It would seem, once again, that Europe is trying to give a signal of what's to come if America doesn't wise up.

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

In a speech in Potsdam, she said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work.

Mrs Merkel's comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant feeling from mainstream politicians.

A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners".

The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for the social benefits.

I have written about this before.

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country."

She added: "We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality."

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

Correspondents say Mrs Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU and its allies to take a tougher stance and require immigrants to do more to adapt to German society.

Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, said it was "obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it harder" to integrate.

"'Multikulti' is dead," Mr Seehofer said.

The entire premise of a "multicultural society" is flawed. Social structures, in order to function, require that the people comprising that structure have similar beliefs. A Society basically IS a culture. So, how can you have multiple cultures within one society? The answer is simple. Without one side caving to the other; you can't! This is what Germany is just now learning. The problem for Germany is that the German culture will soon be the minority culture, at which point things will change drastically.

The only way that some cultures can exist is by limited exposure to other dissimilar cultures. This is accomplished with borders. Borders are social constructs where two cultures (at some point) agree to keep their groups separate.

True Muslims can't assimilate in Germany, nor do they want to. For a Muslim to assimilate would be blasphemy. Living in Germany does not make one a German. Germany is finding this out a little too late.

Those who proclaim, "Can't we all just get along" obviously have no grasp on reality.

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I can't believe what Obama is saying in response to these questions! Take a look at this interview on Rolling Stone's website. It's a rather long interview, but there are a few points in here I have to cover. This is very telling.

Non paywalled link.

- Jann S. Wenner

You've passed more progressive legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Yet your base does not seem nearly as fired up as the opposition, and you don't seem to be getting the credit for those legislative victories. There was talk that you were going to mobilize your grass-roots volunteers and use them to pressure Congress, but you decided for whatever reason not to involve the public directly and not to force a filibuster on issues like health care. What do you say to those people who have developed a sense of frustration — your base — who feel that you need to fight harder?

- Obama:

That's a bunch of different questions, so let me see if I can kind of knock them out one by one.

One of the healthy things about the Democratic Party is that it is diverse and opinionated. We have big arguments within the party because we got a big tent, and that tent grew during my election and in the midterm election previously. So making everybody happy within the Democratic Party is always going to be tough.

Some of it, also, has to do with — and I joke about it — that there's a turn of mind among Democrats and progressives where a lot of times we see the glass as half-empty. It's like, "Well, gosh, we've got this historic health care legislation that we've been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn't have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let's focus on what we didn't get instead of what we got." That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating.

So, Obama admits that the Health Care Reform Legislation is really just leftovers. The health care legislation Obama rammed through is nothing more than a continuation of the dream American socialists have had since the early 1900s. The only difference being that socialists called themselves communists back then.

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

How is it that that having majorities in both the Congress and Senate constitutes, "the most adverse circumstances imaginable"?

I didn't know that the job of the U.S. government was to wrestle profits away from one group, and give it to another. He uses this as a set up to then brag about expanding national service?

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

Remember the code word is "investment". When democrats spend tax payer money it isn't spending, it's "investment".

You look at all this, and you say, "Folks, that's what you elected me to do." I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

Obama has completed about 70 percent of what he set out to accomplish. The public, now seeing what Obama wants to accomplish, is clamoring to stop him from accomplishing the last 30 percent.

All that has taken place against a backdrop in which, because of the financial crisis, we've seen an increase in poverty, and an increase in unemployment, and people's wages and incomes have stagnated. So it's not surprising that a lot of folks out there don't feel like these victories have had an impact. What is also true is our two biggest pieces of legislation, health care and financial regulatory reform, won't take effect right away, so ordinary folks won't see the impact of a lot of these things for another couple of years. It is very important for progressives to understand that just on the domestic side, we've accomplished a huge amount.

Somebody should have told Obama that before gave speeches claiming that as soon as he signed the bill things would change. Remember the people who were showing up at doctors offices want their "free health care"?

When you look at what we've been able to do internationally — resetting our relations with Russia and potentially having a new START treaty by the end of the year, reinvigorating the Middle East peace talks, ending the combat mission in Iraq, promoting a G-20 structure that has drained away a lot of the sense of north versus south, east versus west, so that now the whole world looks to America for leadership, and changing world opinion in terms of how we operate on issues like human rights and torture around the world — all those things have had an impact as well.

This is a flat-out joke. The U.S. is the laughing stock of the world with Obama in office. Doesn't anyone remember the Olympics? Obama shows up for Chicago, and is knocked out in the first round of voting.

What is true, and this is part of what can frustrate folks, is that over the past 20 months, we made a series of decisions that were focused on governance, and sometimes there was a conflict between governance and politics. So there were some areas where we could have picked a fight with Republicans that might have gotten our base feeling good, but would have resulted in us not getting legislation done.

I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of "What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?" I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it.

This is crucial to understanding Obama. Obama admits here that if they were to debate the Republicans; it, "would have resulted in us [Democrats] not getting legislation done." Why would that be? Why if the legislation is "good" for America would it have failed in the public arena?

I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in. Here's an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years — simple stuff like making sure that folks don't jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don't steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they're getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren't preying on poor people in ways that these folks don't understand. And you know what? That's what we say we stand for as progressives. If we can't take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care — if that's not what we're about, then we shouldn't be in the business of politics. Then we're no better than the other side, because all we're thinking about is whether or not we're in power.

This is Obama projecting. Obama doesn't want to help middle-class families. He demonizes high achievers. He doesn't try to lift up the middle class. He only makes legislative decisions which result in the punishment of high achievers. In this climate, why would anyone want to become an achiever? It's obvious that if you become successful you are to be punished. Who wants to work their way up to the "hated" class?

Why not actually help people, by getting out of their way? Why bring one group down? Why not work to bring all groups up!?

Shouldn't a government OF THE PEOPLE actually help THE PEOPLE, not just SOME of the people?

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I find it interesting that these news sources are out in the open about Obama's associations with William Ayres. I wonder why none of this was pointed out before the election? Now William Ayres is denied emeritus status at University of Illinois. The reasons why are what makes this whole thing worth reading.

In a very unusual move, University of Illinois trustees Thursday denied giving emeritus status to controversial retired professor William Ayers.

The vote, at a U. of I. board meeting in Urbana, was unanimous and came after a passionate speech by board chair Christopher Kennedy, who invoked the 1968 assassination of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in saying that he was voting his conscience.

The other trustees, without comment, also voted against the appointment.

Ayers, the Vietnam War-era radical, had been an education faculty member at UIC since 1987. He retired effective Aug. 31 and then sought the emeritus faculty status, a largely honorific title that includes some benefits such as library privileges.

This is strange, I wonder what why William Ayres is controversial?

A co-founder of the Weather Underground anti-war group, Ayers was frequently in the media spotlight and, as such, was one of the university's best-known faculty members.

While trustees regularly vote on emeritus appointments, they rarely comment about them.

But in an emotional statement, Kennedy discussed his reasons for voting against Ayers' request.

"I am guided by my conscience and one which has been formed by a series of experiences, many of which have been shared with the people of our country and mark each of us in a profound way," Kennedy said.

He said he could not confer the title "to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father."

Kennedy was referring to a 1974 book co-authored by Ayers, "Prairie Fire," which was dedicated to a long list of people including Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan and "all political prisoners in the U.S."

Ayers became a controversial figure in Barack Obama's presidential campaign because they worked on a school-reform initiative together, leading opponents to say Obama was linked to a "terrorist." UIC was forced to release more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of that group. The university also faced questions in 2001 after Ayers wrote in his memoir about helping with the non-fatal bombings of government buildings.

According to the UIC faculty handbook, the granting of emeritus status is "based on merit" and is "an extraordinary title that is given for extraordinary service."

It would appear that Obama was indeed involved with a terrorist. Ayres wrote in his book that he helped in the bombings of government buildings. What else do you need?

Obama announced his bid for senate in the living room of William Ayres' house.

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been previously reported.

How can anyone NOT question Obama's love of country when he hangs out with people who have written books about their dislike of America -- and how to strategically take it down? People who obviously get along well with him.

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I was wondering the other day; how are the democrats are going to attempt to spin their tax strategy?

Let's use the democrat premise for a minute. If the extension of The Bush Tax Cuts are, in effect, now The Obama Tax Cuts; why was their expiration not considered a tax increase just months ago?

The democrats reasoning behind the extension of The Bush Tax Cuts (for the middle class) is that it will help middle income earners by allowing them to keep more of their money and increase economic activity. Is this not an admission that increased taxes cause decreased economic activity? If so, why not keep taxes lower for everyone and spur even more economic activity? We are indeed in an economic downturn; why would the government want to do anything which results in decreased economic activity?

Taxes are money taken out of the free market by government. Tax money is then redistributed by the government as the government sees fit. If the so called "tax cuts for the rich" are going to cost the government 700 billion dollars, are they not also keeping 700 billion dollars in the free market --where economic activity is generated. To compound this; the Bush Tax Cuts included dividend and capital gains tax reductions. Dividends and capital gains are effected by inflation, so taxing them at a rate higher than income will result in a reduction of capital investment. In other words, with dividends or capital gains, you are being taxed on the money your earn on your investment. This tax rate does not take into effect inflation. So, capital gains and dividends are taxed at an ever increasing rate because the tax rate does not account for inflation.

If you pay close attention to what the democrats are saying, it makes no sense at all. On many of the Sunday talk shows numerous democrats have pointed to tax increases for millionaires and billionaires, and then talk about tax increases for those making over 250 thousand dollars a year. have you ever heard of any millionaires much less billionaires who make 250k a year. Another point to ponder is this. The democrats claim that tax increases on those making more than 250k a year will not have much of an effect on small business owners. Are there that many people out there making more than 250k who are working for someone else? Are there many people out there working behind a desk making 250k a year? The truth is that the majority of people making more than 250k a year are small business owners.

Nobody goes on a job hunt for jobs grossing 250k a year, because they already know that they won't find one.

The democrats are hinging on the hope that you will buy their faulty logic. The democrats hope that you have enough hatred for those making more than 250k a year that you will punish them with tax increases via elected officials. I don't think that there is that much hatred out there. I don't think that the American public is as stupid as the democrats would hope. Let's keep surprising them!

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Do you ever wonder what Obama is thinking? Well now you can see for yourself. This article, by Dinesh D'Souza, is the most brilliant explanation of how Obama thinks. You can't read this and not learn something.

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