Obama is/was an associate of the Chicago branch of the
Democratic Socialists of America
year
event
Note:
With the exception of some background
entries at the top of this list, this page is organized alphabetically,
by political issue.
Background
Barack Obama was born
of Marxists; mentored by a communist writer and activist;
spent his college days hanging around radical activists; worked as a
radical community organizer, learning the radical tactics of the
communist, Alinsky; attended a radical church; was introduced to Chicago
politics by a communist in the home of another communist;
and today lends his political skill to the international goals of
radical activists, and had radicals working on his campaign and in his
administration.
The fact is, Obama has been around Marxists, of one kind or another,
since the age of 12.
Frank
Marshall
Davis
Accuracy in Media has an in-depth
profile
of a leftist who influenced Obama during his high school years. In an
article entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor," Cliff Kincaid identifies a
member of the Communist Party USA, who has been influential in Obama's
life and education, Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist -- and
born in Kansas.
Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly
identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The
record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some
point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son,
with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career
path. But Obama, in his book, "Dreams From My Father," refers to
him repeatedly as just "Frank." Frank is the black communist
writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence
as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker.
According to an interview with Dawn Weatherly-Williams, Obama returned
to Hawaii in the fall of 1970 to attend Punahou School. He first
met Frank Marshall Davis after he took the entrance exams.
Davis moved to Honolulu from Chicago in 1948 with his second wife Helen
Canfield, a white socialite, at the suggestion of his friend the actor
Paul Robeson, who advised them that there would be more tolerance of a
mixed race couple in Hawaii than on the American mainland.
Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served
as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis
had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
The 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the
Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of
involvement in several communist-front organizations.
In his book, Obama writes about "a poet named Frank," who visited his
family in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of "hard-earned knowledge"
and advice. Who was Frank? Obama only says that he had "some
modest notoriety once," was "a contemporary of Richard Wright and
Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago..." but was now "pushing
eighty." He writes about "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki
self" giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at
the age of 18.
Davis wrote, "The genuine Communists I knew as well as others so labeled
had one principle in common: to use any and every means to abolish
racism." Davis said he wrote to give "the widest possible
publicity to the many instances of racism and the dissatisfaction of
Afro-American with the status quo."
Obama quoted him as saying: "Leaving your race at the door.
Leaving your people behind. Understand something, boy.
You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to
get trained."
He added, "they’ll tank on your chain and let you know that you may be a
well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same."
Is it possible that Obama did not know who Davis was when he wrote his
book? That's not plausible, since Obama refers to him as a
contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and says he saw a
book of his black poetry.
But why? What does Obama have to say about this curious omission?
Could it have something to do with the fact that, by the time Obama
wrote his book, he knew that Davis was a Communist? And that he
deliberately covered this up? Or did he know it earlier?
This is the key question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?
Which of course raises the disturbing questions that must be asked:
Did Davis recruit Obama?
Professor Gerald Horne, a history professor at the University of
Houston, noted that Davis, came into contact with Barack Obama and his
family and became the young man's mentor, influencing Obama's sense of
identity and career moves.
As Horne describes it, Davis, who wrote the memoir, "Living the Blues,"
had "befriended" a "Euro-American family" that
had "migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family
eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who
goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis
eventually decamped to Chicago."
Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the
"Frank" in Obama’s book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much
time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.
In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist
for the Honolulu Record, brought "an acute sense of race relations and
class struggle throughout America and the world" and that he openly
discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and
exploitation. She described him as a "socialist realist" who attacked
the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the
head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a
secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a
columnist with the Honolulu Record "and see if I could do something for
them." The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were
"passed on" to Davis, Takara writes.
Takara says that Davis "espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor
unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro
History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and
white supremacy. He urged coalition politics."
Poems from Davis are in the book "Black Moods" which was edited by John
Tidwell, a University of Kansas professor and expert on Davis' writings.
He
confirmed to Kincaid that Davis joined the Communist Party but that
he publicly tried to deny his affiliations.
Asked why Takara thought Obama didn't identify Frank in his book by his
full name, she replied, "Maybe, he didn't want people delving into it."
Stanley Dunham, Obama's grandfather, was
friends with Davis, a bohemian libertine who drank heavily and loved
jazz -- both had roots reaching back to Kansas and had
families of mixed races -- and the black writer took an interest in
Obama.
"Our grandfather ... thought (Frank) was a point of connection, a bridge
if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother,"
Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, said during a recent interview.
For Obama, Davis was an intriguing figure, "with his books and whiskey
breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes."
Dunham and his grandson would spend evenings at Davis's dilapidated home
in Waikiki, Honolulu's main tourist district. Davis, who had
raised a family with a white wife, would read his poetry and share
whiskey with Dunham, Obama recalled.
Dawna Weatherly-Williams, a friend of Davis' who also lives in Honolulu,
said Dunham wanted Obama to know that there were other children like him
who were part black and part white, she said.
"Stan was real proud of that," she said, adding that it was rare to see
black men with white women at the time.
"He
knew Stan real well. They’d play Scrabble and drink and crack
jokes and argue. Frank always won and he was always very
braggadocio about it too. It was all jocular. They didn’t
get polluted drunk. And Frank never really did drugs, though he
and Stan would smoke pot together."
"Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in
common. Frank’s kids were half-white, Stan’s grandson was
half-black and my son was half-black. We all had that in common
and we all really enjoyed it. We got a real kick out of reality."
Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, told the Associated Press recently
that her grandfather had seen Davis was "a point of connection, a bridge
if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother"
According to Miss Weatherly-Williams, Davis lost touch with Dunham some
time in the 1980s.
Obama describes driving to Davis' home in Waikiki after learning that
his white grandmother was so afraid of a black panhandler she did not
want to take the bus to work. Davis told the teenager that his
grandmother was correct to feel scared because she understood
African-Americans "have a reason to hate."
Davis said Obama's grandfather would never understand people like him
because they hadn't experienced the humiliations he had, according to
Obama's memoir. As he left Davis's house that night, Obama wrote, he
knew he was completely alone for the first time in his life.
Davis appears again later in the book, when Obama recalls meeting the
writer shortly before leaving for college on the mainland. At that
meeting, Davis scolded Obama for his listless attitude toward college
and warned him not to leave his race behind, which he called "the real
price of admission" to higher education.
"Leaving your race at the door. Leaving your people behind….
You're not going to college to get educated. You're going to get
trained…. They'll train you to forget what you already know.
They'll train you so good, you'll start believing what they tell you
about equal opportunity and the American way and all that s**t."
And then Frank pronounces the modern version of the one key concept
which the Democratic Party, under slavery, segregation, and civil
rights, has sought to ingrain in the mind of every black person: "You
may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you're a nigger just the
same."
A few days later Obama left Hawaii for Occidental College
in Los Angeles.
Information from Davis's 601 page
FBI file
reveals that Davis (born 1905) became interested in the Communist
Party as far back as 1931.
Certainly from the mid/late '30s to the early '40s Davis was involved in
several Communist Party fronts including the the National Negro
Congress, the League of American Writers, the National Federation for
Constitutional Liberties and the Civil Rights Congress
The FBI first began tracking Davis in 1944 when they identified him as
member of the Communist Party's Dorie Miller Club in Chicago -- card
number 47544.
Davis taught courses at the party controlled Abraham Lincoln School in
Chicago and attended meetings of the party's Cultural Club until he left
for Hawaii in 1948.
In Hawaii Davis became a columnist for a union financed, communist
controlled newspaper, the Honolulu Record.
Despite going underground in 1950, the Hawaiian CP was one of the most
dynamic in the US at the time. The mainland put huge resources
into the Hawaiian party because the Soviets wanted the US military
presence on the islands shut down. The Hawaiian CP was charged
with agitating against the US military bases at every opportunity.
Several times the FBI observed Davis photographing obscure Hawaiian
beaches -- possibly for espionage purposes.
Through its control of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU)
the Hawaiian CP had huge influence on the local Democratic Party.
In the mid '50s, while still a confirmed communist, Davis like many of
his comrades, became an official in the local Democratic Party.
The communist influence is still felt in the Hawaiian democratic party
today.
At the time the underground CP was divided into two or three person
independent cells. Davis led one such cell "Group 10" with his
wife and one other comrade.
An extensive Senate Security Investigation in 1956 shattered the
Hawaiian CP, driving the remnants completely underground where it
remains to this day.
The FBI continued to monitor Davis into the '60s and though they found
little if any party activity on the islands, he was still regarded as a
"believer."
The FBI monitored Davis for at least 19 years. They marked him
down for immediate arrest should war break out between the US and the
Soviet Union -- an honor reserved only for the most dangerous
subversives.
One of the longest lived communist fronts was the American Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born. Active from 1935 until 1980, the
ACFPFB was charged with preventing foreign communists such Davis's
friend ILWU leader Harry Bridges from deportation.
Davis was a long time supporter of the ACFPFB, apparently at least until
1973, three years after meeting the young Obama.
The ACFPFB
letterhead April 12th 1973, contains Davis' name listed under
"Sponsors."
Interestingly, Hawaiian lawyer, party member and
long time Davis comrade Harriet Bouslog also appears on the list.
Others of the several known party members listed above include civil
rights activists Carl and Anne Braden, Dirk J Struik, a mathematician
and accused Soviet spy, whose daughter peace activist daughter Gwen
lives in New Zealand, Hugh DeLacy a secret party member who became a
Democratic Congressman for Washington State and three prominent Chicago
activists, Richard Criley, Frank Wilkinson and Abe Feinglass.
When Obama decided to go to Chicago in 1983 to become a "community
organizer" he was inspired by that year's election of Chicago's first
black mayor,
Harold Washington.
A long time friend of the Chicago Communist Party, Washington would have
almost certainly known Frank Marshall Davis from his post-War student
days.
It would be interesting to know if Frank Marshall Davis ever told the
young Obama about Harold Washington and his leftist connections.
What connection did Obama have to Chicago other than his boyhood mentor
Frank Marshall Davis?
Marxist
Professors
Obama entered Occidental College in
California in 1979.
In his first memoir,
"Dreams," Obama included a
description of black student life at
Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it
came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying
close together, traveling in packs," he wrote. "It remained
necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the
black masses, to strike out and name names."
He added: "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends
carefully. The more politically active black students. The
foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and
structural feminists."
You are know by your friends and
associates -- and Obama's are the hard-core leftists.
Marxist
Conferences
During Obama's Columbia period, he regularly attended the Marxist-Socialist conferences at
Cooper Union and African cultural
fairs in Brooklyn and started lecturing his relatives until they worried
he'd become "one of
those freaks you see on the streets around here."
He Is
Who He Is
He has made it clear that the mere use of His name would be freighted
with coded innuendoes of something too horrible to say
straightforwardly. One has to go back to Exodus 3:13-14 to find
such strict instructions concerning the use of a name. Moses
explained: "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to
them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me,
'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "I
Am Who I Am." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of
Israel, 'I Am has sent me to you.'"
So perhaps we can call Him, for short, Sen. I Am (full code name: I Am
who you have been waiting for).
Obama is
scheduled to speak at a rally at the University of Mary Washington
today (UMW). The public is invited to this forum, on property it,
the public, owns. However, signs and banners will not be allowed,
according to the organizers and compliant campus officials.
Suddenly, UMW is a First Amendment-Free, or at least a First
Amendment-Crippled, Zone, subject to the self-serving preferences of
politicos. Why does an Obama rally justify taking a little off the
top of Americans’ most fundamental rights?
A UMW spokeswoman says that the Obama campaign required the
sign-and-banner ban. That campaign tells us that the ban is for
"security" reasons. But a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service,
responsible for protecting presidential candidates, says that the
service has no objection to signs at rallies, provided that no "part of
the sign could be used as a weapon," e.g., a heavy metal pole or a
sharpened stick.
The McCain campaign tells us, "We encourage people to make signs at our
events."
1st
Amendment
Gov. Matt Blunt today
issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed
plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to
threaten and intimidate his critics.
"St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit
Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama
and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have
attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden
campaign."
"What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond
words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is
abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence
political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
"This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred
principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more
offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to
deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable
purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people
away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to
suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by
this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress
ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on
television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation
about the election.
"Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in
the press constantly say false things about me and my family.
Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the
purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri
law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent
of the Sedition Acts -- not a free society."
In
this letter, sent to TV stations from Obama campaign general counsel
Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign, once again, attempts to intimidate
television station managers from airing a
TV ad by the National Rifle Association.
Bauer argues, "Unlike federal candidates, independent political
organizations do not have a 'right to command the use of broadcast
facilities.' Moreover, you have a duty 'to protect the public from
false, misleading or deceptive advertising.' We request that you
immediately cease airing this advertising."
The Obama campaign takes issue with an ad called "Hunter," pointing out
that claims in the ad were called "false" by Factcheck.org, and were
given three Pinocchios by the Washington Post's "Factchecker."
In response, Cleta Mitchell, Counsel to the NRA, fired back in a letter
to station managers that the fact checkers in this case are wrong.
"We respectfully request that your station disregard the shamefully
false assertions from the Obama campaign and its attorneys," Mitchell
writes. You can read more of Mitchell's letter at the
blog of Ben Smith of Politico, who reprinted it in full.
Political speech is absolute. This is
another attempt by Obama's
NKVD to deny
Americans their 1st Amendment "free expression" rights.
As you read down the page you will see other instances of intimidation
by Obama's NKVD. This is obviously a formal tactic of his
campaign.
Just imagine what these people would do with the full force of the
Department of Justice behind them.
Obama's assault on free speech reminds me of how Islam deals with speech
it does not like: "Behead Those Who Insult The Prophet."
As an aside, the "lawyer letter" is on Obama
Campaign stationary. Obama's name in the letterhead is quite
large. One can hardly read Biden's name.
2nd
Amendment
Obama is
embracinganti-gun policies in the run-up to a Democratic
presidential debate scheduled on the one-year anniversary of the
Virginia Tech shootings.
"I am not in favor of concealed weapons," Obama told the Pittsburgh
Tribune. "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more
innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."
These remarks break from Obama’s previous moderate rhetoric on gun
control.
While campaigning in Idaho in February, Obama promised, "I have no
intention of taking away folks’ guns."
Obama’s presidential campaign
has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the
Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away
their guns.
But before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of
the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least
nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the
opposite positions.
The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the
Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners’ rights, as well
as two groups that advocated handgun bans. And it paid to
support a book called "Every Handgun Is Aimed at You:
The Case
for Banning Handguns."
2nd
Amendment
On the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (01:28)
2nd
Amendment
Obama's proposal to
ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school.
"Barack Obama supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a
school or park, which would eliminate almost every gun store in
America." is more than just a little exaggeration.
2nd
Amendment
Barack Obama voted four times to allow criminal charges against
homeowners who defend their person and home with a gun.
Despite Obama's propensity to say and do anything to get elected,
Obama's record does not match his rhetoric.
In fact, Barack Obama specifically
voted four times
in the Illinois Legislature to allow criminal charges against a
homeowner who used a firearm in self-defense of their person and home --
specifically what the Supreme Court says is a constitutional right.
Obama may say he supports it, but his record says exactly the opposite.
"I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear
arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that
the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that
right."
Here's a few examples -- make up your own:
"Just because you have an individual right [to free speech] does not
mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of
that right."
"Just because you have an individual right [not to be searched
unreasonably] does not mean that the state or local government can't
constrain the exercise of that right."
"Just because you have an individual right [to freely exercise religion]
does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the
exercise of that right."
"Just because you have an individual right [to an abortion] does not
mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of
that right."
"Just because you have an individual right [to bear arms] does not mean
that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that
right."
Does anyone else find this disturbing?
2nd
Amendment
"One of the most blatant lies ever to come from a
politician's mouth," is how the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) is
characterizing a recent statement by U.S. Senator Barack Obama.
Speaking in the latest issue of "Field & Stream," Obama claims that
Illinois sportsmen know him as an advocate for their rights. On the
contrary, Obama's voting record while a state senator clearly indicates
that he has nothing but contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner.
"Any sportsman who counts Barack Obama as one of his friends is
seriously confused," said ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson.
"Throughout his tenure in the Illinois Senate, Obama served as one of
the most loyal foot soldiers in Mayor Daley's campaign to abolish
civilian firearm ownership. While a state senator, Obama voted for
legislation that would ban and forcibly confiscate nearly every shotgun,
target rifle and hunting rifle in the state. Obama also voted for
bills that would ration the number of firearms a law-abiding citizen
could own, yet give a pass to the violent thugs who roam our streets.
And, inexplicably, Obama voted four times against legislation that would
allow citizens to use firearms to defend their homes and families."
"Let us also not forget that Obama served as a director of the Joyce
Foundation," continued Pearson. "While on the Joyce Foundation
board, Obama funneled tens of millions of dollars to radical gun control
organizations such as the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and
the Violence Policy Center."
"If Senator Obama considers his legislative record and his philanthropic
endeavors to be acts of advocacy on behalf of sportsmen's rights, then I
submit that the Senator is seriously confused as well," asserted
Pearson.
"Nobody knows Obama's record on guns better than I do, and it's rotten
to the core," said Pearson. "I've been involved in Illinois
politics nearly as long as Obama has been alive. In that time, I
have never encountered a legislator who was more hostile towards or more
disinterested in sportsmen's rights than Barack Obama."
While a state
senator, Obama
voted for legislation that would ban and forcibly confiscate nearly
every shotgun, target rifle and hunting rifle in the state. Obama also
voted for bills that would ration the number of firearms a law-abiding
citizen could own, yet give a pass to the violent thugs who roam our
streets. And, inexplicably, Obama voted four times against
legislation that would allow citizens to use firearms to defend their
homes and families.
Abortion
The entire
issue of abortion involves determining when a baby becomes a person.
If Obama thinks this is above his pay grade, then he probably shouldn’t
be running for political office. If a baby is a person at
conception, then abortion is murder. If Obama doesn’t believe that
abortion is murder, then he can’t believe in the personhood, the
humanity, of an embryo or fetus -- not unless he’s some kind of monster.
Obama side-stepped a pointed
query about abortion on Saturday by "mega-pastor" Rick Warren during
a televised forum.
Asked at what point a baby gets "human rights," Obama, who strongly
supports abortion rights, said: "… whether you’re looking at it from a
theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that
question with specificity … is above my pay grade."
As President -- even as Senator -- Obama is expected to have an answer
for this. Quite literally, there is no higher pay grade in the US
government, and abortion is one of the issues he has to face. If
he can’t face it, then he should go back to community organization and
leave politics for people who can. John McCain had no trouble
answering the same question. Obama dodged it -- and for good
reason: his answer would have exposed his radical views.
Abortion
Almost one year has passed since Obama made his vow to the Planned
Parenthood Action Fund that abortion would be the first priority of
his administration.
"The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,"
Obama
said in his July, 2007, speech to abortion advocates worried
about the increase of pro-life legislation at the state level.
The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is legislation Obama has co-sponsored
along with 18 other senators that would annihilate every single state
law limiting or regulating abortion, including the federal ban on
partial birth abortion.
Abortion
Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.
He is so pro-abortion that he refused as an Illinois state senator to
support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions
because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded
speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside
their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were
in fact "persons."
The Illinois bill that Obama refused to support had language identical
to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that passed the U.S. Senate
98-0, with such senators as Barbara Boxer voting in favor.
But
who cares about such stuff when gas is over four bucks a gallon?
Not Donna Brazile or the MSM, apparently.
Abortion
Obama's 10 reasons for supporting infanticide.
Following are 10 excuses Obama has given through the years for voting
"present" and "no" on the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, or
BAIPA.
10. Babies who survive abortions are not protected by the Equal
Protection Clause of the Constitution.
Obama, the sole opponent ever to speak against BAIPA, stated on
the Illinois Senate floor on March 30, 2001:
"I just want to suggest ... that this is probably not going to survive
constitutional scrutiny."
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is
protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the
Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are
persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be
provided to a -- child, a 9-month-old -- child that was delivered to
term. …"
"I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal
protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this
is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute. For that
purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional."
Read the other 9 reasons for supporting infanticide
here.
Abortion
The Christian Defense Coalition is
launching a new campaign focused on painting Obama, who received a
100% rating from NARAL in 2005,2006 and 2007, as "The Abortion
President."
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition,
says Obama would have "the most extremist policies on abortion of any
President in history. Senator Obama's views on abortion are so
radical that he even wants American citizens to pay for them. This
would include Catholics, Evangelicals and all people of faith. He
would also expand abortion rights through his passionate support of The
Freedom of Choice Act."
ACLU
The ACLU scores the entire Senate and House every year based on the
issues they think most important. Obama didn’t beat his VP pick
Joe Biden’s 91%, but he didn’t do bad for a first term Senator with an
82% lifetime score. If he would have actually vote more than just
"present" his score would be higher. The only issue he voted
against that the ACLU wanted him to vote for was the FISA Amendments Act
of 2008 in which he had to do some pandering.
Affirmative
Action
April 29th -- Obama says, "I
still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming
both historic and potentially current discrimination ..."
And what is "potentially current
discrimination?"
Alinsky
Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer
for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community
Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years
old, unmarried, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine
African-American community.
Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community
agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to "rub raw the sores of
discontent," in Alinsky's words.
One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik, who
had
this to say to an interviewer of The New Republic, about Obama:
"He was a natural, the undisputed master of
agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a
rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not
living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be
aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal
questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing
down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they
could make things better."
The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the
"realization" that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the
fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them
to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an
almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations
will see imminent "self-interest" in granting whatever it is that will
cause the harassment to cease.
In these methods, euphemistically labeled "community organizing," Obama
had a four-year education, which he often says was the best education he
ever got anywhere.
Alinsky
Process
In order to stop the "bitter" bleeding caused by Obama's
"bitter, bibles and guns," remark, Obama
responded to the Pennsylvania gaff with the following
I found this video very illuminating, as it demonstrates Obama employing the
Alinsky agitation technique of "rubbing raw the sores of discontent." (Alinsky's
words)
Watch as Obama sets up a list of grievances, gets everyone angry and then
leads the choir in an emotional response to Washington's failures -- "they
(Americans) can't count on Washington" -- and ends strong -- he's the answer
to everything he says is wrong with America.
The entire exercise was to change the discussion. Obama never addressed
his condescending remarks. Instead, he got his audience mad at Washington
-- he changed the subject.
Note the
difference between what Obama said in his unguarded moment at San
Francisco's "Billionair's Row," and the cleaned-up version he tried to sell
tonight.
At the Getty Mansion (see picture below -- 4/6/2008):
"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or
religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment
or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
With "the folks" in Indiana:
"So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the
right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in
their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count
on."
Alinsky
On
Alinsky
All the elements were
present: the individual stories told by real people of their
situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's
chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and
phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the
political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the
agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had
all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.
Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is
showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and
the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get
the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and
thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making
it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.
I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied
successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic
campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we
approach his 100th birthday.
L. DAVID ALINSKY
Medfield
Alinksy
Community
Organizing
Obama goes
to work at a Chicago housing project, Altgeld Gardens, where he refines
his skills.
Here, Obama worked as an
ethnic activist, helping the
impoverished black community wring more money and services from the
government. That government money was wrecking the morals of the
housing-project residents seems obvious from his book, but Obama never
comes out and says it. Numerous white moderates assume that a man
of Obama’s superlative intelligence must be kidding when he espouses his
cast-iron liberalism on race-related policies, but they don’t understand
the emotional imperative of racial loyalty to him.
His mentor during this period was the veteran local agitator, Hazel
Johnson, who who
disputes the version of events at
Altgeld Gardens that Obama wrote of in his book and tells audiences at
his political gatherings.
While working as a community organizer, Obama was repeatedly asked to
join Christian congregations but
begged off.
"I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives ..." he
wrote.
Alinsky
And
Power
Using donations for the poor to help power-seeking
politicians attain their ends is pure Alinskyism. One of
Obama’s Chicago mentors, Gregory Galluzzo -- a former Jesuit priest, now
married and Executive Director of the Gamaliel community organizing
network -- was interviewed by a writer to whom he showed the training
manual he uses with new organizers.
"Galluzzo told me that many new trainees have an aversion to Alinsky’s
gritty approach because they come to organizing as idealists rather than
realists. But Galluzzo’s manual instructs them to get over these
hang-ups. 'We are not virtuous by not wanting power,' it says.
'We are really cowards for not wanting power,' because 'power is good'
and 'powerlessness is evil.'"
Alinksy
'We don't care about the world as it is, we imagine
the world
as it might be. We want to write
a new chapter,'" Obama told the crowd. "That is the moment that we
are in right now."
Arrogance
In his pre-campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama
proclaims, "I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics
the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and
fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable
mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."
Some might think this odd testimony from a young and inexperienced
freshman senator on the cusp of seeking the highest rank, and the most
famous position, in the world. It's a bit like a parish priest
saying he's happy with his modest lot in life and then declaring he's
throwing his hat in the ring to become pope.
But a closer reading reveals a possible explanation. Perhaps he's
an adulation junkie. Maybe the diminishing "nourishment" Sen.
Obama receives from "popularity" is actually causing him to ratchet up
his pursuit of more and more praise just to get the minimal fix he
needs.
That would account for why a man who thinks striving for popularity is a
character flaw has nonetheless decided to give his nomination acceptance
speech in a 76,000-seat football stadium.
Or it might tell us why a candidate who hasn't even been nominated yet
wants to re-enact some of the most famous scenes from both Reagan and
JFK's highlight reels by holding a rally at Germany's Brandenburg Gate,
even though he's not a head of state yet. (German authorities,
aware of Obama's rock-star status with the German public, diplomatically
suggested that it was up to Obama to decide what is in "good taste.")
Perhaps Dominic Lawson, writing in the British newspaper The Independent
had it right when he recently wrote that Obama is "a man of stunning
articulacy, but also stunning self-regard."
Obama has surrounded himself with racists, socialists, Marxists,
communists, domestic terrorists and accused felons, yet has an uncanny
ability to mesmerize the mainstream media into believing the people with
whom he associates in the long term do not reflect upon him personally.
"It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I
had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and
smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they
were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young
black man who didn’t seem angry all the time."
That is a quote from Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father. He has
learned to play the game well. Regardless of the company he keeps,
his smiling well mannered persona has indeed been an effective shield
into the psyche of Barack Obama.
Associates
Barack Obama, measured by his chosen life experiences, closest
associations, voting record, and pre-presidential campaign utterances,
is, in personality and experience, the least qualified, and, in
philosophy and program, most radically left candidate ever offered for
the presidency by the Democratic Party. By comparison, George
McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and John Kerry seem
the very embodiment of presidential readiness and political moderation.
And all this is occurring while the Democrats control both House and
Senate by margins that will increase in November and at a time in
history when the continued existence of Western Civilization is in
serious question.
Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee member
Fred Hobbs
tells The City newspaper in Nashville, "I don't exactly approve of a lot
of the things he stands for -- and I'm not sure we know enough about
him. He's got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist
connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be."
Associates
In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former
leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground,
describes President-elect Barack Obama as a "family
friend" and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the
1960s.
Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few
new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to
Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being
reissued this month.
"We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another
as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my
house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political
campaign," he writes.
With the 1960s over, his more radical days are behind him, he writes.
Nowadays, "I go about my business, hang out with my wife and our kids
and grandchildren, take care of the elders, go to work, teach, and
write," the afterword states. "I also organize and participate in
the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and
social justice." (code words for communism)
Bitter
Obama came
under fire today for saying small-town Pennsylvania residents were
"bitter" and "cling to guns or religion," in comments his rivals said
showed an elitist view of the middle class.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a
lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25
years and nothing's replaced them." Obama said.
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to
guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain
their frustrations." he said.
What makes this so
breathtaking is the mindless, casual way in which Obama reveals his
snobbishness and elitism. We saw hints of this from
Michelle Obama, in her assertions about never being proud of her country
until her husband ran for President. We had not seen it from Obama
himself in such a blatant and unmistakable manner. The
matter-of-fact style in which he spoke this shows the unthinking
contempt he has for people he has never engaged -- an acceptance of
stereotypes without questioning them that shows his own bigotry, not to
mention foolishness and poor judgment.
Obama explained that
simple rural folks and other proletarians would abandon their unpleasant
devotion to firearms and religion if only the Executive Branch of the
Federal Government would preserve their factory jobs. If Obama
sounds familiar here, he should. His comments have a proud pedigree.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It
is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as
the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real
happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their
condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires
illusions."
That is Karl Marx in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843.
Obama is saying exactly the same thing as Marx. They each argue
religion exists because the life of a proletarian worker is frustrating
and unsatisfying. Both Obama and Marx argue that the proletarians
cling to religion, not for its own sake, but because the economic system
is not satisfying their social needs. To Marx’s evaluation of
religion, Obama adds firearms and other aspects of rural life in America
that progressives don’t approve of.
This isn’t a mistake. This isn’t a misquote. This is another
insight into how Obama thinks. The comments that he and his wife
make reveal their "progressive" world view. It is socialist, it is
fascist and it is obvious. All you have to do is listen.
"[T]hey cling to guns…" Cling to guns? Americans have "clung" to
guns since the founding of the Republic. It’s such a core value to
this nation that its founders placed it second on the Bill of Rights,
right after freedom of speech and religion. Speaking of which …
"or [they cling to] religion …" People don’t become religious
because the economy hits a few bumps in the road. Obama may have
chosen his religion based on politics, but most people follow a religion
out of a deeper sense of spirituality. I can’t think of a more
condescending and contemptuous analysis of religious dedication than
this statement.
"or [they cling to] antipathy to people who aren’t like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment…" Small-town voters are bigots and
xenophobes; there’s no other way to read the first part of this
statement. The second part, about them being "anti-immigrant," is
a non-sequitur. They may be anti-illegal immigrant, but that’s a
far different issue. Obama offers no proof that small-town voters
are xenophobes, but the Frisco audience didn’t demand any, either.
It’s part of their own bigotry that makes them see middle America in
those terms.
"or [they cling to] anti-trade sentiment …" And this is just jaw-droppingly
hypocritical. This comes from the same candidate who opposes the
Colombian free-trade agreement and wants to throw NAFTA out the window.
Who’s clinging to anti-trade sentiment? Obama, Hillary Clinton,
and Big Labor.
It would be difficult to be any more condescending or insulting in so
many ways to so many voters in a single sentence. It reveals a
deeply elitist and shockingly callow candidate. It’s the "Let them
eat cake" of 2008.
Bitter Too
At North Carolina's Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C., Clinton
campaign North Carolina chieftain Tom Hendrickson, a former state party
chair,
made much hay out of the "small town" comments made by Sen. Barack
Obama, D-Ill.
"I normally just come and talk about President Clinton and Senator
Clinton at these, but today Senator Obama was out at a fundraiser at I
guess a brie and chardonnay crowd in San Francisco," Hendrickson said.
"But his quote talking about small towns in Pennsylvania -- and which
applies to small towns across eastern North Carolina -- which is why it
is relevant to this tour we are doing today. And his quote is 'and
it is not surprising that they cling to guns and religion or antipathy
to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant or anti-trade as a way
to explain their frustration.'"
"I listened to that quote and I got mad," Hendrickson said, "and
I wanted to reach out to Senator Obama and say senator, we are from the
rural part of eastern North Carolina. We are very proud of our
heritage, we are proud of who we are. We are not frustrated.
We are not bitter. We turn to our faith because we believe, and we
hunt and fish because it is part of our culture and we enjoy it."
Capitalism
Obama described capitalism as "chaotic and unforgiving," and says he
had a desire to roll back the "ownership society." ("The Audacity of
Hope") [271]
Change
Most Americans revile socialism, yet Obama's poll
numbers remain competitive. One explanation: He's a longtime
disciple of a man whose mission was to teach radicals to disguise their
ideology.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's choice of the word
"change" as his campaign's central slogan is not the product of
focus-group studies, or the brainstorming sessions of his political
consultants.
One of Obama's main inspirations was a man dedicated to revolutionary
change that he was convinced "must be preceded by a passive,
affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of
our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so
futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of
the past and change the future."
Saul Alinsky had no time for liberalism or liberals, declaring that "a
liberal is (someone) who puts his foot down firmly on thin air."
He wanted nothing less than transformational radicalism. "America
was begun by its radicals," he wrote. "America was built by its
radicals. The hope and future of America lies with its radicals."
And so, "This is the job for today's radical -- to fan the embers of
hopelessness into a flame to fight. To say, '. . . let us change
it together!' "
Obama called his years as an Alinskyesque community organizer in Chicago
"the best education I ever had."
Alinsky believed in sacrificing ethics and morals for the great cause.
"Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times," Alinsky
wrote in his last book, "Rules for Radicals," adding that "all values
are relative in a world of political relativity."
Published a year before Alinsky's death in 1972, "Rules for Radicals"
includes a dedication in which he gives "an over-the-shoulder
acknowledgment to the very first radical . . . who rebelled against the
establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own
kingdom -- Lucifer."
Yup, Obama isn't done with his personal fable.
He's got
another novel on the way.
You’ll never guess the what the title is.
"Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s
Promise" is a recycled collection of talking points and speeches.
It attempts to explain all the gaffes and lies he's uttered over the
past year.
Barack Obama’s plan to renew America -- yeah!
In the image of Karl Marx.
Change
At a campaign event at Mack's Apple's orchard in
Londonderry, NH, Obama
vowed to "change the world."
"I want you to believe," said the candidate, clad in an open-necked
shirt and barn jacket. "Not so much believe just in me but believe
in yourselves. Believe in the future. Believe in the future
we can build together. I'm confident together we can't fail."
There was a carnival atmosphere among the crowd of some 4,000, who
almost drowned Obama out as he reached his crescendo and said: "I
promise you. We won't just win New Hampshire. We will win
this election and, you and I together, we're going to change the
country and change the world."
And where did Obama get
this line? -- from his sensei , Alisky.
Comparable
Worth
Obama endorses "comparable worth," a truly bad idea.
In case you don't know what comparable worth is, it's an idea concocted
by feminists in the 1970s or early 1980s. They said that jobs typically
held by women pay less than jobs typically held by men.
To eliminate this inequity, somebody - the courts, maybe, or some
administrative agency, presumably with appeals to the courts - should
decide what those jobs were really worth, based on some sort of
convoluted criteria. So that it could be possible to prove that
secretaries were of comparable worth to truck drivers and should be paid
the same wages.
Comparable worth would subject the private-sector economy to the
equivalent of the federal civil service system. Bureaucrats would have
to classify every job, with their classifications subject to
administrative and judicial review.
Cover-Up
U.S. Congressman Eni Faleomavaega (D --
American Samoa)
was in Jakarta, Indonesia, where had a private meeting
in Jakarta with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and
Barnabas Suebu the governor for the Indonesian province of Papau. In the
meeting, Faleomavaega asked to travel to Obama's childhood school.
According to our Indonesian sources, "officials" who accompanied
Faleomavaega were interested in acquiring any and all documentation or
photographs of a young Barry Soetoro for America's "national archives"
and they were offering cash, lots of it. In a show of faith, Barack
Obama's childhood school would be one of the very first beneficiaries of
this outpouring receiving thousands of dollars to upgrade the school and
for the purchase of computer equipment, thanks in part to the
benevolence of this visiting junket.
The challenge of course was securing Indonesian government records
potentially damaging to Barack Obama's candidacy for the U. S.
presidency as well as other records pertaining to a young Barry Soetoro
and his family wouldn't be so easy to acquire and secure, and for this,
the visitors would need the assistance and cooperation of the Indonesian
government.
Calling for a new direction when it comes to Cuba, Obama today said
as president he would allow unlimited family travel and remittances to
the island.
"It's time for more than tough talk that never yields
results. It’s time for a new strategy," he said. "It's time to let
Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and
brothers. It’s time to let Cuban American money make their
families less dependent upon the Castro regime."
Obama on Cuba (01:37
Defense
So, today he says, ""Earning trust means listening to advice
from military people, including top uniformed leaders."
But before the long weekend began, Obama reaffirmed his long-expressed
intention to abandon Iraq by saying, "I am absolutely committed to ending
the war." I will call
my Joint Chiefs of Staff in and give them a new assignment and that is
to end the war."
So much for listening, but check this out.
The Joint Chiefs are not part of the chain of command. Indeed,
they are specifically by statute not part of the chain of command but
instead serve solely in an advisory capacity to the president.
Surely Obama knows this. Obviously he wouldn’t be seeking the role
of Commander-in-Chief without knowing how the job is done. So what
follows will be familiar to him, but may be enlightening to the media
types who to date have overlooked yet another Obama misstatement.
In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols act passed congress, and it reorganized
the way the military functions. The Joint Chiefs would have
a representative from each of the services that could advise the
president of their individual service’s insights, but they were
specifically cut out of the command loop so that the
Schwarzkopf-type could run things efficiently.
So what is to become of our poor President Obama, barking out orders to
his Joint Chiefs only to learn that they don’t carry out orders but just
give advice? Will he claim he is powerless to end the war?
Or will he eventually figure out that he has to get Odierno or Gates or
Petraeus on the phone to make his wishes known?
And what are we to think of our Candidate Obama? As he’s been
running for office for 18 months now, shouldn’t he have found some time
to explore the way the president interacts with the military rather than
repeat canned (not to mention erroneous) assumptions he’s probably held
since his community organizing days?
In
remarks that clearly pointed toward the restoration of the military
draft under an Obama administration, the Democratic candidate said
Thursday night that his job as president would include demanding that
the American people recognize an "obligation" for military service. "If
we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some," Senator Barack
Obama declared.
Defense
The construction of a US missile shield in Europe
has been thrown into doubt after Poland said that President-Elect
Barack Obama had failed to commit himself to the project.
Officials in Warsaw said that after a conversation between President
Lech Kaczynski and Obama, they believe that the chances of the
controversial project going ahead now stood at no more than "over 50 per
cent".
Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister, also conceded that the worsening
state of the American economy might force the president elect to ditch,
or at least delay the program, in favor of domestic priorities (reparations
before defense).
Poland and the US committed themselves to the project on paper in August
in the wake of Russia's military intervention in Georgia. A
cornerstone of the of the defense strategy of President George W. Bush
and designed to protect the West from attack by "rogue states" such as
Iran, the shield would see Poland host ten interceptor missiles and the
Czech Republic host the radar component of a system.
Any delay would delight a resurgent Russia, which has described the plan
as an affront to its national security and has threatened to place
missiles near Poland in retaliation.
Denis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to Obama, said that during the
phone call Obama had reiterated his long-standing position supporting
the deployment of the missile shield but only when the "technology is
proved to be workable."
Of course, the system will never be "workable"
because Obama has promised to end defense spending and development.
(video)
Defense
When
asked how they feel about President-elect Barack Obama as commander
in chief, six out of 10 active-duty service members say they are
uncertain or pessimistic, according to a Military Times survey.
In follow-up interviews,
respondents expressed concerns about Obama's lack of military service
and experience leading men and women in uniform.
''Being that the Marine Corps can be sent anywhere in the world with the
snap of his fingers, nobody has confidence in this guy as commander in
chief," said one lance corporal who asked not to be identified.
Distractions
March 28th -- It's All a Distraction! (Posted: Brian Faughnan on March 28, 2008 02:25 PM)
Obama on Jeremiah Wright:
Part of what I hope to do in this campaign and as president is to get
us beyond these divisions that distract us from our common
challenges and our common opportunities and move the country forward.
On going to war in Iraq:
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove
to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the
poverty rate, a drop in the median income -- to distract us from
corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the
worst month since the Great Depression.
Obama on attacks by Hillary:
We knew that the closer we got to the change we seek, the more we'd
see of the politics we're trying to end -- the attacks and distortions
that try to distract us from the issues that matter to people's
lives, the stunts and the tactics that ask us to fear instead of hope.
On gay marriage:
The heightened focus on marriage is a distraction from other,
attainable measures to prevent discrimination and gays and lesbians.
Obama on race, gay marriage, abortion, and illegal immigration:
We get distracted from solving problems such as health care,
employment or the environment because of these divisions. It
happens in every election, and it's not just race. It's
immigration, gay people or abortion. There's always one of these
issues that crops up and prevents us from focusing on vital issues that
this country's long-term well-being depends on us solving.
It's not all that original to note that much of Obama's rhetoric is
pretty vague -- often vapid. But I've begun to notice how many
things Obama regards as distractions. When he labels a given issue
a 'distraction,' he's saying that someone is whipping up a an issue from
whole cloth simply for political gain.
So who does he think is being insincere: gays who want to marry, or
people of faith who think marriage is for a man and a woman? How
about in the competition between border enforcement advocates and those
who want amnesty for illegal aliens? Or between those who favor
abortion on demand, and those who believe life begins at conception?
All of these are important public policy questions, with divisions among
Americans that prevent easy solutions. Obama shouldn't denigrate
broad swaths of the population just because it would be difficult to
address their concerns.
Distractions
Inauguration Day is more than a month away and Obama can add the Blago
scandal to all the other "distractions" he has to deal with.
Obama is surrounded by more scandals than Nixon, Clinton and a dozen
other corrupt politicians combined and he's not even in office
yet, and these things aren't going to go way.
He will be so busy playing "cover-your-ass," he will be unable to
govern. His entire administration will be on damage control from
day one, and eventually, this will all crumble around him.
Affirmative action is a wonderful thing.
* Distraction -- Obama's term for
allegations of wrongdoing by himself and/or his close associates.
Economy
A
Billion Here
A
Billion There
Obama unveiled much of his
economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150
billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an
infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He
wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants
to "reopen" trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to
raise the barriers to free trade.
He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers,
and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax
credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the
earned income tax credit, the EITC, and triple the EITC benefit for
minimum-wage workers. The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around
$800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won’t pay for it.
It’s the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden
in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.
This isn’t free enterprise. It’s old-fashioned-liberal tax, and
spend, and regulate. It’s plain ol’ big government. The only
people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore has done the math on Mr. Obama’s
tax plan. He says it will add up to a 39.6% personal income tax, a
52.2% combined income and payroll tax, a 28% capital-gains tax, a 39.6%
dividends tax, and a 55% estate tax.
Not only is Mr. Obama the big-spending candidate, he’s also the
very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.
Obama doesn't understand the vital role of capital formation in creating
businesses and jobs. He doesn't understand that without capital,
businesses can’t expand their operations and hire more workers?
Economy
Obama's 'emergency' economic plan -- raiding corporate
America
On Friday, Obama
announced
an "Emergency Economic Plan" that would give families a stimulus check
of $1,000 each, funded in part by what his presidential campaign calls
"windfall profits from Big Oil."
The first part of Obama’s plan is an emergency energy rebate ($500 to
individual workers, $1,000 to families) as soon as this fall.
Separately, Obama’s plan includes a $50 billion stimulus package that
his campaign claims would save more than 1 million jobs, with half of
the money going to state governments.
Obama announced his plan for a windfall profits tax on oil companies on
June 9 in Raleigh, N.C., as he launched a two-week economic tour after
clinching the Democratic nomination.
Friday’s proposal says Obama "is proposing to offset the cost of his
emergency energy rebates over the next five years by enacting a windfall
profits tax on big oil companies."
The windfall-profits tax tried by Jimmy Carter resulted in decreased
domestic production and forced us to import more oil -- it did nothing
to relieve weary consumers.
The Congressional Research Service analyzed the Carter-era
windfall-profits tax and called it a complete failure.
Economy
On the first day of what is to be a two-week economic tour around
the country, Barack Obama said Monday that lawmakers should inject
another $50 billion immediately into the sluggish U.S. economy.
"Such relief can't wait until the next president takes office. ...
That's why I've called for another round of fiscal stimulus,
an immediate $50 billion to help those who've been hit hardest by
this economic downturn," Obama told a crowd in Raleigh, N.C.
And he's going to take it from you to give it
to them -- it's what socialists do.
Economy
Do you think the recent stock market
collapse or troubles in the banking system are good news?
Well, according to CNN's Candy Crowley, the Obama campaign does.
On Monday's "Anderson Cooper 360," after CNN senior political analyst
David Gergen said "what happened over the weekend with the economy and
the bottom falling out of the financial markets...is the opportunity for
Obama to seize the momentum back on his side," Crowley actually said, "[J]ust
as foreclosures were showing up on B-17, or in the real estate section,
along comes this horrific headline out of Wall Street...I mean, this
is what they wanted."
I kid you not. The transcript of this disgraceful exchange follows
(video embedded right, at link)
"As I said before, I think that one of the things we have to determine
is how we can be most helpful. It’s my sense that the most helpful thing
we can do right now is, uh, to let everyone know this is a sufficiently
important problem. I can be helpful, and I am prepared to be anywhere,
anytime. So, uh, I think the message is, if I can be helpful, I am
prepared to be there at any point."
Bear in mind that Senator Obama wants to run the executive branch
starting in January. At a moment when his country needs leadership and
Congress is meeting to determine policy that will affect the executive
branch for the next several months and years, he doesn’t consider his
role as a Senator important enough to take part in those negotiations.
"If I can be helpful," Obama says, indicating that he doesn’t consider
fulfilling his current responsibilities helpful or even desirable.
Energy
When Obama
told a Pennsylvania audience this past weekend that, "We can't drill
our way out of this," he was repeating the same line that Nancy Pelosi
used days earlier and that Harry Reid used on Wednesday.
The "Big Three" Dhimmicrats all agreed, they're against a Republican
proposal to lift a ban on oil drilling off the Florida coast, saying it
would take at least 10 years for that to offer motorists relief at the
pump -- the same argument dhimmicrats have been making for 20 or 30
years.
That's what they said during the Clinton Administration, and the Carter
Administration before that.
Obama is against every available option -- exploration, drilling,
refineries, clean coal and nuclear. His alternative? -- "clean
energy" -- which is also 10 years away.
If Clinton and his allies in Congress hadn't used this same excuse to
block drilling in ANWR in 1997, we'd be pumping oil there today.
Why are they so desperately opposed to exploiting our energy resources?
They have more nefarious goals and
this video
exposes them, the nationalization of the oil
industry.
If they can't tax the oil companies out of business, their alternate
goal is to seize the oil industry, just like their comrade, Hugo Chavez,
did in Venezuela.
There is no talk about where they’d get the trillions to buy out
stockholders, because they’re talking about outright theft -- the
seizure of the oil industry by the dhimmicratically controlled Congress.
Energy
Obama's Solution To The Drilling Debate: Inflate Your Tires
"We could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off
drilling if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular
tune-ups. You
could save just as much."
Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a
script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a
script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that
he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant. Today he delivered
another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate
our tires, we could save as much gasoline as "all the oil that they're
talking about getting off drilling."
Obama's solution to the energy problem -- Hot Air! (00:22)
Update 8/4/08: Time
reports that McCain supporters in Michigan will distribute tire
gauges at Obama’s energy speech in Lansing, and that the RNC will also
deliver gauges reading "Obama’s Energy Plan" to Washington newsrooms.
Mary Katharine Ham may want to update her tribute to "Obama on your
shoulder" to include his helpful hint on the importance of tire gauges
and tune-ups.
Extremism
Senator Stealth: How to advance radical causes
when no one's looking
After hearing about Barack Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Fr. Michael Pfleger, and the militant
activists of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now), it should be clear to everyone that his extremist roots run
deep.
But the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has yet another
connection with the world of far-Left radicalism. Obama has long
been linked -- through foundation grants, shared political activism,
collaboration on legislation and tactics, and mutual praise and support
-- with the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, one of the least known
yet most influential national umbrella groups for church-based
"community organizers."
The same separatist, anti-American theology of liberation that was so
boldly and bitterly proclaimed by Obama's pastor is shared, if more
quietly, by Obama's Gamaliel colleagues. The operative word here
is "quietly." Gamaliel specializes in ideological stealth, and
Obama, a master student of Gamaliel strategy, shows disturbing signs of
being a sub rosa radical himself. Obama's legislative tactics, as
well as his persistent professions of non-ideological pragmatism, appear
to be inspired by his radical mentors' most sophisticated tactics.
Not only has Obama studied, taught, and apparently absorbed stealth
techniques from radical groups like Gamaliel and ACORN, but in his
position as a board member of Chicago's supposedly nonpartisan Woods
Fund, he quietly funneled money to his radical allies -- at the very
moment he most needed their support to boost his political career.
It's high time for these shadowy, perhaps improper, ties to receive a
dose of sunlight.
The connections are numerous. Gregory Galluzzo, Gamaliel's co-founder
and executive director, served as a trainer and mentor during Obama's
mid-1980s organizing days in Chicago. The Developing Communities
Project, which first hired Obama, is part of the Gamaliel network.
Obama became a consultant and eventually a trainer of community
organizers for Gamaliel. (He also served as a trainer for ACORN.)
And he has kept up his ties with Gamaliel during his time in the U.S.
Senate.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac survived scrutiny by
manipulating, cajoling, and lobbying politicians and hiring board
members who were politicos (e.g. Jamie Gorelick) rather than mortgage
gurus. They hired lobbyists, gave massive donations, obtained nice
tax breaks, and sailed below the regulatory radar screen.
Of the 354 lawmakers who
received money from Freddie and Fannie between 1989 and 2008, Sen.
Chris Dodd received the most. But next was . . . drumroll .
. . Barack Obama. Yup. And he was only there for three
years.
Fascism
Obama believes he is above criticism and will act aggressively to
prevent stories and images, he and his supporters believe are
unflattering from being published. Obama has become a one-man
national censor.
A while back, Obama was all upset that his wife, Michelle, received fire
for her anti-American views, and
ordered the media and Republicans to "leave my wife alone" -- even
as the bride was out dissing the United States.
Two weeks ago, Dr. Danielle Allen, who failed to identify herself as an
Obama campaign worker and maximum financial contributor,
attacked me and a couple of others in the Washington Post for daring
to publish, on the Internet, opinion that she believes is unflattering
to Obama. She calls it calumny, the intentional and generally
vicious false accusation of a crime or other offense designed to damage
one's reputation. Acting as Obama's agent, she wants those she finds guilty of calumny to
be shunned and punished under the law.
Two days ago, Obama and his sycophants got their panties in a bunch over
the New Yorker cover page showing Obama dressed as a Somali elder (quite
true) and Michelle dressed as Angela Davis in the Oval Office, where
an American flag burns in the fireplace (image below).
Now, Obama's people are
crying "racism" that John McLaughlin used the term "oreo" in a
discussion of Jesse Jackson's threat to cut Obama's nuts off. Mind
you, McLaughlin never called or inferred Obama was an "oreo," or Jackson
either, but that didn't matter to the Obamalytes, because what Obama is
attempting to do is to silence any criticism or perceived criticism of
him, and by extension, his wife. CNN even reported that
McLaughlin's innocent comments caused an uproar -- what?
We all have watched as the left has portrayed the President of the
United States, George W. Bush with the most unbelievable, doctored
images. Search Google, using the word "Bush" and "Hitler,"
"chimp," "evil," or "murderer" to see what the Left has been up to for
the last 7 years.
George Bush, ever a man, simply ignored these vicious attacks.
Obama, on the other hand, whines like a child.
But it's worse. Obama has an agenda here. He and
his minions
want to silence any criticism of Obama -- anything that they see as
unflattering. They even stoop to identifying their critics as
racists -- which is really strange, since Obama, himself has displayed
his personal racism in his writings and spoken words for years.
Beware this guy. He truly has the instincts of a fascist.
Update: Obama
says the New Yorker cover was an insult to Muslim Americans.
"You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country
who are doing wonderful things," the presidential candidate told CNN's
Larry King. "And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to
raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not
what America's all about."
Fascism
Obama's latest brainstorm -- "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the
national security objectives that we have set. We have got to have
a civilian national security force that is
just as
powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."
Someone should introduce this genius to the
National Guard.
Fascism
Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today
sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly
attacking the Dallas billionaire funding an anti-Obama ad, Harold
Simmons.
"We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its
commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the
American Issues Project, and we further request that the Department of
Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and
willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits,"
he wrote.
He called the group's activities "patently illegal."
Bauer made the case that Simmons' group isn't fulfilling its a real nonprofit
charter because it hasn't spent any money on anything other than
attacking Obama.
The American Issues Project released a statement responding to the
letter.
"Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and
fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put
our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech," said Ed
Martin, the group's president. "These over-the-top bullying
tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a
Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys
generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who
disagreed with them into jail."
There must be something suspicious about Barack Obama's relationship
with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers that he doesn't want us to know
about.
He has sent out a team to threaten and silence an ad on this subject
that was developed by a legitimate and independent political
organization.
Now ask yourself this question, "just what is so damning about Obama's
relationship with William Ayers that he would threaten the free speech
of others to prevent it from airing?
Here's the real question, though: if Obama is
elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will
carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now
demanding? I suppose we can't know for sure, but why wouldn't he?
If he demands criminal prosecution of free speech that opposes his
political interests when he's a candidate, why wouldn't he order it as
President?
Fascism
NewsBusters reports that the Obama Campaign tried to
shut down a Chicago radio show.
Members of Barack Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago tried to shut down a
local radio show on the City's most powerful radio signal, WGN 720,
because they didn't like a conservative guest that was on going on the
air to discuss Senator Barack Obama's ties to local terrorist William
Ayers.
This is a shocking attempt at stifling political free speech and a bald
attempt to quash debate by the office of the Democratic Party's nominee.
The funny thing is, WGN is the most liberal station in the City with
every host but one slavishly supporting the junior Senator from
Illinois.
Show host Milt Rosenberg, the station's only conservative leaning host
(probably to be considered more libertarian than Republican), had on
short notice asked conservative writer Stanley Kurtz to come on the air
to discuss his work on uncovering Obama's ties to terrorist Wiliam Ayres
and the Annenberg Challenge project. Kurtz was just in Chicago for
his investigation and Rosenberg contacted Kurtz only that morning to
appear. At the same time, Rosenberg's producer contacted the Obama
campaign's HQ -- which is but blocks from the radio station in downtown
Chicago -- to offer some time on the air with Kurtz to debate Kurtz'
claims about Obama and Ayres. The campaign, however, flatly
refused the offer of the equal air time and instead tried to drum up via
email a protest of the show, trying to get it stopped.
The campaign
e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action
Wire with detailed instructions including the station’s telephone number
and the show’s extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which
seems to prove that he’s a conservative, which isn’t in dispute.
The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his
much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in
Scandinavia.
"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing
baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of
political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure
on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in
the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.
"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character
assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our
public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest
rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies," it continues.
So let’s get this straight. Team Obama calls Kurtz all of these
names, and it’s Kurtz who’s the character assassin?
Fascism
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said
yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could
pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are
elected in November.
Biden's comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on
a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart,
Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
But his statements represent the Democrats' strongest vow so far this
year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.
"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a
criminal violation, they will be pursued," Biden said during a campaign
event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC.
"[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution," he added, "out of the
need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no
president -- no one is above the law."
Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would
ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions
to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad
policies".
"[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama
told the Philadelphia Daily News. "You're also right that I would not
want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of
Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many
problems we've got to solve."
Fascism
But Obama's goons haven't given up. Chicago radio station
WGN-AM is again coming
under attack from the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama for
offering airtime to a controversial author. It is the second time
in recent weeks the station has been the target of an "Obama Action
Wire" alert to supporters of the Illinois Democrat.
Monday night's target was
David
Freddoso, who the campaign said was scheduled to be on the station
from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Chicago time.
"The author of the latest anti-Barack hit book is appearing on WGN Radio
in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to
make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility," an e-mail sent
Monday evening to Obama supporters reads.
"David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate
mongering," the message said. "And WGN apparently thinks this
card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine needs a bigger
platform for his lies and smears about Barack Obama -- on the public
airwaves."
The Tribune-owned station was flooded with calls and e-mails about an
hour before an Aug. 27 interview with Stanley Kurtz, a conservative
writer who examined Obama's ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers.
A WGN producer said Monday night's response was about the same as when
Kurtz was on the station.
Fascism
Remember Barack Obama’s
attempt to silence TV stations running an independent ad by American
Issues Project spotlighting The One’s ties to Weather Underground
terrorist Bill Ayers? (link)
And remember the Obama campaign’s attempt to sic the Justice Department
on the GOP donor behind the forbidden ad? (link)
Well, Obama, the government will not do your bidding and intimidate
conservatives exercising their free speech. A spokesman indicated
that department apparently does not view the FEC rules as a strong
enough basis for a criminal case
So call off your henchmen and back off.
And here, again, is the ad
Obama doesn’t want you to see.
Fascism
we don't
hear much fretting at all about the Obama Action Wire, which, unlike
the brownshirts of yore, is actually managed by Obama's campaign
to muzzle critical media.
Here's how it works. A message goes out over Obama's Web site with
the names, phone numbers and e-mails of editors and producers foolish
enough to host Obama critics. With Obama's extensive digital
following, and his extensive fund-raising and contact lists, shutting up
the Democratic nominee's critics with a fraction of Obama's millions of
supporters is relatively simple. The digital legions plug phone
lines, crash servers and intimidate the advertisers of these media
outlets. This must be another instance of the "new" politics that
Mr. Obama frequently talks about.
The latest incident, reported in the Chicago Tribune, "orchestrated a
massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune-owned WGN-AM
in Chicago. "The offense: The station hosted National Review's
David Freddoso, author of 'The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely
Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate,' a fair
and rigorous but adversarial examination of Mr. Obama's record.
Surely, we can't have any of that.
"The Action Wire serves as a means of arming our supporters with the
facts to take on those who spread lies about Barack Obama and respond
forcefully with the truth, whether it's an author passing off fiction as
biography, a Web site spreading baseless conspiracy theories or a TV
station airing an ad that makes demonstrably false claims," Obama
spokesman Ben LaBolt told the Tribune.
How Orwellian. LaBolt defends the very actions that prevent WGN-AM and
others from airing the facts, as though obstructionism is an "airing of
facts."
Note to the Obama campaign: Informed observers don't get "the facts"
only from a political campaign. They read and listen to the
independent media outlets -- the same outlets the thin-skinned Obama is
currently trying to quash.
Fascism
This
video just blows my mind! -- Sing for Change Obama (03:24)
Michael S. brought my attention to this outrage -- In Europe, during the
1930s, another Socialist created a "youth
movement." It wasn't good then, and it isn't good now.
Related to this is Obama's organization "Public
Allies" and the more recent "Camp Obama." Both are involved with
creating a "Movement" established on a personality cult built around
Obama?
I guess Obama took his communist
mentor's advice
about, "don't start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity
and the American way
and all that shit."
This video was originally posted on Obama's website -- the
page has now disappeared.
Here is the Google cached
version of the page, containing this statement: "The likes of
Jeff Zucker (President and Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal),
Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy
Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate. Holly
Schiffer was able to get three High Definition cameras (Panasonic
HVX250’s), and an AVID editing facility. When Jeff Zucker went to pick
up the camera package, Ted Schilowitz happened to be there and offered a
RED camera set up on a Steadi Cam."
Al Gore's business partner Google has now even
removed the cached version.
Fascism
Related: Will Election 2008 be remembered as the first contest
between Republicans and Obamacrats -- or the first between the
Obamacrats and the Democrats?
Senator Barack Obama is
building a national organization separate and apart from the
national Democrat Party apparatus -- at least in any state where the
outcome of the November election is at all in doubt.
In state after state, the Obama campaign, in a break with tradition, has
opened up its own offices -- which largely push Barack Obama, and only
Obama -- apart from the Democrat Party’s own offices in those very same
communities.
Obama has, literally, hundreds of these offices dotting the USA.
What does he plan for "The Movement?"
Fascism
I received this email Friday
(black bold mine).
Dear Beckwith,
Hi,
my name is Roger Fisk and I'm the State Director for the Obama campaign
here in Massachusetts. I want to tell you about an exciting
program we're launching called Camp Obama.
During these training sessions, people like you will be taking
their support for Barack to the next level by learning the
(Alinsky)
organizing principles that this campaign and our movement for change are
built on.
Camp Obama attendees will receive real world organizing experience that
will have a direct impact on this election. Graduates of Camp Obama will
go on to become Deputy Field Organizers who will lead this campaign to
victory in crucial battleground states around the country.
By participating in Camp Obama, you'll get the kind of experience
that Barack got as a community organizer on the South Side of
Chicago, where he learned that real change happens from the bottom up.
That experience transformed Barack's life and made him who he is today.
Camp Obama is your chance to put those very same principles into
action -- to win this election and to strengthen democracy in
communities around the country.
After completing the program, you'll be required to work as a Deputy
Field Organizer in a battleground state where you'll organize supporters
and help lead our grassroots Get Out The Vote operation.
Apply for a spot at Camp Obama and become a leader in our movement
for change:
This campaign relies on the passion and enthusiasm of ordinary
supporters, but it needs leaders who can organize these supporters and
turn their enthusiasm into votes on Election Day.
Camp Obama is your chance to step up and become a leader in this
movement.
Thanks,
Roger
Roger Fisk
Massachusetts State Director
Obama for America
Between this Alinsky training program and
Obama's "Public Allies" organization, Obama
is cloning thousands of himself. What does he plan on doing with
these "movement leaders" after the election, and what is the goal of the
"movement?"
This guy is scary -- but he sure is focused and organized.
FEC
Did you know, that the Federal Election
Commission is made up of two Republicans, two Democrats and one
independent?
The FEC has not met in full session since August 2007. Why?
One democratic member of the US Senate has
blocked the election of one of the Republicans. You guessed
it, Senator Barack Obama.
Foreign
Relations
Prepare for a new America
That's the
message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed
to participants in the first World Policy Forum,
held at this French lakeside resort last week.
He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy -- saying
America must "heal wounds" it has caused to
other nations, revive its alliances and
apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush
administration."
The most important change would occur in the
Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's
interests first" would end.
Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who
have controlled American policy for decades"
remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of
their clout when Barack Obama enters the White
House.
"Obama is about change," Jackson told me in a
wide-ranging conversation. "And the change that
Obama promises is not limited to what we do in
America itself. It is a change of the way
America looks at the world and its place in it."
Global
Poverty
Act
February 17th -- Sen. Barack Obama, giving America a preview of his
priorities, is rejoicing over the Senate committee passage of a plan
that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars in an attempt to
reduce poverty in other nations.
The nice-sounding bill, called the "Global
Poverty Act," sponsored by Obama, is up for a Senate vote on
Thursday and could result in the imposition of a $845 billion global tax
on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal
religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient
to the dictates of the United Nations.
The U.N.'s "Millennium Project," says that the U.N. plan to force the
U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of its GNP in increased foreign aid spending
would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a
13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development
conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is
expected to meet the "Millennium Development Goals," this amounts to
$845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money is through a
global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.
"To require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive
strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of
promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme
global poverty, and the achievement of the [U.N.] Millennium Development
Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between
1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day."
In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits
nations to banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying a series
of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the
Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological
Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the
Child.
The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as "the indispensable
common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to
realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and
development."
Here's how Senator Obama's website
frames
the bill:
"With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world,
global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the
international community faces," said Senator Obama. "It must be a
priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme
poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking
water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this
important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in
the developing world. Our commitment to the global economy must extend
beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing corporate profits
than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere."
Will somebody tell this idiot that it's not the job of the United States
to cut global poverty by taxing its citizens and giving those monies to
the corrupt United Nations.
Welfare doesn't work in America and its sure not going to work anywhere
else. It's just more billions and trillions down the toilet.
Global
Poverty
Act
For an entire week, Americans watched as Senator Barack
Obama took his act on the road, courting the European elitists and
cowtowing to an endless array of foreign politicians. At this
point it may be easy to take Obama’s "celebri-plomacy" lightly.
Yet, his trip highlights a dangerous threat to America’s national
sovereignty in the form of his globalist policies that will diminish
America’s role in the world and outsource decisions of vital national
interest to the United Nations.
Obama's Global Poverty Act, currently under consideration in Congress,
is just one such policy. Despite its seemingly innocuous title,
the Global Poverty Act would force America to adopt the U.N.’s
"Millennium Development Goals" as official U.S. policy. This means
outsourcing to the United Nations all important decisions concerning the
use of U.S. foreign aid dollars. Not only that, but the fee for
allowing the U.N. to play the "middle man" in our global war on poverty
would be a tax of .7 percent of the U.S. Gross National Product.
That’s right. Barack Obama and his liberal allies such as Senator
Biden have signed on to a bill that would allow the U.N. to tax America
(and Americans) an estimated $845 billion over the next 13 years.
Obama’s plan represents perhaps the greatest affront to our national
sovereignty since the War of 1812.
The co-chair of Barack Obama’s Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett,
appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an
interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing
in January when he’s officially sworn into office. She
told Tom Brokaw that Obama will be ready to "rule" on day one.
It’s a word that reflects the worst fears that people have for Obama the
"arrogant," the "messiah," that imagines he’s here to "rule" instead of
govern.
Jarret told Brokaw that "given the daunting challenges that we face,
it’s important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take
power and begin to rule day one."
Someone needs to get to Jarrett and inform her that American politicians
are not Kings and do not "rule" from office. But if this is the
attitude of Obama’s transition team, what does The One himself imagine
he is about to unleash? Could the fears that Obama thinks he is
being anointed America’s King be far off with this sort of talk flying
about?
The economic crisis will not stop President-elect Barack Obama from
expanding health care, overhauling education and energy policy, and
passing a middle-class tax cut (andredistribution of tax revenues in a massive
vote-buying scheme) soon after he takes office in January,
senior aides said on Sunday.
Meanwhile the U.S. Congress should act to ease the pain of an economy
sliding into recession by extending unemployment benefits and boosting
aid to states struggling to meet their health-care obligations, they
said.
The economic crisis will not prevent Obama from pursuing the priorities
he outlined on the campaign trail, said John Podesta, co-chair of
Obama's transition team.
These
include extending heath care to the nation's 47 million uninsured,
a number that includes 12 million illegal aliens.
Homosexual Agenda
On July 18th, 2007, ABC News' Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson
reported that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood
that sex education for kindergarteners is "the right thing to do."
(Video at link).
Homosexual
Agenda
April 10th -- The Democratic presidential front-runner favors
repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy , which was
instituted during the Clinton administration.
"But I think there's increasing recognition within the Armed Forces that
this is a counterproductive strategy," he said. "We're spending
large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our
military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language
capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn't make us more
safe."
"The gay press may feel like I'm not giving them enough love, but
basically all press feels that way at all times," Obama told The
Advocate. He said he's frequently spoken out against homophobia
and in support of gay rights.
Asked what he could reasonably accomplish for the gay community as
president, Obama said he can "reasonably see" repeal of the "don't ask,
don't tell" policy as well as signing legislation to ban workplace
discrimination against gays. He said he'd like transgendered
people to be covered by the law, but thinks it would be tough to get
such legislation through Congress.
Obama also said he's interested in ensuring that same-sex couples in
civil unions get federal benefits.
Homosexual
Agenda
Barack Obama
on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights.
Expand Hate Crimes Statutes:
In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest
category of hate crime reported. Obama co-sponsored legislation to
expand federal hate crimes law to include crimes perpetrated because of
sexual orientation or gender identity.
Fight Workplace Discrimination and Promote Rights:
Obama believes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act should be expanded
to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Obama sponsored
legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples:
Obama also believes we need to fully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act
and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal
rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status
are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally
recognized unions.
Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage:
Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have
defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial
extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried
couples.
Repeal Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell:
Obama believes we need to repeal the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. The
key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and
a willingness to serve. Obama will work with military leaders to repeal
the current policy and ensure we accomplish our national defense goals.
Fight AIDS Worldwide:
Obama has been a global leader in the fight
against AIDS. He traveled to Kenya and took a public HIV test to
encourage testing and reduce the stigma of the disease. Obama worked to
reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act, one of the largest sources of
federal funds for primary health care and support services for HIV/AIDS
patients.
Homosexual
Agenda
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who previously said
the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, has
announced his
opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex
marriages.
In a letter to the "Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club," read Sunday
at the group's annual Pride Breakfast in San Francisco, the Illinois
senator said he supports extending "fully equal rights and benefits to
same-sex couples under both state and federal law."
"And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to
amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S.
Constitution or those of other states," Obama wrote.
Photoshopped image -- I just couldn't help
myself.
Homosexual
Agenda
In an August, 2008,
letter to a Boston-based homosexual rights group, the Family
Equality Council, Obama specifically pledged to use the presidency to
overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -- and pledged his support
for homosexual "families" and efforts to totally redefine marriage.
He wrote: "... (W)e also have to do more to support and strengthen
Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered (LGBT) families. Because
equality in relationship, family, and adoption rights is not some
abstract principle; it’s about whether millions of LGBT Americans can
finally live lives marked by dignity and freedom.
"That’s why we have to repeal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act.
That’s why we have to eliminate discrimination against LGBT families.
And that’s why we have to extend equal treatment in our family and
adoption laws," Obama wrote.
"I’ll be a president that stands up for American families -- all of
them," he added.
Homosexual
Agenda
Obama
credits gay activists with making the Democratic Party "immeasurably
stronger."
In a letter to the party’s LGBT Caucus -- the acronym stands for
Lesbian/ Gay/ Bisexual/Transgender -- Obama said the group "will be
crucial to bringing our Party together and sweeping us to victory on
November 4th."
"Congratulations on being part of the largest LGBT Caucus delegation in
Democratic National Convention history," Obama wrote. "I look
forward to seeing the LGBT community turn out in record numbers to help
create the changes we seek."
Homosexual
Agenda
Sixteen years after Bill Clinton tried to end restrictions on gays
in the military, the US armed forces under Barack Obama
may be forced to give homosexuals the same welcome as non-gays.
Under president Clinton, the policy that once saw homosexuals
discharged from US military service evolved to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,"
allowing gays to remain in the military so long as they did not reveal
their sexual orientation.
Obama has pledged to overhaul current
law.
"The key test for military service should be patriotism, a
sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should
be prohibited," reads an entry on the president-elect's transition
website.
Homosexual
Agenda
Obama has
chosen the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church to pray
at the kickoff event for the inaugural festivities this Sunday.
Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who advised Obama on gay rights issues during
the campaign, is set to deliver the invocation at an event on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial two days before the swearing-in ceremony, aides
to Obama said Monday.
Robinson has also become a well known
figure around the world in the debate over gay rights. His consecration
as a bishop six years ago set in motion a widening rift in the Anglican
church.
Homosexual
Agenda
As Obama prepares to be sworn in as commander in chief on
January 20, homosexual-rights activists are gleeful about changes he
will bring to the armed services. Based on his campaign promises,
Obama is expected to
overturn the military's policy regarding sexual conduct.
Commonly referred to as "don’t ask, don’t tell," the military prohibits
the service of openly practicing homosexuals. This policy was
created early in the Clinton administration after a long and divisive
fight and the hard-fought compromise has drawn the ire of liberals such
as Obama ever since.
"It's time to turn the page on the
bitterness and bigotry that fill so much of today's LGBT (Lesbian Gay
Bisexual Transgender) rights debate," Obama said while campaigning.
"The rights of all Americans should be protected -- whether it's at work
or anyplace else. 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' needs to be repealed
because patriotism and a sense of duty should be the key tests for
military service, not sexual orientation."
Not reported in the
media or discussed by advocates are the opinions of the men and women
actually serving our country that would be affected by this change in
policy. A poll of some 2,000 active duty military taken in
December by the Military Times found that 58 percent opposed a policy
change. Of those polled, 10 percent said they would not reenlist, and 14
percent reported they would consider not reenlisting if the policy is
changed to please homosexual activists.
Essentially, the United
States military, the greatest fighting force ever assembled, has had a
policy in place against homosexual conduct since its formation.
This policy annoys certain liberals who want to force their social
agenda on the rest of the country and ignore those affected.
Watch the military disintegrate
when
this stuff (warning, nasties),
part of the inauguration festivities, goes on in the barracks.
Update: Citing pressure from "extreme Christian groups" this
expression of "gay love" has been
cancelled -- anyone wanna bet it was moved to another venue?
Illegal Immigration
Obama, shared
his vision of America as welfare state with the annual meeting of
the National Council of La Raza, compared last year's massive
immigration rallies, led by Hispanics, to the civil-rights marches of
African-Americans in the 1960's.
In California, in order to garner support from Hispanics, Obama
announces his support for granting driver's licenses to illegal
immigrants.
"Barack Obama has not backed down" on driver's licenses for illegal
immigrants, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet
member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. "I think when the
Latino community hears Barack's position on such an important and
controversial issue, they'll understand that his heart and his intellect
is with Latino community."
To the Harvard-trained lawyer, the illegal immigrants are just
"undocumented immigrants" who just haven't had a chance to get the
paperwork done.
It certainly is new for someone, campaigning for our nation's highest
office, to see representation of the millions who are here illegally, as
part of those responsibilities.
Can it be that Obama thinks he is running for secretary-general of
the United Nations and not president of the United States?
Illegal
Immigration
The Patriot Room reports
that there was a YouTube Video on this, but it was pulled.
In a panderfest to La Raza, Obama once again showed his love for America
and its laws.
"The system isn’t working when 12 million people live in hiding, and
hundreds of thousands cross our borders illegally each year; when
companies hire undocumented immigrants instead of legal citizens to
avoid paying overtime or to avoid a union; when communities are
terrorized by ICE immigration raids – when nursing mothers are torn from
their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents
missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel."
The killer is, these were prepared remarks. It wasn’t a gaffe; the
speech was written that way.
Is this guy running for president of Mexico or the United States?
Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama today
speaking to the
National Council of La Raza in San Diego promised amnesty for the more
than 12 million illegal immigrants that are living in the United States.
Here’s a bit of what Obama had to say: "Yes, they broke the law.
And we should not excuse that. We should require them to pay a
fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for citizenship --
behind those who came here legally. But we cannot -- and should
not -- deport 12 million people."
Obama went on to say: "That's why we need to offer those who are willing
to make amends a pathway to citizenship. That way, we can
reconcile our values as both a nation of immigrants and a nation of
laws."
That’s amnesty any way you look at it. How does "a nation of laws"
ignore the fact that 12 million people broke the law of the land by
granting them amnesty?
Illegal
Immigration
Obama has
pledged amnesty for "law-abiding illegal aliens."
Regardless of one's feelings about illegal aliens, the simple fact is
that their presence alone disqualifies each and every one from being
"law abiding."
At a minimum, all illegal aliens have violated immigration laws and US
borders. Many have engaged in other criminal acts, including
consumption of public services to which they are not entitled.
To leave open the possibility that any illegal alien can be logically
seen as "law abiding" is about as absurd as describing Islam as a
"Religion of Peace."
Income
Redistribution
Obama's
grand theme is to spread America's wealth to the world's poor, as
the onetime community organizer from the streets of South Chicago goes
global.
He says to his followers, "It's not too late to claim the American
dream," and they cheer wildly, and some even cry.
Don't they know that the American dream isn't a wish granted by a
politician, or an entitlement from the government? Do they need a
political seer to tell them what to hope for, and dream of, because they
are unable to find it for themselves?
In his
most recent victory speech, delivered in Madison, Wisconsin on
February 13, Obama named some of those guilty of creating America's
victims. They included:
Exxon, turning record profits from high pump prices
Wall Street, whose agenda smothers Main Street
NAFTA, where the American worker has no voice at the negotiating table
Lobbyists, who drown out the peoples' voice.
Iran
Obama offers a
policy of dialogue and accommodation to Iran. He has opposed listing
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and
proposed a grand bargain with Syria's rulers. He is even prepared
to ignore two UN Security Council resolutions that require Iran to stop
its uranium-enrichment program as a precondition for talks at the
highest level. He has campaigned for a formal congressional move
to prevent Bush from taking any military action against Tehran.
In an important symbolic move designed to signal an end of the special
relationship between Israel and America, Obama has become the first
major presidential candidate in 25 years not to commit himself to
transferring the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Last but not least, Obama has promised to withdraw from Iraq in his
first year in office -- meeting a key demand of all radical Islamist
forces, Sunni and Shiite.
The message is clear: Obama wants a new relationship with radical forces
in the Islamic world while distancing America from its traditional
regional allies. In other words, he proposes to reverse policies
that have taken shape over more than six decades under 12 successive
American presidents.
Iran
Old Spin:
In a Democratic presidential debate last summer, Obama was asked if he'd
meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea
without precondition and during his first year in office.
Since then he has frequently reiterated his belief that no preconditions
should be set.
"When you say preconditions, what you're really saying is, 'I'm not
going to talk to you until you agree to do exactly what I want you to
do,'" Obama said. "Well, that's not how negotiations take place."
New Spin:
Obama objected on CNN this week to "this obsession with Ahmadinejad" and
explained guardedly: "I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if
we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
"Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we
don't even know how much power he is going to have a year from now,"
Obama added. "He is not the most powerful person in Iran."
He said he would expect "to meet with those people who can actually make
decisions" in Iran on its nuclear program, its aid to terrorists and
destabilization in Iraq.
He did not explain how he would get around Iran's president to other
people of influence.
Iran
Barry Rubin,
writing for the Global Research in Information Center website,
comments on this statement by Obama:
"Iran, they spend one one-hundredth of what we spend on the military.
I mean if Iran tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand
a chance. And, we should use that position of strength that we
have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. That doesn't mean
we agree with them on everything. That doesn't, we might not
compromise with them on any issues. But, at least we should find
out, are there areas of potential common interest and we can reduce some
of the tension that have caused us so many problems around the world."
One cannot pretend away the implications of this paragraph. Let's
list them:
1. Obama doesn't understand that Iran follows strategies designed
to circumvent that problem of unequal power, including terrorism,
guerrilla war, deniable attacks, long wars of attrition, the use of
surrogates, and so on.
2. The only way Obama sees the U. S. of using its "position of
strength" is to listen to their grievances, as if we are not familiar
with them. In short, the only thing you can do when you are
stronger is to get weaker. Presumably the same applies when you
are the weaker party.
3. Why is Obama so totally unaware that dialogue has been tried?
A decade with the PLO, longer with Hezbollah by other Lebanese, four
straight years of European engagement with Tehran over the nuclear
issue, multiple U.S. delegations to talk with the Syrians, and so on.
Was nothing learned from this experience?
4. And what happens afterward, if Obama's dialogue doesn't work?
What cards would he have left? What readiness to try another
course? Perhaps by then the Iranians will have nuclear weapons and
other gains negating that "position of strength" so fecklessly frittered
away.
5. What possible issues can the United States find to compromise
with Iran? Let's say: give them Lebanon (oh, we already did that);
ignore their sponsorship of terrorism; give them Iraq; give them Israel;
withdraw U.S. forces from the region, accept their having nuclear arms.
What?
6. Why should the United States be able to reduce tensions through
negotiations when Iran wants tensions? There is an important hint
here: if the United States makes concessions, it might buy off tensions.
Since Iran and the others know about Obama's all-carrots-no-sticks
worldview, they will make him pay a lot to get the illusion of peace and
quiet.
7. There is no hint, not the slightest, of his understanding the
option of using power to intimidate or defeat Iran, or as a way to
muster allies. If Obama had the most minimal comprehension of
these issues, he would fake it with some blah-blah about how America
would combine toughness with flexibility, deterrence with compromise,
steadfastness in order to gain more from the other side in negotiations.
A critical element in peace-keeping, peace-making, and negotiations is
to act tough and be strong in order to have leverage. Even in
responding to criticisms, Obama has only talked about whether
negotiations are conditional or unconditional and at what level they
should be conducted. He is oblivious to the fact that the chief
executive does things other than negotiations.
If this is Obama's strategy while Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons what
would he do in dealing with a Tehran owning them?
Make no mistake, Obama is channeling Neville Chamberlain -- precisely
because what he says shows his parallel thinking. Many people may
get a chill listening to Obama but it certainly isn't a Churchill.
Apologists, sympathizers, and wishful-thinkers keep endowing this
would-be emperor with beautiful suits of clothes. He doesn't have
any.
Iran
One of Iran’s top foreign policy
goals is a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
One of Obama’s top foreign policy goals is a precipitous U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq.
Why should Iran or other rogue states alter their behavior if Obama
gives them what they want, without preconditions?
Iran
Obama
said on Sunday, January 11th, that he will take a new approach
toward Iran that will emphasize respect for the Iranian people and spell
out what the United States expects of its leaders.
"We are going
to have to take a new approach. And I've outlined my belief that
engagement is the place to start," he said.
"We are in
preparations for that. We anticipate that we're going to have to
move swiftly in that area," Obama said.
Obama has said he was
prepared to offer Iran economic incentives to stop its
nuclear program but he also has said tougher sanctions could be imposed
if it refused.
Obama's "new
approach" is nothing more than a plan to pay baksheesh
to Ahmadenejhad, who will grin, take the money and continue to build his
nukes.
Does any rational person really believe that Ahmadenejhad
will end his quest -- for any reason?
Iraq
In October, Obama gives a speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago
opposing the invasion of Iraq, saying, "I am not opposed to all wars. I
am opposed to dumb wars."
Iraq
In February, 2007, when Barack Obama declared that he was running
for President, violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic levels, and he
based his candidacy, in part, on a
bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of American forces upon
taking office. At the time, this pledge represented conventional
thinking among Democrats and was guaranteed to play well with primary
voters. But in the year and a half since then two improbable,
though not unforeseeable, events have occurred: Obama has won the
Democratic nomination, and Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to
stabilize. With the general election four months away, Obama’s
rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the
nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue
that did so much to bring him this far.
In January 2007, Obama outlined a
plan to begin "redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007"
and "remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008."
Obama’s plan called for the remaining combat brigades to be
pulled out at a brisk pace of about one per month, along with a
strategic shift of resources and attention away from Iraq and toward
Afghanistan. At that rate, all combat troops would be withdrawn in
sixteen months, or, by March 31,
2008. In hindsight, it was a mistake -- an understandable one,
given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today -- for
Obama to offer such a specific timetable. In matters of foreign
policy, flexibility is a President’s primary defense against surprise.
Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out
to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that
prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will
surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on
Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented
now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, re-energize the
Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s
recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a
state of collapse. The question is whether Obama will publicly
change course before November. So far, he has offered nothing more
concrete than this: "We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we
were careless getting in."
Iraq
Even the Washington Post recognizes that Obama has lost touch with
reality,
referring to Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan as "The Iron Timetable" --
observing that whether the war in Iraq is being lost or won, Barack
Obama's strategy remains unchanged -- retreat -- surrender -- bug out!
Iraq
Obama
said he was "pleased with the progress taking place" in Iraq and
said that it was his impression that among Iraqis there was "more
optimism about what is happening."
"You see the activity taking place, the people in the shops, the traffic
on the streets, clearly there’s been an enormous improvement," he said.
Of course, if Obama's widely praised judgment
were followed, there would have been no surge and al Qaeda in Iraq and
the Mookie al Sadr would be running things.
Obama is now going to have to admit the surge worked and victory in Iraq
is at hand. The trick now, is for him to figure out a way to take
credit for it.
Iraq
Obama still opposes the surge -- even if it worked ( 1:02)
Here is video of Barack Obama from Iraq, in an interview with ABC News, saying
he would NOT support the "Surge Strategy" if he had it to do over again.
This is the very "Surge Strategy" that has undeniably transformed Iraq.
But Obama says he would still oppose it because . . . well, just because.
(There are two other videos
here, illustrating the
stupidity of Obama's position)
There's another interview with Katie Couric who presses Obama on the surge and
he hums and haws and squirms, but absolutely refuses to admit the surge has been
successful. (I will try and post it later in the
day)
The question becomes, do we really want to elect
someone to lead this country, who is so breathtakingly arrogant, that even after
learning he was wrong, refuses to acknowledge reality?
Obama and his supporters on the left are invested in the defeat of our own
forces to the political damage of Bush. It means everything to them.
They would risk losing everything before they give the president a dime's worth
of credit.
America is at war in the mideast, but the dhimmicrats are at war with Bush.
It's that simple.
Iraq
Redstate
notes that John McCain has gone and said one of the things you are
not supposed to say in American politics:
"This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the
courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign
than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in
order to win a political campaign."
Mainstream media liberals like Joe Klein and Obama flacks like John
Aravosis headed for the fainting couches at the suggestion that Obama
was willing to lose the war in Iraq in order to win this election.
But the facts are the facts, and they show beyond any doubt that Obama
chose to pursue defeat in Iraq instead of a strategy that is leading us
to victory:
1. Obama's public statements from 2004 through 2006 recognized
that withdrawal from Iraq would lead to defeat and disaster.
2. In early 2007, when President Bush announced the "surge"
strategy to try to win the war, leading Democrats -- Obama included --
publicly concluded that the war was lost and accordingly opposed the
surge.
3. Obama went further and rolled out a plan to begin drawing down
troops in May 2007, leading to a full withdrawal by March 2008.
There was no pretense that this was to be a victorious withdrawal; Obama
stated in his press release that "no amount of American soldiers can
solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil
war" and that he was proposing to "reverse the President's dangerous and
ill-conceived escalation of the Iraq war" and "bring a responsible end
to this war and bring our troops home". The press release made no
mention of victory or even honor.
4. Obama's opposition to the surge and calls for an immediate
commencement of withdrawal proved popular with his supporters in the
Democratic primary and helped him win the nomination of his party.
5. John McCain, by contrast, supported the surge on the grounds
that it would lead to victory.
6. It is now obvious, and so broadly conceded that Klein paints it
as beyond dispute, that the surge has succeeded and will lead to victory
in Iraq.
7. Had we followed Obama's strategy instead of McCain's, it is
equally clear that we would have lost the war, as the Iraqis could not
have done it without us.
While Aravosis calls McCain's statement "a brutal lie," he does not take
issue with any of those facts. Meanwhile, Ann Althouse delivers a
devastating rebuke to Klein for his insistence that it is out of bounds
to present America with the facts of Obama's choice and the necessary
consequences of that choice.
Since Obama has NO EXPERIENCE at anything
except running for office, he has based his campaign on his superior
judgment. Obama has been wrong about Iraq for 5 years.
If Obama had his way in 2003, Saddam and Sons would still be torturing,
killing and poisoning Iraqis; they would still be shooting at Coalition
aircraft over the "No-Fly Zone"; they would still be pursuing their
weapons of mass destruction goals; they would still be building palaces
with Iraq's oil money, instead of its infrastructure; and they would
still be a threat to their neighbors.
More recently he was against the Surge when it was proposed; he was
against the Surge when it was implemented; and now that the Surge has
been successful, he's STILL against it.
And let's not forget Obama's selection of
friends and associates.
Iraq
Related to the above, Randall Hoven,
writing in American Thinker, notes that the "Surge" in Iraq sure
appears to have worked. let's look at the results to date:
1. US troop and Iraqi civilian fatality rates are at their lowest
points since the war began in 2003.
2. Today Iraq has legitimate elections, a constitution and a
functioning parliament. It is considered more politically free
than virtually any country in the Middle East, including Iran, Syria,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait.
3. Gross Domestic Product has almost tripled, from $20.5B (US
dollars) in 2002 to $60.9B in 2008.
4. Oil production in each of the last three months (May-July 2008)
has exceeded the peak pre-war estimated rate of 2.5 million barrels per
day. Oil exports now bring in about $7 billion per month, and
rising.
5. Pre-war, only 4 to 8 hours of electricity were available per
day nationwide, on average. In July 2008, electricity was
available an average of almost 12 hours per day, an improvement of 50%
to 200%.
6. There are more than twice as many registered cars, more than 10
times as many telephone subscribers and more than 50 times as many
internet subscribers.
7. Under Saddam, Iraq had no commercial TV or radio stations and
no independent newspapers or magazines. Zero. Today it has
dozens of TV stations and hundreds of radio stations, newspapers and
magazines.
8. More children are in school, and more doctors, judges and
security personnel have been trained and are being trained.
In addition to the above, the White House has reported that the Iraqi
government achieved "satisfactory" progress on 15 of 18 political
benchmarks as set by Congress and the President.
With results like these, who can deny the
"Surge" is working? Well, Obama, that's who.
Iraq
Ed Morrissey wrote about this a
few days ago when Obama
ducked Katie Couric’s question by torturing the distinction between
tactics and strategy. According to The One, the president sets
the strategy: Most troops out in 16 months but some left behind for
various missions. The generals supply the tactics: To carry
out those missions responsibly, we need X number of troops.
What does X equal? Why, it’s … "entirely
conditions-based":
Bob Novak’s column this
week cites unnamed Obama advisors as saying this could mean leaving
as many as 50,000 troops in place. According to a recent essay
by Colin Kahl, who runs
Obama’s working group on Iraq, in the "near term" they might keep as
many as 12 brigades there for "overwatch," i.e. support,
duties.
Obama finally abandoned his dangerous
insistence on an unconditional withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from
Iraq by making clear that for the foreseeable future, troop levels
in Iraq will be "entirely conditions based." This latest
shift in Senator Obama’s position is welcome, but it is obvious
that it was only a lack of experience and judgment that kept him
from arriving at this position sooner.
Iraq
Obama comments on the "Surge" (01.09)
and don't miss the last 10 seconds -- definitely
Commander in Chief material
Iraq
Politico blog is
wondering
about a trip that has nothing to do with the cost of fuel. I am
wondering about Barack Obama’s planned trip to Iraq.
Is it necessary? Why? What is he going to learn from it?
Besides, as he said last Thursday and documented below, "I am
absolutely committed to ending the war." He also said
that he would call his Joint Chiefs of Staff in and give them a new
assignment and that is to end the war.
Notice, he's not absolutely committed to winning the war -- just ending
it.
How's he going to do that. Blow a whistle and call time out? This
ain't B-ball, Barry -- it's a war -- you win it or you lose it.
Armistices don't work. Ask the French. Ask the Israelis.
Ask the Koreans.
Because Obama is a logical guy, he said there was a logical reason for
him to go to Iraq. He was going to talk to military people there, he
said, and "continue to refine" his Iraq policy.
"I am going to do a thorough assessment when I’m there," he said at a
news conference last week in Fargo, N.D. "When I go to Iraq and I
have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure
I’ll have more information and continue to refine my policy.
How do you refine, "I am absolutely committed to ending the war?"
-- and remember, he can't give the Joints Chiefs a new assignment to end
the war. They're not in the chain of command, as explained below.
So let us get this straight once and for all and stop all this frenzy:
Barack Obama is going to Iraq because he does not intend to change his
mind about Iraq.
An Obama trip to Iraq is nothing more than a political stunt.
Iraq
Here is an
excerpt from Susan Duclos' 15 September blockbuster article on
Obama's attempted manipulation of GIs troop withdrawals from Iraq for
his own political purposes.
Iraqi government sources have revealed to the New York Post that
Presidential candidate Barack Obama demanded Iraqi officials stop
negotiations with the Bush Administration to withdraw U.S. troops
from Iraq. Fearful that the success in Iraq would harm his political
aspirations, Obama sought to keep U.S. troops in Iraq so he can continue
attacking the Bush Administration for not imposing a timetable for
withdrawal.
Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win -- but the
prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the
anti-war lobby" -- which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster
to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder
in US history." [...]
Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to
appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The
reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive
the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat
before it strikes at America.
Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects
pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his
foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a
disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other
apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past
five years.
In a brief press conference back in June, Obama
admitted to this outrageous act.
"He said he told Zebari that negotiations for a Status of Forces
agreement or strategic framework agreement between the two countries
should be done in the open and with Congress's authorization and that it
was important that that there be strong bipartisan support for any
agreement so that it can be sustained through a future administration.
He argued it would make sense to hold off on such negotiations until the
next administration."
Israel Is An
Infection
In an
interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic, Barack Obama
presents himself as the best friend Israel ever had.
Then he proceeds to call Israel a "constant sore" that "infects all of
our foreign policy:" Obama on Zionism and Hamas.
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is, that this constant wound, that this
constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy.
Jobs
In his January 5th, 2009, radio address, Obama uses some new
language when discussing what he wants the stimulus package to achieve
in terms of jobs. First off, he has a name for the package -- the
"American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."
says he wants to
"create three million new jobs" -- this is a change from a few weeks
ago, when he said he wanted the plan to create OR SAVE two million jobs.
He says the "No. 1 goal of my plan ... is to create three million
new jobs, more than 80 percent of them in the private sector."
If
you do the math: 20 percent of three million means 600,000 new
government employees.
600,000 new
government employees = 576,00 Democratic Party jobs
Marxism
The British get it!
You have to
pinch yourself -- a Marxist radical who all his life has been
mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed
the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted
and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists,
Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and
Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United
States. And apparently it's considered impolite to say so.
Marxism
At an Apollo Theater fundraiser, Obama was introduced by the
radical Marxist professor and self-styled rapper, Cornell West, as "my
comrade."
What does this tell you about Obama, when he chooses to be introduced by
one of the most radical Marxists in America as, "my comrade?"
Watch this video
-- Cornell doesn't trust Obama -- Why the change in attitude?
What promises did Obama make to cause this 180◦?
Marxism
Obama actively
sought and received the stamp of approval of a Marxist third party
that operated briefly in Chicago between 1992 and 1998. The group
was called the "New Party" and was started in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a
former staffer for Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel
Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison).
The New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to
endorse and elect leftist public officials -- most often Democrats.
The New Party’s short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party
leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist
third party.
Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America
(Obama was an associate of the Chicago branch), and the militant
organization ACORN. The party’s Chicago chapter also included a
large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist
coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA
members.
Marxism
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun attacked President-elect Barack
Obama's agenda as Marxist, saying, "In my opinion, we've elected a
Marxist to be president of the United States."
The Republican congressman from Georgia warned that Obama might be
planning to form a
Brownshirts-like security force so he can rule as a dictator.
The two-term congressman cited a July speech in which Obama called for a
civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the
military.
Broun said he was not fear-mongering but wants to warn people that the
nation could be going down that path.
His comments came in a Monday telephone interview with The Associated
Press after he called Obama a Marxist at a Rotary Club meeting in his
district over the weekend.
Well,
here's the video
of Obama's July speech and
here's the cadre program behind Obama's
private army. You can decide for yourself whether this guy is a
nut, or on to something.
Mortgage
Meltdown
Obama says sub prime mortgages are a good idea! (video)
After the Sub Prime Crisis already started in 2007, Obama
said that sub prime mortgages that gave houses to people who couldn't
afford them was a good idea.
He's believed this since 1995, when Obama and his fellow attorneys
charged that
Citibank was making too few loans to black applicants and
won the case that began the whole thing.
Obama says he's against reparations, but he's for every other type of
race-based giveaway on the planet, including
giving
$840 billion to the United Nations to end poverty in Africa.
National
Security
Obama
said the Bush administration’s announcement it was bringing
some U.S. troops home fell short, calling it a "modest" step that
indicated no real change in policy.
"At this point what it appears is the next president will inherit a
status quo that is still unstable, Obama told reporters at a high school
outside Dayton. "And what’s going to be required is a
comprehensive strategy, and that’s what I’ve been offering for the last
two years...."
Mind you, Commander-in Chief Obama has never
even been a boy scout, but now he's second-guessing the combined wisdom
of the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, Central
Command, the Presidents National Defense Team and the real
Commander-in-Chief.
Obama's greatest attribute -- arrogance.
National
Security
Abe Greenwald
asks, "What More Do You Need To Know?"
"Successful politicians aren’t just good at what they do; they’re
lucky." Obama’s being on a Hawaii vacation when Russia invades
Georgia is a stroke of luck for John McCain. (Calm down, calm
down. I’m not saying that Russia invading Georgia is lucky for anyone.
It’s the timing of Obama’s trip that’s fortuitous for the McCain camp.)
For starters, it creates an (undeserved) correlation between global
crisis and a lounging Obama. This dovetails exquisitely with McCain’s
recent push to discredit Obama as a serious statesman. Also, the timing
simply allows McCain to be the the most prepared with a comment, and
McCain has capitalized on this opportunity. Here’s a brief statement
from the Senator:
"Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military
operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.
What is most critical now is to avoid further confrontation between
Russian and Georgian military forces. The consequences of
Euro-Atlantic stability and security are grave. The government of
Georgia has called for a cease fire and for a resumption of direct talks
on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should
immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security
Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The U.S. should
immediately work with the E.U. and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure
on Russia to reverse this perilous course that it has chosen."
As that concise and specific statement demonstrates, successful
politicians aren’t just lucky either. They’re informed and
resolute. When the world goes kablooey, as it does from time to
time, the difference between gibberish about world citizenship and the
"consequences of Euro-Atlantic stability and security" comes into sharp
focus. Here is the vague hash Obama has come up with in response
to Russian aggression:
"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an
immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and
Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war.
Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected."
Obama called for direct talks among all sides and said the United
States, U.N. Security Council and other parties should try to help bring
about a peaceful resolution.
Forget all the ads, the videos, the talking points, and the accusations.
Here’s what it comes down to: In a geopolitical crisis, you have one
candidate with a handle on the specific players and their intentions,
and ideas on specific ways to move forward: then you have another
candidate who says parties "should try to help bring about a peaceful
resolution." There’s your choice.
National
Security
On Friday the Obama campaign issued a pathetic
statement "strongly condemn[ing] the outbreak of violence in
Georgia." Strongly! Obama found no reason to distinguish
between Russia and Georgia in strongly condemning the outbreak of
violence. Or perhaps he found it too difficult to do so.
Obama has apparently continued to deliberate on the subject. Given
some more time to think about it, one can infer from this Reuters story,
Obama has made a big decision. Obama has decided that it's better
to sound like John McCain.
National
Security
Barack Obama without a teleprompter is an accident
waiting to happen. Sometimes he reveals his ignorance of history,
sometimes he stumbles incoherently, and sometimes he blurts out what he
really believes.
That's what happened today when Obama tried to talk about Georgia, a
topic that has embarrassed him more than once already, beginning when,
in the first hours after the invasion, he parroted the Russian line, by
equating Russia's invasion of Georgia with our toppling of Saddam
Hussein.
Obama
told an audience at Purdue
University that, his administration would rid the world of
nuclear weapons.
The problem is, he wants to start in America.
Obama's plan to disarm America (01:35)
While Obama proceeds with his plan to disarm America and neuter its
military, he has a plan to establish his own private, civilian security
force.
National
Security
Kristinn, at FreeRepublic.com,
observes that Barack Obama and his team agree: At 46 years old, with no
military service or foreign policy experience, having only spent three
years as a United States senator, he is master of the universe.
Susan Rice, Obama's senior foreign policy advisor, informed the German
news magazine Der Spiegel in an
interview published today that her candidate "bows to nobody in
understanding this world."
Rice prefaced this conceit by relating his world travels: "Senator Obama
has travelled to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia many
times before. He lived in Asia."
This evening ABC News Nightline will
broadcast an interview with Obama conducted after he met with Iraqi
Prime Minister Maliki and Gen. Petraeus today in Iraq.
Obama's arrogance shone through as he dismissed Petraeus' concerns about
Obama's plans for Iraq:
"My job is to think about the national security interests as a whole
and to weigh and balance risks in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their job
is just to get the job done here, and I completely understand that."
Obama, in his arrogance, failed to recognize that Petraeus, having
recently been promoted to head up Centcom, which oversees both Iraq and
Afghanistan, would also be looking at Iraq from the same perspective.
Obama also made clear he worked to undermine President Bush's
negotiations with the Maliki government on the new status of forces
agreement:
"I made very clear to him that we have one president at a time.
And it is the job of the Bush administration to work with [the] Iraqi
government. I am a United States senator, I can present my views
as a candidate and I can present my views as a senator who believes that
we can't bind the next president to an agreement that involves us
committing troops or budget."
While Obama has not been elected yet, he and his team are acting like it
is all over but the swearing in ceremony.
His presidential-style rally being held in Berlin later this week is one
more example of the self-crowning of Obama.
Many an arrogant man who "bowed to nobody in their understanding of this
world" have found themselves to be proven disastrously wrong.
Unfortunately the world usually pays a horrendous price for their
arrogance.
Berlin is a good city for Obama to learn a valuable lesson or two.
However, the lessons of Berlin will likely be lost on him.
In the Der Speigel interview, Rice said of Obama: "He sees the world as
more complex than simply good versus evil."
For more than half a century, Berlin was the front line in the battle
between good and evil in the world -- from the rise and fall of Adolph
Hitler through the rise and fall of the Berlin wall.
However, a man who has foretold his own coming ("we are the ones we have
been waiting for") may be too far gone already.
Related:
At a morning background
briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the
characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign
rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw
thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United
States.
"It is not going to be a political speech," said a senior foreign policy
adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. "When the president
of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political
speech or a political rally.
"But he is not president of the United States," a reporter reminded the
adviser.
National
Security
Scott at
PowerLine blog noted that Senator Obama's victory speech last night
turned impressively to the general election campaign. He all but
clinched the Democratic nomination last night. His speech sounded
very much like a nomination acceptance speech. I expect that the
themes he sounded in his speech last night will reappear in his speech
this summer in Denver.
I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but
wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like
Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.
Maguire comments:
Obama's supporters are too young to know any of this, but Roosevelt led
the United States in the war against Hitler; the Allied policy was
unconditional surrender, so there was very little for Roosevelt and
Hitler to discuss, and in fact, the two did not meet at all (but they
did exchange correspondence before the war).
So my guess is that Obama is thinking of the Yalta Conference with
Churchill and Stalin as talking to "our enemies," although of course we
were still allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan at
that point. Beyond that, is the Yalta Conference something Obama
and his advisers view as a success worthy of emulation? Puzzling.
And the United States has been talking with Iran right along in any
event. It's not for lack of communication that Iran has been
conducting its war on the United States.
When Obama invoked past Democratic presidents in his speech last night,
he started with Roosevelt but omitted Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.
Moving on from the Clinton era is part of the thesis of Obama's
candidacy, so the omission is understandable. Of past Democratic
presidents, none has set a better example of the pitfalls of "talking to
our enemies" than Jimmy Carter, both in his presidency and his travels
since (though Carter probably would not acknowledge that his
interlocutors are our enemies).
Obama may not be knowledgeable enough to know he doesn't want to emulate
Roosevelt at Yalta. Perhaps he believes that Roosevelt's name
sanctions whatever action he can attach to it. But Obama is smart
enough to know that he doesn't want to profess a desire to emulate Jimmy
Carter, if only on political grounds. In substance, however, it
seems to me that the president Obama most closely resembles on this
point is Carter.
New America
Welcome to "New America," where Obama
doesn't want to produce his bona fides to prove he's
Constitutionally eligible for the office of POTUS, but
wants a new Declaration of Independence.
In Dayton, Ohio,
Mason school officials
want to suspend the 1st Amendment, saying they will not tolerate
"inappropriate comments that may make other students, staff or families
feel unwelcome or uncomfortable."
A New York congressman
wants to repeal the 22nd Amendment, ending presidential term limits.
An Illinois congressman
wants
all handguns be registered with and licensed by the Attorney General of
the United States, along with a database containing the owner's address, photo, thumb print, mental heath
records and records of every handgun sale or transfer.
A California
congresswoman
wants to prosecute Bush Administration officials for actions
approved by Congress.
Partisanship
Do you recognize bullsh!t when you see it?
Jake Tapper of ABC News
asked Obama: "Have you ever worked across the aisle in such a way
that entailed a political risk for yourself?"
Get ready to duck now
-- Obama's response??? -- "Well, look,
when I was doing ethics reform legislation, for example, that wasn't
popular with Democrats or Republicans. So any time that you
actually try to get something done in Washington, it entails some
political risks. But I think the basic principle which you pointed
out is that I have consistently said, when it comes to solving problems,
like nuclear proliferation or reducing the influence of lobbyists in
Washington, that I don't approach this from a partisan or ideological
perspective."
Huh?
And remember, in regards to this comment, "...any time that you actually
try to get something done in Washington...," that Obama hasn't gotten
squat accomplished in Washington since he was sent there to represent
the citizens of Illinois. His accomplishments? He's passed
two bills. One sends American taxpayer money down the rat-hole
called the Congo, "to encourage democracy," and the other named a post
office.
Patriotism
Obama
defends his commitment to patriotic ideals by telling
a town hall meeting in North Carolina that "I always have the flag in my
heart."
He just won't wear one on his lapel or salute
it during the National Anthem.
Patriotism
Kinda brings this to mind.
Patriotism
A combative Barack Obama said Tuesday that Republican John McCain
"doesn't know what he's up against" in this election and challenged his
rival to stop questioning his character and patriotism.
Obama certainly is thin-skinned, isn't he?
Of course if he didn't work for and hang out with this guy,
named Chicago's "Citizen of the Year" in 1997, then maybe
there wouldn't be a question.
And maybe if he showed the proper respect for America and its symbols,
there would be fewer people asking these questions.
The photo was taken to promote Ayers’s book, "Fugitive Days" and
published by Chicago Mag in their August 2001 issue.
This guy is still a hard-core communist as he proudly announces on his
red communist star-headed
website.
I can't imagine why anybody would question your
patriotism, Obama?
Public
Allies
The stunning
comment from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama that the United States
needs a "civilian national security force" that would be as powerful,
strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar United States Army,
Marines, Navy and Air Force have mysteriously disappeared from published
transcripts of his speech.
On July 6th, Obama said, ""We cannot continue to rely on our military in
order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've
got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful,
just as strong, just as well-funded."
In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama
serious about creating some kind of domestic security force as big and
expensive as that?
Answer me this, Obamamessiah, just what are
those national security objectives? Who is the "WE" who
will set those objectives?
How would such a force be used to achieve those objectives -- oh, and
will its members wear brown shirts?
Public
Allies
Democrats' reintroduction of militant Michelle Obama in Denver was
supposed to show her softer side. But it only highlighted a
radical part of her resume: Public Allies.
Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in
1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago
chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit
group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a
national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal
Voluntary Public Service."
Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American
youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be
brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need
of "social change."
The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that
radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid
one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government
agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training
workshops and three retreats.
In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid
health and child care. They also get a post-service education
award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund
future education.
But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to
bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and
confrontation -- the tactics used by the father of community organizing,
Saul Alinsky.
More on this unbelievable plan at Investor's Business Daily.
Public Allies is nothing more than an Alinsky training program
designed to build a cadre of "community organizers" -- Obama wants to
clone thousands of himself -- and on our dime.
Fact
Sheet on Public Allies’ History with Senator Barack and Michelle
Obama.
Public Allies
home
page -- "Changing the Face and Practice of Leadership"
The Obamas already have fifteen
chapters
churning out these radical Alinsky practitioners.
The Obama Campaign is also conducting, at the state level, a "national
program for social change," called "Camp Obama."
Obama Campaign's website promises that "you'll get the kind of experience that Barack
got as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago," and "Camp Obama
is your chance to step up and become a leader in this movement."
Movement? What movement?
Now, Capital Research
reports that
there does indeed seem to be a "hidden Soros Slush Fund" in the
Democratic Party’s official platform, as commentator Michelle Malkin
recently
pointed out.
At page 56 (PDF)
of the platform document "Renewing America’s Promise," the party
proposes the creation of a "Social Investment Fund Network":
A Partnership with Civic Institutions
Social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations are assisting
schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps, and
inspiring others to lead change in their own communities. To
support these results-oriented innovators, we will create a Social
Investment Fund Network that invests in ideas that work, tests their
impact, and expands the most successful programs.
In practice, this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent,
taxpayer-backed pipeline to organizations, such as Public Allies,
masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. This George Soros
Slush Fund would be political payback in spades. Obama owes much of his
Chicago political success to financial support from radical, left-wing
billionaire and leading "social entrepreneur" Soros.
Redistribution
In this (video)
exchange between Obama and a plumber on the campaign trail this weekend,
the self-employed plumber said to Obama: "Your new tax plan is going to
tax me more. Isn't it?"
Obama responded: "It's not that I want to punish your success, I just
want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a
chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around,
it's good for everybody."
Obama's not a socialist? -- geez Louise!
Redistribution
Given Barack Obama's relentless populism this cycle, the
Wall Street Journal analysis of his tax cuts should surprise no one.
They find that Obama relies less on actual cuts in tax rates and more in
specific, "refundable" grants that filers receive whether they have a
tax liability or not. Instead of reducing taxes, Obama makes his redistributionism explicit.
Six of the seven listed in the Obama plan are these "refundables," money
people get from the federal government even if they pay no taxes at all.
These are not Ttax cuts," but instead welfare grants based on specific
social policy. It's blatant redistributionism, as the money
comes from tax increases on the wealthy.
It's more like the same old change
we've heard jingling in the pockets of politicians since the beginning
of time. And it's the same dirty change that has landed the bums
in jail since the beginning of democracy.
Barack Obama hasn't
even made history yet by getting into the White House, but he's already
making history for the number of serious scandals between his election
and his inauguration.
First, it was Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich, Obama's old pal and political ally. Now New Mexico
Gov. Bill Richardson -- Obama's pick for commerce secretary -- bails out
amid a grand jury investigation into how a major political donor snared
a lucrative contract from the state.
At this rate, Obama will be
lucky to have any friends left after his first 100 days in office.
Socialism
His
political history in Illinois shows that in the
period from 1996
to
2000, Obama has proven himself to be a nearly perfect
Progressive-Democrat.
Socialism
Beyond a reasonable doubt -- Obama is a socialist -- at best!
In 1995, Obama, as part of his first run for the
Illinois State Senate, began seeking the endorsement of the
New Party.
The New Party's objective was to push forth the socialist principles of
the
Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), that
claimed Obama as a member, by focusing on winnable elections at a
local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards.
Obama had been running in a four way primary against his former boss,
Senator
Alice Palmer, an executive board member of the
U.S. Peace Council, which the FBI identified as a communist front
group, and an affiliate of the World Peace Council, a Soviet front
group.
The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a
pledge of support for the party. Obama signed that pledge,
choosing to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for
communists. The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the
New Party consisted of
DSA members and a good number of members of the
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a democratic
socialist group in the United States which originated in 1991 as the
Committees of Correspondence, a moderate, dissenting wing of the
Communist Party USA.
When allegations surfaced early this summer of the New Party's
endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the
New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was
never a member of either organization. The DSA and New Party then
systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the
Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was
indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party.
On Tuesday, John Hinderaker of the PowerLine blog
discovered a web page that had been scrubbed from the New Party's
website. The web page which was published in October 1996, was an
internet newsletter update on that years congressional races.
Although the web page was deleted from the New Party's website, the
non-profit Internet Archive Organization had archived the page.
Here it is:
So the New Party claimed Obama as a member as of 1996. Progressive
Populist magazine agreed in this
editorial:
New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including
an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the
county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's
County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress,
as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory.
New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate
seat from Chicago.
Barack Obama chose to affiliate himself with this band of
quasi-communists. As the nation moves closer to the election,
it is clear that Obama chose to affiliate with assorted anti-American
radicals. Machiavelli once noted that we can know a leader by the
people he surrounds himself with. What does it say about Barack
Obama, that he chooses to surround himself with people committed to
overthrowing the United States and capitalism?
Socialism
In 1996, Obama received the endorsement of the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for the Illinois state senate
seat. Obama is an associate of the Chicago branch of the DSA.
Here is a video
of Obama enthusiastically campaigning for openly socialist Senator
Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders, who won his seat in 2006,
called Obama "one of the great leaders of the United States Senate,"
even though Obama had only been in the body for less than two years.
On
November 1st,
2007, Obama made this startling comment, "We've got to make
sure that people who have more money help the people who have less
money."
His "solutions"
will sound familiar to those who listened to Lyndon Johnson's poverty
gurus and their fellow travelers under Jimmy Carter who promised massive
government assistance:
"When I'm President, I will raise the minimum wage and make it a
living wage by making sure that it rises every time the cost of living
does. I'll start letting our unions do what they do best again --
organize our workers and lift up our middle-class. And I'll finally make
sure every American has affordable health care that stays with you no
matter what happens by passing my plan to provide universal coverage and
cut the cost of health care by up to $2500 per family."
"The philosophy behind the project is simple -- if poverty is a disease
that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and
violence; failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat
those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And
we have to focus on what actually works."
Socialism
An
analysis of "lifetime voting records,"
shows Obama as the most liberal Democrat in Congress, with a score of
84.3 after two full years in the Senate. The most liberal score possible
was 99.
The study, released in March, 2007, by the National Journal, a respected
inside-the-Beltway research report, places Obama even in front of Dennis
Kucinich, with a lifetime score of 79.4.
Socialism
Seeking to add heft to his presidential bid,
Democrat Barack Obama is offering a sweeping plan that would require
every American to have
health coverage and calls on government, businesses and consumers to
share the costs of the program.
It's not surprising that a socialist would push for socialized medicine.
Socialism
The National Journal identifies Barack Obama, D-Ill., as
the most liberal
senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote
ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to
the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the
16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.
Socialism
During a rally in Roseburg, Oregon, on Saturday, Obama presented
himself as the front-runner almost without question -- then had this to
say:
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes
on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries
are going to say OK," Obama said.
Do you remember any other time in this nation’s
history when we were told by our elected leaders to tighten our belts in
order to gain the approval of other countries around the world?
Socialism
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about
something called "economic
justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code --
socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term
at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to
help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said
at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he
asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never
spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His
audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're
launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and
redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism
for socialism.
He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" -- "to make
America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance,"
whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions
made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income
levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the
Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum
wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices,"
with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks
for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
If you looked at Barack Obama's record, public
statements and campaign platform as of any time before June 3, 2008 (the
last day of the Democratic primaries), you could detect a trend: on
issue after issue after issue, there was a conservative position, a
moderate position, a liberal position...and then there was an Obama
position.
Other liberals opposed the Iraq War; Obama called for complete
withdrawal by March 2008. Other liberals opposed confrontation
with Iran; Obama pledged to meet its leader unconditionally. Other
liberals supported abortion on demand or even partial-birth abortion;
Obama went beyond that to oppose any legal protection for a child born
alive after a failed abortion. Other liberals supported amnesty to
give illegal immigrants citizenship and "bring them out of the shadows";
Obama championed giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens even as they
continued to live outside the law. Other liberals were concerned
about surveillance outside of the FISA framework; Obama pledged to
filibuster even a bill that brought surveillance into that framework
unless it allowed civil lawsuits against phone companies that had
complied with prior government requests. Other liberals voted
against Justice Alito; Obama voted against Chief Justice Roberts, too,
and for that matter voted to filibuster to prevent a vote on Alito.
Other liberals courted liberal interest groups; Obama sought the
nomination of a Marxist third party. Other liberals championed a
"nuclear freeze" during the arms race of the early 1980s; Obama called
for eliminating nuclear weapons and "slow[ing] our development of future
combat systems" during a period of American nuclear and military
predominance.
On issue after issue after issue -- taxes, guns, energy, you name it --
Obama not only stood outside the national political mainstream, but on
the far left edge even of his own party, which is how he earned the
National Journal's "most liberal Senator" rating for 2007 despite the
presence of a self-described Socialist in his caucus (Bernie Sanders
(I-VT)).
Isn't the VP pick supposed to balance out the ticket?
Obama is THE MOST liberal member of the U. S. Senate. He is more
liberal than 94% of the Senate on economic issues; 94% of the Senate on
social issues; and 92% of the Senate on foreign issues. His
composite "Liberal" score is 95.5%.
Biden is the 3RD MOST liberal member of the U. S. Senate. He is
more liberal than 94% of the Senate on economic issues; 88% of the
Senate on social issues; and 94% of the Senate on foreign issues.
His composite "Liberal" score is 94.2%.
Both Obama and Biden are further to the left than Bernie Sanders, who
comes in fourth. He is more liberal than 90% of the Senate on
economic issues; 88% of the Senate on social issues; and 98% of the
Senate on foreign issues. His composite "Liberal" score is 93.7%
-- and Bernie Sanders identifies himself as a Socialist.
Even if you think that Americans should want to turn
their country into a European-style system, there is a perfectly good
reason that you might have
grave doubts about Obama.
The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between
the Barack Obama of the candidate's speeches, and the Barack Obama who
has actually been in politics for the past decade or so.
Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the
need to change the culture of American political life, to take on the
special interests that undermine government's effectiveness and erode
trust in the system itself,
Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the
most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a
brilliantly cogent and measured book, "The Case Against Barack Obama"
the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an
old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side
with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways
of the ruling party.
Speechmaker Obama talks about an era of bipartisanship. He speaks
powerfully about the destructive politics of red and blue states.
Politician Obama has toed his party's line more reliably than almost any
other Democrat in US politics. He has a near-perfect record of
voting with his side. He has the most solidly left-wing voting
history in the Senate.
Speechmaker Obama talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the
bloody battlegrounds of the "culture wars" in America; the urgent need
to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion.
Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of
any Democratic senator. In the Illinois legislature he refused to
join Democrats and Republicans in supporting a Bill that would require
doctors to provide medical care for babies who survived abortions.
No one in the Senate - not the arch feminist Hillary Clinton nor the
super-liberal Edward Kennedy -- opposed this same humane measure.
Here's the real problem with Obama: the jarring gap between his promises
of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many
contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring
rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.
Socialism
Following his election last week, Obama set up a new
website, Change.gov, that featured his
socialist policy proposals on everything from tax, the war, gun control,
education and health care, seemingly cut and past from his campaign
website, BarackObama.com.
Over the weekend, the webpage disappeared.
The list was replaced by a single paragraph committing Obama and
Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden to "...a plan to revive the economy, to
fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a
clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly
and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to
prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic
and foreign policy objectives".
Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said: "We are currently retooling the web
site."
Well, nothing gets deleted from the web, and
here is the page. Lots of
reparations by another name, lots of free money, lots of "inner city"
and "urban" programs, no racial profiling and bring back the gun bans.
The federal government spent trillions on Lyndon Johnson's "The Great
Society" -- to no avail. Now, Obama plans on bringing us "The
Great Society -- Part Deux," which is nothing more than the biggest
redistribution of wealth in the nations' history.
Mo' money -- that's what this woman heard --
"I won't have to worry about
putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage.
You know, if I help him, he's gonna help me." (video)
Socialism
When President-elect Barack Obama talked on Sunday about
realigning the American automobile industry he was quick to offer a
caution, lest he sound more like the incoming leader of France, or
perhaps Japan. He wants to nationalizing America's industries
"We don't want government to run companies," Obama told Tom Brokaw on
"Meet the Press." "Generally, government historically hasn't done that
very well."
But, what Obama went on to describe was a long-term government
bailout that would be conditioned on government oversight. It
could mean that the government would mandate, or at least heavily
influence, what kind of cars companies make, what mileage and
environmental standards they must meet and what large investments they
are permitted to make -- to recreate an industry that Obama said
"actually works, that actually functions."
It all sounds perilously close to a word that no one in Obama's camp
wants to be caught uttering: nationalization.
"I asked the president-elect, 'At the end of the
day, are you really talking about over the course of your campaign some
kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare
reform, entitlement reform including Social Security
and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to
sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?'
"'Yes,' Obama said.
Supreme
Court
When the nomination of John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme
Court came up in the Senate in 2005,
Obama argued that the role of a justice is to favor the "weak" over
the "strong."
When the nomination of Sam Alito as an associate justice came up in
January 2006, he made the same argument.
Obama does not want a Supreme Court that preserves the rule of law, he
wants a Supreme Court that wages class war under color of law.
So, in Obama's vision, who are the "weak" and who are the "strong"?
Who deserves to win the "hearts" of Supreme Court justices? Who
does not?
In contrast to his soaring campaign rhetoric about bringing America
together, Obama's Senate speeches against Justices Roberts and Alito
revealed a polarizing vision of America. Minorities, women,
employees and criminal defendants were among the weak; majorities, men,
employers and prosecutors among the strong.
Supreme
Court
April 29th, -- George Will posed thirteen questions for Obama.
The first -- "Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will
nominate judges, you said: 'We need somebody who's got the heart, the
empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom.
The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or
African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.' Such sensitivities
might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to do with
judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy
stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial
function inimical to the rule of law?"
And there's twelve more critical questions at
this link -- worth a
visit.
Supreme
Court
Expectations among Senate Democrats are rising that if elected
president, Barack Obama will reward Sen. Hillary Clinton's support with
a
Supreme Court nomination when one opens.
"It's the talk up here," says a key Senate aide. While confirmation
would be difficult, the move is being encouraged by her supporters as a
way for Obama to acknowledge Clinton's historic run for the White House.
"It would have a more lasting impact than being president."
Now, there's a truly scary notion.
As if Obama himself wasn't enough reason to vote for "anyone else," the
thought of "Justice Clinton"
ought to get the "I won't vote for McCain" conservatives down to the polls.
Supreme
Court
The conservative-leaning Committee for Justice (CJ) is
trying to rile supporters with a "Top
10" list of things to expect from the Supreme Court should Barack
Obama be elected president and appoint his desired justices
"That very real possibility should frighten conservatives all the more
when they consider that 1) by the end of an 8-year Obama presidency,
Justices Scalia and Kennedy would be 80 years old, an age most men never
reach, and 2) given the damage the Supreme Court has done to the rule of
law since 1969, imagine what the Court would do if it regained a "solid
liberal majority?"
Given Obama’s stances on various issues, CJ compiled this list with what
their group believes Obama’s appointed justices would be capable of
doing:
10. Expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences
9. Creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide and
human cloning
8. Expanding judicial oversight of military detentions and CIA
interrogations
7. Prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools
6. Banning the death penalty
5. Requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights
4. Creating new constitutional rights to massive government welfare and
medical care programs
3. Stripping "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance
2. Eroding property rights
1. Ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriage
Taxes
Also on the 31st, Obama
said he would pay for his proposed new programs, including mandatory
health insurance, by imposing higher taxes on "the wealthy" and raising
the tax on Social Security wages. He added, "What we have had
right now is a situation where we've cut taxes for people who don't need
them."
According to recent Gallup data, "The wealthiest 1 percent of the
population earn 19 percent of the income, but pay 37 percent of the
income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent -- those below the median income level
-- now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the
taxes.
Should government determine how much money people "need"?
This is Marxism: "from each according to his ability; to each according
to his need."
Taxes
Economic conservatives have a special love for cutting capital gains
taxes. Not only do they feel it is one of the most destructive taxes
that exists, but it was the 1978 capital gains tax cut -- along with
Proposition 13 the same year in California -- that really launched the
supply-side tax revolution. Now Obama says he wants to nearly
double the capital gains tax rate. Here is what
he told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo last week:
"Well, you know, I haven't given a firm number. Here's my belief,
that we can't go back to some of the, you know, confiscatory rates that
existed in the past that distorted sound economics. And I
certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was
28 percent. I would -- and my guess would be it would be
significantly lower than that. I think that we can have a capital
gains rate that is higher than 15 percent. If it -- and if it, you
know -- when I talk to people like Warren Buffett or others and I ask
them, you know, what's -- how much of a difference is it going to be if
it's 20 or 25 percent, they say, look, if it's within that range, then
it's not going to distort, I think, economic decision making."
My take: Obama got it wrong. The capital gains rate during the
Clinton administration fell from 28 percent at the beginning to 20
percent with the signing of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 in August of
that year. Interestingly, the economy managed only two years of
growth of 4 percent or more in the decade previous to the 1997 cap gains
cut -- but notched three straight years of such growth in 1997, 1998,
and 1999.
Taxes
Hugh Hewitt
observes: Barack Obama wants to hike social security taxes,
double the capital gains tax and restore the death tax to its
highest levels.
Barack Obama opposes any expansion of exploration for oil even
though the price you are paying at the pump is soaring and the only way
to halt the rise is increased production.
Barack Obama wants to meet, without preconditions, with Ahmadinejad,
Chavez and Kim Jung Il.
Barack Obama wants the U.S. to quit the field in Iraq, imperiling
the victory there that is emerging with unmistakable clarity.
But perhaps worst of all his many terrible positions, Barack Obama wants
to return to the anti-terrorism model of the 1990's --the
criminal justice model.
Some change!
Taxes
First
hard numbers on the Obama Tax Plan show a dramatic redistribution of
wealth according to a new Tax Foundation analysis.
In Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact, No. 132, Tax Foundation president Scott
Hodge uses revenue estimates from the Tax Policy Center to show that
Obama's plan would greatly accelerate the decades-long trend toward a
federal government that depends for tax revenue almost exclusively on a
few high-income people.
This contrasts starkly with the McCain plan, according to Hodge, which
would give every taxpayer a cut and leave the current tax burden
distribution approximately where it is.
"Under the Obama plan for 2009," explains Hodge, "more than $131 billion
would be redistributed from the top 1 percent of taxpayers to all other
taxpayers."
Obama's plan to punish success is patterned
straight from Karl Marx -- "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs."
Of course, Obama has his millions in a "quasi-blind
trust" -- exempt from his "tax the rich" plan.
More
Taxes
An Obama presidency
could mean a Trillion Dollar tax increase.
The Urban Institute Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center has just
published a detailed analysis and comparison of the tax policies of
Senators McCain and Obama.
It concludes that compared to current policy, McCain would cut taxes by
$628 billion over the next 10 years and that Obama would raise them by
$734 billion over the same period.
Taxes For
Thee,
But Not For
Me
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would raise taxes on
the rich, but as an investor, he seems eager
to cut his own.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to raises taxes on
the wealthy, but as a member of that social class, he isn't eager to
fall victim himself. He has invested at least $1 million in a fund that
yields tax-free income.
The Illinois senator's latest campaign-finance disclosure shows that his
investments have nearly tripled in the past two years to as much as $7.4
million, and his income in 2007 surged past $4 million, not counting his
government salary.
Obama reported accounts with Morgan Chase Private Client Asset
Management, an elite firm that deals only with the rich, as well as a
host of retirement accounts, some in the name of his wife, Michelle.
Taxes For
Thee,
But Not For
Me
Obama has already
endorsed the U.N.-inspired giveaway known as the Global Poverty Act.
It’s estimated that filling this particular Christmas stocking would run
us $845 billion. Worse yet, most of this largesse would wind up in
the pockets or Swiss bank accounts of those various thugs, such as Omar
al-Bashir, Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo, Isayas Afeworki and the
aforementioned Robert Mugabe, who run Africa the way that Al Capone ran
Chicago.
Finally, it’s no business of mine how much of their millions Mr. And
Mrs. Obama send to his relatives in Kenya, but I see no good reason why
the we should have to shell out a plugged nickel.
But, that's with your money. Obama is much tighter with his own.
The Evening Standard reports that Barack Obama has
failed to honor the pledges of
assistance that he made to a school named in his honor when he visited
here amid great fanfare two years ago.
Update: Kenyan-American milblogger Juliette Ochieng at
Baldilocks is setting up a
non-profit called "Save
Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc" to effect the change the village
had hoped Obama would deliver.
Taxes
Windfall
Profits
Obama's
proposal for a windfall profits tax on oil companies could cost $15
billion a year at last year's profit levels, a campaign adviser said.
The plan would target profit from the biggest oil companies by taxing
each barrel of oil costing more than $80, according to a fact sheet on
the proposal. The tax would help pay for a $1,000 tax cut for
working families, an expansion of the earned-income tax credit and
assistance for people who can't afford their energy bills.
And the oil companies would pass that on to the
consumer -- great idea!
Taxes
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama flatly promised to
raise taxes in a television interview Thursday afternoon.
"I will raise CEO taxes," Obama told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on "The
Situation Room."
"If you’re a CEO in this country you’ll probably pay more taxes," Obama
said. Obama speculated his CEO tax rates "won’t be prohibitively high,
you’ll pay roughly what you did in the 90’s when they were doing fine."
Obama replied, "You know, I think the definitions are always a little
bit rough" and said "if you’re making $100,000 a year or less, then
you’re pretty solidly middle class… On the other hand, if you’re making
more than $100,000 and certainly if you’re making more than $200,000 or
$250,000, you’re doing pretty well."
More Taxes
Today's Wall Street Journal
publishes a column by former principal deputy commissioner of the
Social Security Administration Andrew Biggs on "Obama's
faulty tax argument."
Like his
improbable history, Obama's argument in favor of higher taxes is
both straightforward and misleading. If Obama is elected
president, we can count on at least two things: bad economic policy and
bad foreign policy. And we won't be able to say we weren't warned.
Taxes
After battling for five months, the Cook County Board has voted to
more than double the county's sales tax, bringing the overall sales
tax in Chicago to be the highest of any major U.S. city at 10.25
percent.
The agreement means a drink at the bar, a fast-food meal and
back-to-school shopping, among other things, will get a bit more
expensive in Cook County.
Vote Obama and double your taxes too!
When Obama talks about change, he's talking about the money he plans to
leave in your pocket.
Did you know, as a U. S senator, Obama has
voted to raise taxes 90 times
-- and on wage-earners
earning as little as $32,000.
Taxes
Wall Street Journal -- Obama's Tax Plan Is Really a Welfare Plan
(excerpted)
Barack
Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He
proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax.
He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if
they engage in various government-specified activities.
Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or
nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax
credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but
the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government
would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays
nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole
$1,000.
Such credits are not tax cuts. Indeed, they should be called The
New Tax Welfare. In effect, Mr. Obama is proposing to create or
expand a slew of government spending programs that are disguised as tax
credits. The spending on these programs is then subtracted from
the total tax burden, in order to make the claim that his tax plan is a
net tax cut overall.
Taxes
Sunday's Washington Post carried
a story by reporter Lori Montgomery with a surprising headline:
"Obama Tax Plan Would Balloon Deficit, Analysis Finds." The Post
is highlighting research from the "nonpartisan" Tax Policy Center, a
project of two liberal think tanks, the Brookings Institution and the
Urban Institute.
Measured against current law and against the promises of his fellow
Democrats, Obama would rack up huge deficits. According to a
recent analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Obama's tax plan
would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt, including interest, by
2018.
Taxes
The recently released
details
of Barack Obama's tax plan, published on his campaign website, along
with an article by his top economic advisers in the Wall Street Journal,
confirm that Obama makes Walter Mondale look like a moderate. For
Obama pledges not just to raise taxes. He proposes to raise every
major federal tax. The recently released details confirm that:
* Obama would raise individual income taxes, increasing the top two
income tax rates, with the top rate climbing by 13%, to almost 40%.
This tax increase particularly hits small business, which creates the
most new jobs in America.
* Obama would raise the top capital gains tax rate by 33%, to 20%.
* He would also raise the top dividends tax rate by 33%, to 20% as well.
* He would raise Social Security payroll taxes by 16% to 32% for
families earning over $250,000 a year. He would consequently
arbitrarily punish these families with an effective real return from
Social Security of less than 0%, while making only a minor dent in the
long term Social Security deficit.
* Obama would reinstate the death tax (estate tax) now being phased out
under current law, with a top tax rate of 45%.
* The Obama health plan includes a new payroll tax on employers to pay
for health insurance.
* Obama would impose several specified tax increases on corporations,
including a new so-called windfall profits tax on oil companies.
* Obama's protectionist trade policies would mean higher taxes and
tariffs on trade.
* Obama tries to argue, crassly, that these tax increases would fall
only on "the rich." The tax increasers always start by saying
that. But they always end up reaching down towards the middle
class because that is where the big money is. The federal income
tax was adopted almost 100 years ago with the promise it would only tax
"the rich."
Moreover, the answer to Rick Warren's question as to who the rich are is
small business employers who create most of the jobs, and investors who
finance the jobs. Raising taxes on them ends up hurting the middle
class and working people the most in terms of lost jobs, lower wages,
and a weaker economy, discussed further
HERE.
Taxes
A health care mandate is not the only new regulation that
Obama wants to impose. For example, he would require businesses to
pay an undefined "living wage." He would require paid "family and
medical leave." He would regulate mortgages and credit card interest
rates. He would impose a host of environmental and labor restrictions.
The net cost of this regulatory burden almost certainly will be higher
unemployment and greater poverty.
And it's not just businesses that would feel the regulatory hand of an
Obama presidency. Consumers too will have to pay, as he imposes new
costs on products ranging from homes to automobiles and appliances. In
almost everything we do, Obama sees a need for the government to
intervene.
A President Obama would mean a much bigger, more intrusive, and costlier
government. Indeed, when considering his policies, one searches in vain
for any break with liberal orthodoxy. Personal accounts for Social
Security? Entitlement reform? School choice? Obama rejects them all,
calling such proposals, "Social Darwinism."
Taxes
10 Things You Need to Know About Senator Obama’s Tax
Proposals
if you have a retirement account, work in or shop at a small business,
are close or in retirement, or even flip on a light switch, then there
are a few things that you should consider.
Under that plan:
1. Small main street businesses would be forced to pay tax rates as high
as 62.3% under Senator Obama’s tax proposals.
2. Senator Obama’s tax plan would tax small businesses at a higher rate
than Wal-Mart!
3. Taxes on retirement income and savings could increase by at least
33%, hitting millions of seniors when they need these resources the
most.
4. 4 million workers over the age of 50 -- those eagerly looking forward
to retirement -- would be hit with increased tax bills.
5. Millions of Americans would only keep 38 cents of every dollar that
they earn.
6. Senator Obama’s tax plan would reduce the after tax wages of millions
of workers by 17.7%.
7. It will take 227 days per year, nearly 8 months, just to pay your tax
bill!
8. 97,065 carpenters, 110,908 police officers, 254,992 nurses, 208,562
postsecondary teachers and 237,000 dentists would see tax increases, if
the earnings cap was successfully eliminated.
9. 10.3 million workers would see an average of $5,650 taken from their
paycheck and given to government programs.
Barack Obama’s
belief that we should treat terrorists as nothing more than common
criminals demonstrates a stunning and alarming misunderstanding of the
threat we face from radical Islamic extremism. Obama holds up the
prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993
as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of
treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than
a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the
tragedy of September 11th. This is change that will take us back
to the failed policies of the past and every American should find this
mindset troubling.
When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system
works against terrorists, he means it satisfies
his top concern: due process. And on that score, he’s quite
right. We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the
terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the
taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in
discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials,
appeals, and habeas corpus.
A successful counterterrorism strategy makes criminal prosecution a
subordinate part of a much broader governmental response. Most of
what is needed never happens in a courtroom. It happens in
military operations against terrorist strongholds; intelligence
operations in which jihadists get assassinated -- without trial;
intelligence collections in which we cozy up to despicable informants
since only they can tell us what we need to know; and aggressive
treasury actions to trace terror funds.
Terrorism
This week, Obama claimed, again, that he'd promptly capture Osama
bin Laden. OK, tell us, how?
Specifically, which concrete measures would he take that haven't been
taken? How would he force our intelligence agencies to locate bin
Laden? And he can't just respond, "That's classified."
He also claimed that fighting terrorism is a law-enforcement problem,
not a military one (should we send the NYPD to Mosul and Kandahar?), and
that the answer to terrorism is the approach taken after the 1993 World
Trade Center attack, featuring conventional trials and prison terms.
That flaccid post-'93 response only encouraged terrorists -- who are
unfazed by the prospect of a US prison, where the quality of life's
better than it was at home. The Clinton administration's hesitancy
and softness gave us the subsequent attacks on the Khobar Towers housing
complex in Saudi Arabia, on our embassies in East Africa, on the USS
Cole and, ultimately, the events of 9/11.
The senator needs to tell us why it would be different now.
Obama flip-flops again, by joining fellow senators in
passing new wiretapping measure.
The Senate easily approved legislation to overhaul government
eavesdropping rules in terrorism and espionage cases and effectively
granted immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in a
secret domestic spying program, ending a contentious debate that has
raged for more than two years.
Among the 69 senators who voted "yes" on final passage was Barack Obama
(Ill.), who had opposed the immunity provision in earlier
versions of the wiretapping bill, a rewrite of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee said revisions had alleviated his concerns, but
Sen. John McCain's campaign -- and many on the left -- seized on the
reversal as a flip-flop of the first order.
"He's willing to change positions, break campaign commitments and
undermine his own words in his quest for higher office," said Tucker
Bounds, a spokesman for the Arizona Republican.
Terrorism
If terrorists are entitled to U.S. Constitutional rights, are U.S.
soldiers going to be turned into police officers, subject to reading
terrorists their Miranda rights and providing them with attorneys
overseas if requested? We cannot treat fighting terrorism as a
"law enforcement" matter. Barack Obama's motto should be,
"Extremism we can believe in."
Some time has now passed for the public to digest the Supreme Court’s
Guantanamo Bay ruling, as well as the candidate’s statements on the
ruling. Obama praised it and pointed to the prosecutions of the
original World Trade Center bombers in regular federal district court as
a model for the government to follow now.
Last weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe.
Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an
American-European partnership to defeat terrorism.
In Paris, he said that "terrorism cannot be solved by any one country
alone," and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he
expressed hope that Europeans and Americans "can join in a new and
global partnership to dismantle the networks" of terrorists worldwide.
But there’s
one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership
with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news
media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist
Europeans, both groups are quite serious about protecting citizens by
working together.
Agreements between the United States and Europe, like the Declaration on
Combating Terrorism and the Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance
Treaty, have helped enormously. And for years, NATO, the Group of
8 industrialized nations, and other multilateral organizations have
contributed as well.
In 2004, J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for
counterterrorism, testified about the success of these partnerships
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European
affairs. Had Senator Obama, who now heads that subcommittee, read
the transcripts from the meeting, which took place before he came to
office, or had he held a similar hearing, he might have known that the
partnerships he called for last week already exist.
After years of investment and sacrifice, Americans and Europeans deserve
accurate information about our efforts to defeat international
terrorism, especially from a prospective commander in chief.
Terrorism
As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama
sketched the broad outlines of a plan to close the detention center
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: try detainees in American courts and
reject the Bush administration’s military commission system.
Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for
Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the
fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They
include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how
many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama
transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are
acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?
That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human
rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election.
Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with
terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority
for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to
release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.
The transition team won't even acknowledge that they're even discussing
the issue? Hundreds of terrorists' could be released from Gitmo
upon the inauguration of the junior Illinois Senator and they want us to
believe they're not even discussing it?
Terrorism
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George
Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the
Islamist organization, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to
open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US
intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the
Bushpresidency's ostracizing of the group. The state department
has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and in 2006, Congress
passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
The Guardian
has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the
Obama camp.
WASHINGTON -- President-elect Obama says his
policy on terrorism strategy will beto uphold
high ideals.
That's
the whole story!
That's going to work well against an enemy who
cuts people into pieces and blows up pizza parlors.
Transition
Obama transition
guidelines would prevent Obama from working in the White House.
Obama's transition team is looking for about 8,000 employees and
candidates are submitting their applications via his website.
To be considered for a position with the Obama Administration,
applicant's finances will be closely examined and they may also be
subject to a background check by the FBI.
It's ironic. Obama, who has been in the close company of communists
since the age of 11, a self-admitted cocaine and marijuana abuser who once ran his credit cards up so high that the credit card company
denied him access to further use of his card, would not be able to meet
the requirements to work on the Obama White House staff.
Rules don't apply to the Obamamessiah.
Voter
Fraud
Out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters
-- received absentee ballots
Michelle Malkin
reports on an entire houseful (photo)
of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue
address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure
absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances -- all while
mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee
and early voting. The activists are leaders of a group called "Vote
From Home ‘08." The group is self-identified as having
"extensive experience with political organizing, election
administration, and Democratic politics." They were hailed as the
"Justice League" by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page
brags: "Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing
state? Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded
by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and
tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House.
Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement
around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking
to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide."
Palestra.net, a network of young
reporters who have been doing the voter and registration fraud reporting
that the MSM has been slow to do, have a breaking investigative report
on how several members of the Democrat Vote From Home team -- all
Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars studying abroad --
are turning up on Franklin County voter rolls despite having no bona
fide residence in Ohio and admittedly having little to no knowledge
about the state before descending on it in August to sign up other new
voters in a rush to put 10,000 Obama supporters on the rolls.
Waterboarding
Gateway Pundit
reports that a former intelligence agent says the waterboarding of
Abu Zubaydah got him to talk in less than 35 seconds. The technique,
which critics say is torture, probably disrupted "dozens" of planned
al-Qaida attacks and saved hundreds and thousands of lives.
Waterboarding works.
But, Barack Obama said today on ABC's "This
Week" program that waterboarding is torture and that he is not ruling
out prosecution of Bush officials for interrogation crimes.
In
the interview, Obama criticized Vice President Dick Cheney for his
public defense of "extraordinary" interrogation methods used against top
terrorism suspects, including simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
"Vice President Cheney, I think, continues to defend what he
calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to
interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture," Obama said.
"I have said that under my administration we will not torture."
Many special operations units
in all branches of the U.S. military employ the use of waterboarding as
part of survival school (SERE) training. Will Obama end this
training too?
The co-chair of Barack Obama’s Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett,
appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an
interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing
in January when he’s officially sworn into office. She
