
</blockquote>

<blockquote>
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, explained in a recent article that there is plausible reason to believe the rebels are current or former Islamist mujahedin, eager to engage in jihad. Indeed, Gaddafi has fought against Libyan Islamists for years and is seen by them as a bitter enemy. Astoundingly, it may well be that we are assisting al Qaeda in this new war! [[Ibidem]]
</blockquote>

==2008 Presidential Campaign==

Paul formally declared his candidacy for the 2008 Presidential election on 12 March, 2007 as a guest on [[Washington Journal]] on [[C-SPAN]].<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA031207.paul2008.EN.74141d9.html | title = Paul formally launches presidential bid | first = Gary | last = Martin | work = San Antonio Express-News | accessdate = 2007-03-13}}</ref> <ref>[http://chbn.com/Clip.aspx?key=1CD9E3A0397BCBEC Ron Paul announcing candidacy on C-SPAN]</ref>. In regards to his candidacy, he had a 30-minute interview with online political analyst [[James Kotecki]] regarding foreign policy, Congress and the Constitution, and personal liberties. <ref>[http://www.youtube.com/jameskotecki James Kotecki interviews Ron Paul]</ref>

Paul participated (along with nine other Republican presidential candidates) in the [[Ronald Reagan Presidential Library]]'s 2008 Republican Presidential Candidates Debate on May 3, 2007. Ron Paul finished first in the MSNBC poll following the GOP primary debate with 43 percent -- beating second place [[Mitt Romney]] by 5 percentage points.[http://www.ronpaul2008.typepad.com/]

Paul seemed to have dropped slightly in the polls that followed the second Republican debate in Columbia, South Carolina, to 25 percent. This was probably as a result of his suggestion that weekly bombing of [[Iraq]] following [[Operation Desert Fox]] in December 1998 may have contributed sufficiently to [[Arab]] anger at the United States as to make the [[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks]] inevitable. Paul was excoriated by [[Rudy Giuliani]], who said that this was the most bizarre explanation for the attacks he had ever heard. Other Republican commentators sought to explain Paul's continued strength in post-debate polls as the result of multiple votes by his supporters or voting by non-Republicans. In response to Rudy Giuliani, the next day at the National Press Club, Ron Paul offered Rudy a book list to read regarding the issue of American foreign policy. These books are ''Imperial Hubris'' by Michael Scheuer, ''Dying to Win'' by Robert Pape, ''Blowback'' by Chalmers Johnson, and ''The 9-11 Commission Report'' by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks.

Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul staffer, declared himself a candidate against Paul in the 2008 Republican primary election to represent the 14th District of Texas in Congress. Dondero (called "Dumbdero" by [[libertarians]]) dropped out shortly thereafter. Considering the trouncing Paul ended up giving to [[Chris Peden]] in the 2008 Republican congressional primary, it was likely for the better.

Paul has garnered large amounts of support from activists, particularly on the [[Internet]]. Many have come up with creative ways to campaign for their candidate. For example, some Paul supporters, who are not officially affiliated with his campaign, purchased a blimp to fly overhead with the phrases "Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul" and "Ron Paul Revolution". <ref>http://www.ronpaulblimp.com/</ref> The [[neo-Nazi]] organization [[Stormfront]] also provided [[widget]]s on its internet site to enable people to electronically donate cash to Paul's campaign. Stormfront's founder, former [[Ku Klux Klan]] member Don Black, also gave financial support to Paul's campaign.<ref>[http://lonestartimes.com/2007/10/25/rpb1/ Lone Star Times] 25 October 2007. Retrieved 24 July 2008.</ref>

He dropped out of the race on June 12, 2008, but will keep spreading his [[message]] by working to help elect [[Libertarianism|libertarian-leaning]] Republicans to [[public]] office around the [[United States of America|U.S.]] <ref>[http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/12/ron-paul-ends-campaign-will-shift-gears/
Ron Paul Ends Campaign, Will ‘Shift Gears’], [[Associated Press]], ''[[Fox News Channel|Fox News]]'', June 12, 2008</ref>

=== Possible Campaign censorship by the Media ===

Fox News has frequently excluded Ron Paul from its programs, even in at least one case removing him from Iowa Straw Poll results. Fox News' results left out Paul (as well as [[Tom Tancredo]]), even though they scored 9.1% and 13.7%, respectively.

=== Straw Poll results ===

Ron Paul was recently established as the most frequent winner of Straw Poll.

==Ron Paul Quotes==
* on Congressman [[Larry McDonald]], passenger on [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]], shot down by the Soviets near [[Moneron Island]] on Sept. 1, 1983 - "He was the most principled man in Congress"

==Telephone Hotline==
Ron Paul runs a toll-free [[telephone]] hotline with a recorded message of conservative commentary. It is updated every Monday. <ref>http://www.house.gov/paul/</ref>

==Books by Ron Paul==
* ''Challenge to Liberty''. Lake Jackson, Tex.: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education
* ''Gold, Peace, and Prosperity''. Lake Jackson, Tex.: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education
* ''Ten Myths About Paper Money''. Lake Jackson, Tex.: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education
* ''The Case for Gold''. Reprinted by the [[The Cato Institute|Cato Institute]], 1982; Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007. ISBN 0-932790-31-3. ([http://www.mises.org/books/caseforgold.pdf])
* ''A Republic, If You Can Keep It''
* ''Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View''. Auburn, Ala.: [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], 1984.
* ''Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution After 200 Years''. Lake Jackson, Tex.: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 1987. ([http://www.dailypaul.com/node/65] Book distributed with permission in 7 parts in pdf-format)
* ''A Foreign Policy of Freedom''. Lake Jackson, Tex.: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007. ISBN 0-912453-00-1
* ''The Revolution: A Manifesto'', Hachette Book Group USA, 2008. ISBN 978-0446537513

== References ==

* Gwynne, Sam (1 October, 2001). ''Texas Monthly''.
* Bernstein, Alan (May 23, 1996). “Newsletter excerpts offer ammunition to Paul's opponent; GOP hopeful quoted on race, crime”, ''The Houston Chronicle'', p. A33.
<references />
* "Ron Paul Background". Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: Religion & Politics '08. Pew Research Center. September 2007. http://pewforum.org/religion08/profile.php?CandidateID=15. Retrieved on 2007-10-21.

==External Links==
===Official Sites and Publications===
* [http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Official Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Site]
* [http://www.house.gov/paul/ Official web site of Congressman Ron Paul]
* [http://www.myspace.com/congressmanronpaul Ron Paul's MySpace page]
* [http://www3.webng.com/ronpaul Ron Paul Grassroots Campaign] 
* [http://antiwar.com/paul/archives.php Rep. Ron Paul's Column for Antiwar.com]
* [http://www.mediamonitors.net/ronpaul2.html Commentary by Rep. Paul on U.S. policy in the Middle East]
* [http://www.counterpunch.org/paul03182004.html The Broadcast Indecency Act, An Indecent Attack on the First Amendment] by Ron Paul
* [http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr062702.htm Is America a Police State?], speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on June 27, 2002
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/rescueKAL007#p/c/FD3DE4F0642C350C/0/1c8v-kgLvhM Ron Paul's introduction to Video of Cong.[[Larry McDonald]] on ''Crossfire'' made a few months before Larry McDonald went down with [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]] brought down by the Soviet Union in 1983]

===Positions and Quotations===
* [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ron_Paul Quotes by Ron Paul on Wikiquote]
* [http://senate.ontheissues.org/Ron_Paul.htm On the Issues - Ron Paul] issue positions and quotes
* [http://vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=BC031929 Project Vote Smart - Ron Paul]
* [http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000583/ Voting record maintained by the Washington Post]
* [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Paul SourceWatch Congresspedia - Ron Paul]
* [http://www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org/BiosInd/Paul.htm Congressman Ron Paul and Medical Marijuana]
* "He was the most principled man in Congress" - On 2nd Chairman of [[John Birch Society]], Congressman [[Larry McDonald]] passenger on [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]] shot down by the Soviets on Sept. 1, 1983

===Third Party Sources about Ron Paul===
* [http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/allsummary.asp?CID=N00005906 OpenSecrets.org - Congressional campaign contributions]
* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2008/primaries/candidates/paul.html Vote 2008: Ron Paul - Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer]
* [http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/cgi-bin/can_detail/P80000748 Federal Election Commission - Presidential campaign contributions]
* [http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/ron-paul.html Advocates for Self-Government profile of Ron Paul]
* [http://www.virtuemag.org/articles/ron-paul Virtue Magazine Political profile of Ron Paul]
* [http://dailypaul.com/node/53 The American Dream - Through the Eyes of Mrs. Ron Paul] by Mrs. Ron Paul on TheDailyPaul.

===Articles and Editorials about Ron Paul===
* [http://www.321gold.com/editorials/taylor/taylor031706.html Congressman Ron Paul Talks About Gold, Oil & the Economy]
* [http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2004/pr042104.htm National Taxpayers Union Honors Ron Paul as one of 29 Congressmen who are "Taxpayer's Friends"]

{{2008_presidential_candidates}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paul, Ron}}
[[Category:United States Representatives]]
[[Category:2008 Presidential Candidates]]
[[Category:Republican Party]]
[[Category: 110th United States Congress]]
[[Category:Libertarianism]]
[[Category:The 100 Americans The Left Hates Most]]

Michael Dukakis

2011-10-29T22:37:50Z

EdwinLerch: /* 1988 Democratic primary */ more info

{{Image request|Iconic photo of Gov. Dukakis riding in tank|thumb|right|Governor Michael Dukakis}}
'''Michael S. Dukakis''' (born 1933) was a three-term [[Massachusetts]] [[governor]], who ran for [[President of the United States]] in 1988 as a [[Democrat]]. After obtaining the party's nomination, he lost to President [[George H.W. Bush]] Mostly due to his soft on crime policies. His running mate was Senator [[Lloyd Bentsen]] of Texas.

Dukakis is a US Army veteran, serving in South Korea from 1955 to 1957.

==Gubernatorial Career==
Dukakis was first elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1974. He was defeated in the 1978 Democratic primary by Edward J. King, but would return to defeat king in 1982 and be reelected Governor in 1986. He was Massachusetts' longest serving Governor.

==1988 Presidential campaign==
===Primary===
Dukakis finished third in the Iowa caucuses, but went on to win the New Hampshire primary by a considerable margin. From this point forward he led the field in the all-important accrual of delegates and managed to outlast the other Democratic hopefuls.

===Defeat===
Dukakis and Bensten faced the GOP ticket of Vice President Bush and Senator [[Dan Quayle]] of Indiana. Dukakis' image and campaign were mortally wounded by his soft approach to crime as evidenced by the Willie Horton debacle. Horton, a convicted murderer, committed a violent rape and assault after being released from prison as part of a Dukakis-approved furlough program. Fueled by Bush strategist [[Lee Atwater]], the issue became a hot-button topic during the election.

Dukakis lost the election to Bush by a wide margin, winning only ten states.

==See also==
*[[United States presidential election, 1988]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dukakis, Michael}}

[[Category:Democratic Governors]]
[[Category:Massachusetts Governors]]
[[Category:Reagan Era]]
[[Category: Liberals]]

Michael Dukakis

2011-10-29T21:38:11Z

EdwinLerch: image request

Michael Dukakis

2011-10-29T21:30:02Z

EdwinLerch:

'''Michael S. Dukakis''' (born 1933) was a three-term [[Massachusetts]] [[governor]], who ran for [[President of the United States]] in 1988 as a [[Democrat]]. After obtaining the party's nomination, he lost to President [[George H.W. Bush]] Mostly due to his soft on crime policies. His running mate was Senator [[Lloyd Bentsen]] of Texas.

Dukakis is a US Army veteran, serving in South Korea from 1955 to 1957.

==Gubernatorial Career==
Dukakis was first elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1974. He was defeated in the 1978 Democratic primary by Edward J. King, but would return to defeat king in 1982 and be reelected Governor in 1986. He was Massachusetts' longest serving Governor.

==1988 Democratic primary==
Dukakis finished third in the Iowa caucuses, but went on to win the New Hampshire primary by a considerable margin. From this point forward he led the field in the all-important accrual of delegates.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dukakis, Michael}}

[[Category:Democratic Governors]]
[[Category:Massachusetts Governors]]
[[Category:Reagan Era]]
[[Category: Liberals]]

Marijuana

2011-10-29T05:10:12Z

EdwinLerch: /* Legal Status */

[[Image:Marijuana.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Indoor Marijuana Grow (DEA photo)]]
'''Marijuana''' (colloquially known as '''"weed"''' or '''"pot"''') is a dangerous drug that comes from the ''Cannabis'' [[plant]]. The main active ingredient in marijuana is [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], or tetrahydrocannabinol, an [[organic chemistry|organic chemical]] compound. Marijuana is illegal to possess, cultivate or consume in most civilized areas of the world.

The effects of marijuana can include short-term memory loss, malaise, mild [[hallucination]]s, insanity, impairment of physical and mental functioning, and death. Proponents of marijuana have claimed that it has medicinal benefits (see [[Medical marijuana]]) although other treatments can also deliver these benefits to various ailments without hallucinations and the impairments to judgment.

The religious or sacramental use of marijuana is reported in various cultures such as those of the [[Rastafari]] movement or the [[Sadhu]]s of India.

==Medicinal Harms==
Marijuana contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco, thus when smoked it has the same harmful effects including: potential damage to DNA, cancer, respiratory diseases associated with smoke inhilation, and impaired immune system.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615095940.htm Science Daily 6/9/2009]</ref>. However, these effects have not been linked directly to alternate methods of marijuana use. Marijuana use can impair short term memory while intoxicated. THC has slight negative affects on long term memory and thus, in chronic users (approximately 1g/24Hrs)<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>, complications with long term memory are a risk. If smoked, marijuana leads to a temporary increase in heart rate and blood pressure while intoxicated. For this reason, there is a slight increase in the risk for heart related problems including heart attack during the time of intoxication<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>. Chronic smokers often suffer from mild withdrawal symptoms, however marijuana is not physically addictive.<ref>[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/201012/is-marijuana-addictive Psychology Today: Is Marijuana Addictive?]</ref>. Marijuana can impair judgment, motor skills, and balance <ref>[http://www.acde.org/common/Marijana.htm]</ref>. Marijuana has also been linked to impaired learning and developmental diability in unborn children <ref>[http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v31/n10/full/1301068a.html Neuropsycopharmacology: High-Potency Marijuana Impairs Executive Function and Inhibitory Motor Control]</ref>

==Medicinal Benefits==
The active ingredient in marijuana, [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], has been shown (in studies) to produce certain psychological and medicinal benefits. Marijuana has been used to treat anorexia and has been used as an antiemetic.<ref>[http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Support/marijuana National Cancer Institute]</ref> Harvard University conducted a study on the effect of Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol on certain lung cancers. The result of the test was that THC can reduce tumor size by as much as half.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/7/2007]</ref> In addition to a significant reduction in tumor size, there was a reduction in lesions on the lungs by 60%, and a reduction in protein markers associated with the progression of cancer.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/17/2007]</ref> This study shows that not only can THC treat the side effects of cancer treatment, but can stop the spread of cancer, repair damage caused by tumors, and even reduce the size of tumors.

In addition to the positive effect on cancer treatment symptoms and cancer itself, marijuana is used to help patients afflicted with [[amyotrophic lateral sclerosis|ALS]]<ref>[http://ajh.sagepub.com/content/18/4/264.short American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine]</ref>.

Marijuana is an [[antispasmodic]] and is used in the treatment of seizures <ref>[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9586&page=106 National Academies Press: Marijuana and muscle spasticity]</ref>. Marijuana is also used in the treatment of migraines, arthritis<ref>[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.1780090304/abstract Online Library: Treatment of adjuvant arthritis in rats with anti-inflammatory drugs]</ref>, depression<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>, and glaucoma. However the effect of marijuana on intraocular pressure (IOC) is not as effective as those offered by other drugs on the market <ref>[http://www.nei.nih.gov/news/statements/marij.asp National Eye Institue: Glaucoma and Marijuana use]</ref>.

There have not been many in-depth and widely distributed studies into the possible medicinal effects of marijuana. However, with pressure from liberal advocates of marijuana, more otherwise accredited institutions are conducting research on the drug.

==Interesting Facts==
Carl Sagan used recreational marijuana to help "open his mind".<ref>[http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/carl-sagan-spaced-ou.html Boing Boing: Carl Sagan Spaced Out]</ref>
Cannabis was first cultivated in China around 4000 B.C.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
U.S. Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
George Washington grew marijuana. <ref>[http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/gwtheman.htm The President and the Cabinet: George Washington the Man]</ref>
Marijuana is over 100 times less lethal than Alcohol (ratio of lethal dose to effective dose)<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol Wikipedia: Tetrahydrocannabinol]</ref>.

==Legal Status==
Marijuana is a [[Schedule I]] [[Controlled Substance]] in the United States of America, meaning that it is an illegal substance under the law of the United States. In a few countries, particularly in the most [[liberal]] countries of [[Western Europe]], it is legal, though several other countries impose more harsh penalties than the United States.

The [[Netherlands]] decriminalized the use of marijuana in 1976. As a result, marijuana use among the 18-25 age group doubled, while the rate of [[heroin]] addiction tripled.<ref>[http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/09so.htm Europe’s More Liberal Drug Policies Are Not the Right Model for America]</ref> The Netherlands also saw an influx of "drug tourists" and other undesirables, as well as an increase in crime.

Many liberals have advocated for decriminalization.<ref>[http://www.leap.cc Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]</ref><ref>http://www.lp.org/issues/lp-oss.shtml</ref>

Many [[American]] [[conservative]]s, especially social conservatives, oppose legalization of marijuana in any form due to its harmful medical and emotional effects and its likelihood of harm to third parties due to drug-related crime and reckless driving. A few libertarian-leaning conservatives, most notably [[William F. Buckley]] and [[Larry Elder]], have advocated the decriminalization of this drug. Some [[liberal]]s support legalization, but most instead advocate for drug treatment and rehabilitation. [[Libertarian]]s are usually the biggest supporters of marijuana legalization.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Illegal substances]]
[[Category:Illegal Drugs]]

Marijuana

2011-10-29T04:50:15Z

EdwinLerch:

[[Image:Marijuana.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Indoor Marijuana Grow (DEA photo)]]
'''Marijuana''' (colloquially known as '''"weed"''' or '''"pot"''') is a dangerous drug that comes from the ''Cannabis'' [[plant]]. The main active ingredient in marijuana is [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], or tetrahydrocannabinol, an [[organic chemistry|organic chemical]] compound. Marijuana is illegal to possess, cultivate or consume in most civilized areas of the world.

The effects of marijuana can include short-term memory loss, malaise, mild [[hallucination]]s, insanity, impairment of physical and mental functioning, and death. Proponents of marijuana have claimed that it has medicinal benefits (see [[Medical marijuana]]) although other treatments can also deliver these benefits to various ailments without hallucinations and the impairments to judgment.

The religious or sacramental use of marijuana is reported in various cultures such as those of the [[Rastafari]] movement or the [[Sadhu]]s of India.

==Medicinal Harms==
Marijuana contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco, thus when smoked it has the same harmful effects including: potential damage to DNA, cancer, respiratory diseases associated with smoke inhilation, and impaired immune system.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615095940.htm Science Daily 6/9/2009]</ref>. However, these effects have not been linked directly to alternate methods of marijuana use. Marijuana use can impair short term memory while intoxicated. THC has slight negative affects on long term memory and thus, in chronic users (approximately 1g/24Hrs)<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>, complications with long term memory are a risk. If smoked, marijuana leads to a temporary increase in heart rate and blood pressure while intoxicated. For this reason, there is a slight increase in the risk for heart related problems including heart attack during the time of intoxication<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>. Chronic smokers often suffer from mild withdrawal symptoms, however marijuana is not physically addictive.<ref>[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/201012/is-marijuana-addictive Psychology Today: Is Marijuana Addictive?]</ref>. Marijuana can impair judgment, motor skills, and balance <ref>[http://www.acde.org/common/Marijana.htm]</ref>. Marijuana has also been linked to impaired learning and developmental diability in unborn children <ref>[http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v31/n10/full/1301068a.html Neuropsycopharmacology: High-Potency Marijuana Impairs Executive Function and Inhibitory Motor Control]</ref>

==Medicinal Benefits==
The active ingredient in marijuana, [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], has been shown (in studies) to produce certain psychological and medicinal benefits. Marijuana has been used to treat anorexia and has been used as an antiemetic.<ref>[http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Support/marijuana National Cancer Institute]</ref> Harvard University conducted a study on the effect of Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol on certain lung cancers. The result of the test was that THC can reduce tumor size by as much as half.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/7/2007]</ref> In addition to a significant reduction in tumor size, there was a reduction in lesions on the lungs by 60%, and a reduction in protein markers associated with the progression of cancer.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/17/2007]</ref> This study shows that not only can THC treat the side effects of cancer treatment, but can stop the spread of cancer, repair damage caused by tumors, and even reduce the size of tumors.

In addition to the positive effect on cancer treatment symptoms and cancer itself, marijuana is used to help patients afflicted with [[amyotrophic lateral sclerosis|ALS]]<ref>[http://ajh.sagepub.com/content/18/4/264.short American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine]</ref>.

Marijuana is an [[antispasmodic]] and is used in the treatment of seizures <ref>[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9586&page=106 National Academies Press: Marijuana and muscle spasticity]</ref>. Marijuana is also used in the treatment of migraines, arthritis<ref>[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.1780090304/abstract Online Library: Treatment of adjuvant arthritis in rats with anti-inflammatory drugs]</ref>, depression<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>, and glaucoma. However the effect of marijuana on intraocular pressure (IOC) is not as effective as those offered by other drugs on the market <ref>[http://www.nei.nih.gov/news/statements/marij.asp National Eye Institue: Glaucoma and Marijuana use]</ref>.

There have not been many in-depth and widely distributed studies into the possible medicinal effects of marijuana. However, with pressure from liberal advocates of marijuana, more otherwise accredited institutions are conducting research on the drug.

==Interesting Facts==
Carl Sagan used recreational marijuana to help "open his mind".<ref>[http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/carl-sagan-spaced-ou.html Boing Boing: Carl Sagan Spaced Out]</ref>
Cannabis was first cultivated in China around 4000 B.C.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
U.S. Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
George Washington grew marijuana. <ref>[http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/gwtheman.htm The President and the Cabinet: George Washington the Man]</ref>
Marijuana is over 100 times less lethal than Alcohol (ratio of lethal dose to effective dose)<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol Wikipedia: Tetrahydrocannabinol]</ref>.

==Legal Status==
Marijuana is a [[Schedule I]] [[Controlled Substance]] in the United States of America, meaning that it is an illegal substance under the law of the United States. In a few countries, particularly in the most [[liberal]] countries of [[Western Europe]], it is legal, though several other countries impose more harsh penalties than the Untied States.

The [[Netherlands]] decriminalized the use of marijuana in 1976. As a result, marijuana use among the 18-25 age group doubled, while the rate of [[heroin]] addiction tripled.<ref>[http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/09so.htm Europe’s More Liberal Drug Policies Are Not the Right Model for America]</ref> The Netherlands also saw an influx of "drug tourists" and other undesirables, as well as an increase in crime.

Many liberals have advocated for decriminalization.<ref>[http://www.leap.cc Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]</ref><ref>http://www.lp.org/issues/lp-oss.shtml</ref>

Many [[American]] [[conservative]]s, especially social conservatives, oppose legalization of marijuana in any form due to its harmful medical and emotional effects and its likelihood of harm to third parties due to drug-related crime and reckless driving. A few libertarian-leaning conservatives, most notably [[William F. Buckley]] and [[Larry Elder]], have advocated the decriminalization of this drug. Some [[liberal]]s support legalization, but most instead advocate for drug treatment and rehabilitation. [[Libertarian]]s are usually the biggest supporters of marijuana legalization.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Illegal substances]]
[[Category:Illegal Drugs]]

Barack Hussein Obama

2011-10-29T02:21:38Z

EdwinLerch:

Marijuana

2011-10-29T02:14:03Z

EdwinLerch:

[[Image:Marijuana.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Indoor Marijuana Grow (DEA photo)]]
'''Marijuana''' (colloquially known as '''"weed"''' or '''"pot"''') is a dangerous drug that comes from the ''Cannabis'' [[plant]]. The main active ingredient in marijuana is [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], or tetrahydrocannabinol, an [[organic chemistry|organic chemical]] compound. Marijuana is illegal to possess, cultivate or consume in most civilized areas of the world.

The effects of marijuana can include short-term memory loss, mild [[hallucination]]s, and an impairment of physical and mental functioning. Proponents of marijuana have claimed that it has medicinal benefits (see [[Medical marijuana]]) although other treatments can also deliver these benefits to various ailments without hallucinations and the impairments to judgment.

The religious or sacramental use of marijuana is reported in various cultures such as those of the [[Rastafari]] movement or the [[Sadhu]]s of India.

==Medicinal Harms==
Marijuana contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco, thus when smoked it has the same harmful effects including: potential damage to DNA, cancer, respiratory diseases associated with smoke inhilation, and impaired immune system.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615095940.htm Science Daily 6/9/2009]</ref>. However, these effects have not been linked directly to alternate methods of marijuana use. Marijuana use can impair short term memory while intoxicated. THC has slight negative affects on long term memory and thus, in chronic users (approximately 1g/24Hrs)<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>, complications with long term memory are a risk. If smoked, marijuana leads to a temporary increase in heart rate and blood pressure while intoxicated. For this reason, there is a slight increase in the risk for heart related problems including heart attack during the time of intoxication<ref>[http://www.askmen.com/sports/health/20_mens_health.html AskMen: Benefits of Marijuana]</ref>. Chronic smokers often suffer from mild withdrawal symptoms, however marijuana is not physically addictive.<ref>[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/201012/is-marijuana-addictive Psychology Today: Is Marijuana Addictive?]</ref>. Marijuana can impair judgment, motor skills, and balance <ref>[http://www.acde.org/common/Marijana.htm]</ref>. Marijuana has also been linked to impaired learning and developmental diability in unborn children <ref>[http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v31/n10/full/1301068a.html Neuropsycopharmacology: High-Potency Marijuana Impairs Executive Function and Inhibitory Motor Control]</ref>

==Medicinal Benefits==
The active ingredient in marijuana, [[Tetrahydrocannabinol|THC]], has been shown (in studies) to produce certain psychological and medicinal benefits. Marijuana has been used to treat anorexia and has been used as an antiemetic.<ref>[http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Support/marijuana National Cancer Institute]</ref> Harvard University conducted a study on the effect of Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol on certain lung cancers. The result of the test was that THC can reduce tumor size by as much as half.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/7/2007]</ref> In addition to a significant reduction in tumor size, there was a reduction in lesions on the lungs by 60%, and a reduction in protein markers associated with the progression of cancer.<ref>[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Science Daily 4/17/2007]</ref> This study shows that not only can THC treat the side effects of cancer treatment, but can stop the spread of cancer, repair damage caused by tumors, and even reduce the size of tumors.

In addition to the positive effect on cancer treatment symptoms and cancer itself, marijuana is used to help patients afflicted with [[amyotrophic lateral sclerosis|ALS]]<ref>[http://ajh.sagepub.com/content/18/4/264.short American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine]</ref>.

Marijuana is an [[antispasmodic]] and is used in the treatment of seizures <ref>[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9586&page=106 National Academies Press: Marijuana and muscle spasticity]</ref>. Marijuana is also used in the treatment of migraines, arthritis<ref>[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.1780090304/abstract Online Library: Treatment of adjuvant arthritis in rats with anti-inflammatory drugs]</ref>, depression<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>, and glaucoma. However the effect of marijuana on intraocular pressure (IOC) is not as effective as those offered by other drugs on the market <ref>[http://www.nei.nih.gov/news/statements/marij.asp National Eye Institue: Glaucoma and Marijuana use]</ref>.

There have not been many in-depth and widely distributed studies into the possible medicinal effects of marijuana. However, with pressure from liberal advocates of marijuana, more otherwise accredited institutions are conducting research on the drug.

==Interesting Facts==
Carl Sagan used recreational marijuana to help "open his mind".<ref>[http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/carl-sagan-spaced-ou.html Boing Boing: Carl Sagan Spaced Out]</ref>
Cannabis was first cultivated in China around 4000 B.C.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
U.S. Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.<ref>[http://www.interestingfacts.org/fact/facts-about-marijuana Interesting Facts: Facts about marijuana]</ref>
George Washington grew marijuana. <ref>[http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/gwtheman.htm The President and the Cabinet: George Washington the Man]</ref>
Marijuana is over 100 times less lethal than Alcohol (ratio of lethal dose to effective dose)<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol Wikipedia: Tetrahydrocannabinol]</ref>.

==Legal Status==
Marijuana is a [[Schedule I]] [[Controlled Substance]] in the United States of America, meaning that it is an illegal substance under the law of the United States. In a few countries, particularly in the most [[liberal]] countries of [[Western Europe]], it is legal, though several other countries impose more harsh penalties than the Untied States.

The [[Netherlands]] decriminalized the use of marijuana in 1976. As a result, marijuana use among the 18-25 age group doubled, while the rate of [[heroin]] addiction tripled.<ref>[http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/09so.htm Europe’s More Liberal Drug Policies Are Not the Right Model for America]</ref> The Netherlands also saw an influx of "drug tourists" and other undesirables, as well as an increase in crime.

Many liberals have advocated for decriminalization.<ref>[http://www.leap.cc Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]</ref><ref>http://www.lp.org/issues/lp-oss.shtml</ref>

Many [[American]] [[conservative]]s, especially social conservatives, oppose legalization of marijuana in any form due to its harmful medical and emotional effects and its likelihood of harm to third parties due to drug-related crime and reckless driving. A few libertarian-leaning conservatives, most notably [[William F. Buckley]] and [[Larry Elder]], have advocated the decriminalization of this drug. Some [[liberal]]s support legalization, but most instead advocate for drug treatment and rehabilitation. [[Libertarian]]s are usually the biggest supporters of marijuana legalization.

==References==
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[[Category:Illegal substances]]
[[Category:Illegal Drugs]]