"Hillary Camp Assails Obama Anti-Palin Ad

Friday, October 31, 2008 1:59 PM

By: Dave Eberhart
Source NewsMax.com

"Hillary Clinton supporters and Women for McCain leadership are slamming Barack Obama’s new ad, titled “His Choice,” as sexist and demeaning to women for its depiction of running mate Sarah Palin.

The ad features a McCain quote about relying on his vice president for economic advice — and then shows an unrelated clip of Palin winking mischievously at the camera.

The implication: She’s less than a person to be taken seriously.

****** [ VIDEO ] *******   http://newsmax.com/insidecover/palin_mccain_obama/2008/10/31/146399.html

“It’s a sexist example of reducing a woman to an object — a wink — and denying her a voice. Her lips are actually moving, but she’s not allowed to be heard,” says Stephanie Bressler, a Hillary Clinton supporter and women and politics professor at the University of Scranton.

Bressler is not alone in her umbrage over the ad.

Christine Toretti, co-chair of Pennsylvania Women for McCain, said, “God forbid a leader is not only competent, but beautiful and wears a skirt!”

And Judy Singleton, co-chair of Indiana Women for McCain, said: “To imply that Governor Palin doesn’t understand economics because she’s pretty and winks is ridiculous.”

Such objections are echoing throughout the country, so much so that the McCain-Palin campaign released the following statements Friday from former Clinton supporters and Women for McCain leaders reacting to the ad:

Virginia:

Judy Black, national co-chair of Women for McCain: “Enough is enough! Senator Obama has stooped to a new low in his constant attacks on Governor Palin . . . Barack Obama’s choice has been to attack, demean and ridicule women, first Senator Clinton and now Governor Palin.

“American women do not need any more of Obama’s sexist choices or attacks. John McCain made the choice to put a strong leader with a proven record forward as his running mate. As a woman, I am outraged by the over-the-top treatment of Governor Palin, and I urge all women to reject the double standard put forward by a man who was just a state senator in Illinois three years ago by voting McCain-Palin this Tuesday.”

Patty Denton, Washington County Republican chairwoman: “We, as a country, should be past the days in which women were treated as inferior. Women are the backbone of this country. It’s disappointing for Senator Obama, who has proclaimed change’ as his mantra, to disregard the monumental progress women have made in this country.

“Governor Palin is an exceptional leader and has fought on the side of all Americans, regardless of race or gender. These types of ads show that the Obama campaign is willing to do anything to score a few political cheap shots at the expense of women. On November 4th, women will go to the polls and demand respect for themselves and their daughters from the type of negative attacks perpetrated by Senator Obama.”

Missouri:

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson: “With more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined, Governor Sarah Palin holds her own on the national scene and embodies the values that Americans want in those who will lead our country. This ad is just one more example of the constant attacks from the Obama-Biden campaign. With each attack, they attempt to dismiss the intelligent, qualified, and experienced woman who will soon become our next vice president.”

Sharon Barnes, state chair of Women for McCain: “These attacks . . . show the desperation of the Democratic Party to try to stem the overwhelming support for the maverick Republican team of John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin — a team dedicated to bringing about the right kind of change for the people of this country.

“The voters of this great nation will not be fooled. Governor Palin is a proven leader and serious reformer with experience in economics, defense and foreign policy that the Democratic candidate for president can only wish he had.”

California:

Shelly Mandell, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women: “I am outraged by the new ad put out by Barack Obama. It is sexist and demeaning to women. These tactics started with Hillary Clinton and continue, growing even more disgusting, with Governor Palin. I was a Hillstar for Hillary and an avid supporter. Trashing two women clearly in a sexist manner in one election is an outrage and must be identified and stopped. There must be consequences. Let female Obama supporters take a good look at this and still believe their candidate supports women’s rights and women’s dignity.”

Prameela Bartholomeusz, DNC Platform Committee member: “I am once again stunned at the personal and sexist attacks by the Obama campaign against Governor Palin. This latest ad is sexist and offensive. The governor of Alaska has been managing and balancing a budget of $10 billion; I think she knows a bit about economics.

“Senator Obama never spoke up against sexism during the primary season, and is not speaking out against misogyny during this phase of the election season. He is contributing to it. I have no confidence that Senator Obama will fight for women’s issues if elected. This sets women back decades.”

Pennsylvania:

Christine J. Toretti, Pennsylvania Women for McCain co-chair and state national committeewoman: “Vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin is an experienced public servant. As governor of Alaska and as mayor of Wasilla, she proved to be an effective leader and businesswoman. Senator Obama’s baseless attack on Governor Palin is preposterous. God forbid a leader is not only competent, but beautiful and wears a skirt!”

Bernie Comfort, state chair of Pennsylvania Women for McCain: “Senator Obama’s ad simply mocks Governor Palin. The real truth is Governor Palin has experience dealing with the economy as an executive running the state of Alaska and as a business owner. She is the experienced leader we need to lead this country with John McCain.”

Stephanie Bressler, Hillary Clinton supporter and women and politics professor at the University of Scranton: “It’s a sexist example of reducing a woman to an object — a wink — and denying her a voice. Her lips are actually moving, but she’s not allowed to be heard.”

Ohio:

Barbara Rosier-Tryon, member of the Warren Republican Women’s Club: “This is yet another sexist cheap shot . . . Sarah Palin’s record of reform and experience as governor of Alaska and commander of the state’s National Guard is more distinguished than Barack Obama’s one and only term in the U.S. Senate.”

North Carolina:

Martha Jenkins, North Carolina Women for McCain state chairwoman: “Barack Obama chose Joe Biden to make up for his own lack of foreign policy expertise. He has absolutely no reason to criticize McCain’s pick of Palin. Governor Palin is infinitely more qualified than Barack Obama.

“In running this ad, Obama is acknowledging that Governor Palin is an effective and a positive part of John McCain’s candidacy. Otherwise, why focus on her at all? Barack Obama is using this ad to divert attention from the fact that the American public is realizing that Obama is just as radical as his associates, and that he lacks the experience and judgment to be President of the United States.”

Florida:

Albert Chang, regional director of Citizens for McCain, which includes Democrats and Independents: “We look forward to winning Tampa and the surrounding counties for McCain-Palin. This ad is a distracting personal attack on an experienced executive and the voters of Florida will see through it. This campaign will remain focused on issues impacting the everyday lives of Floridians and Americans.”

Mary Calderon, Tampa, former Hillary Clinton supporter: “I’m disappointed that Senator Obama has resorted to personal attacks at this point in the campaign. Would any male candidate for vice president of the United States be afforded similar treatment by the Obama campaign? I would say not.”

Indiana:

Judy Singleton, Indiana Women for McCain co-chair: “Obama seems to have a problem with strong, smart women. Ask Hillary. Running an ad like this is an affront to talented women everywhere. To imply that Governor Palin doesn’t understand economics because she’s pretty and winks is ridiculous.

“As a governor, she’s proved she understands the economy better than Barack Obama, who hasn’t completed his first term in the Senate, does. All one has to do is look at her record of leadership on economic development and then look at his.”

New York:

Amy Siskind, ambassador for Hillary: “When Senator Hillary Clinton was demeaned and degraded during the presidential primary, many of us of, myself included, vowed ‘never again.’ The treatment of Governor Palin by both the mainstream media, and now the Obama campaign, shows that the misogyny fest is alive and well in our country. There has been a complete and utter smear job of our fellow citizen, Sarah Palin, who is only trying to serve her country.”

The Obama campaign’s ad contrasts sharply with the image that the national Women for McCain organization projects of Palin on its Web site:"

****** [  VIDEO  ] *********

http://newsmax.com/insidecover/palin_mccain_obama/2008/10/31/146399.html

"Dear Mr. Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l0AWKOFwvc

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1723950/dear_mr_obama/

Top article directly quoted from Powerlineblog.com who's been on the story at least a month.

Bottom article referenced in the Powerline piece, outlines exactly how Obama is openly soliciting fraudulent and illegal donations.

Embedded live links.

___________

"Obama Shrugged: An update

October 30, 2008 Posted by Scott at 5:57 AM

"Washington Post reporter Matthew Mosk returned to the subject of Barack Obama's online campaign fundraising yesterday in "Obama campaign using untraceable donations."  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413_pf.html  The story was published on page 2. Mosk reported in the second and third paragraphs of the story:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

Mosk is to be congratulated on getting somewhere in the vicinity of the heart of the story after his earlier. The story is an improvement over his unbelievably obtuse page-one story "Campaign finance gets new scrutiny"  this past Sunday.

Yet Mosk's story yesterday is still lacking. It fails to observe that the McCain campaign's online donation screen contributors through the use of the basic Address Verification System. On the contary, it creates the false impression that the McCain campaign is party to the same modus operandi.

Moreover, despite the implication of the Obama campaign's statement that it provides "extensive review" to donations received online, Mosk fails to note that Obama contributors using a valid credit card but a fictitious name and address cannot be effectively screened once they have been accepted. That's why the McCain campaign is using AVS security and the Obama campaign is not, but Mosk's story blurs the difference between the campaigns.

Mosk's regurgitation of the statement that the Obama campaign "has ensured that [it] has refunded any improper contributions" is ludicrous. We know, for example, that "John Galt," "Osama bin Laden," "Bill Ayers," "Saddam Hussein," "Della Ware," and "Adolfe Hitler," among many others, are still waiting for their refunds. Again, one wonders if Mosk means to be obtuse.

Mosk also relates the Obama campaign's comment "that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations." But failing to screen donors at the front end coincidentally facilitates the violation of basic federal campaign finance law. Federal campaign finance law requires donors contributing over $200 to be identified, limits donations to a total of $2,300 and prohibits foreigners from contributing.

The Obama campaign's intentional disabling of basic AVS credit card security knowingly facilitates criminal fraud and illegal contributions. Is this too difficult a concept to grasp? John Ronning, (article posted in flull below) for example, provides a step-by-step set of instructions for foreigners seeking to contribute to the Obama campaign.

One might think this story is something of a scandal, but Mosk doesn't get it. He sees no causal connection between the Obama campaign's deliberate disabling of AVS credit card security "with a with a huge influx of donations over the Internet[.]" With two-thirds of Obama's $150 million September haul having come over the Internet, you'd think it might dawn on a dogged reporter that the end might have something to do with the means.

Mosk might have asked the Obama campaign why it has chosen to continue in this manner knowing it is accepting contributions that violate federal law. Yesterday, for example, Crazy Eight from Swindler Lane made a $25 dollar donation to the Obama campaign. "It went right through to my credit card after a two-day delay," writes Mr. Eight: "No security code. No address check. No name verification. Nothing. Unbelievable."

Mr. Eight was in good company yesterday. He was joined by "Karl Marx." Our man "John Galt" writes with questions and comments that seem to have eluded Matthew Mosk:

Given the bad PR and the additional cost for all their CC transactions, why is the AVS still turned off? This story first broke in the blogs in a big way last Wednesday, and the MSM starting asking the Obama campaign about it by the end of the week.

So the Obama campaign surely knows the basic facts of the story and its potential liability -- that they don't have even the most basic security measures initiated at their website. Just to cover their butts, don't you think they would have turned those features back on? So they can claim, "Yes, we discovered the issue and have rectified it several days ago...blah, blah, blah..."?

So, I tested the system, yet again, this morning with the same credit card - this time with Karl Marx as the donor - and sure enough, it went through.

But why? Why would they continue to expose themselves to this potential scandal? My bet is (in spite of their claims that it's too difficult to make the info available) they know down to the penny the exact details of all their under $200 donors and the serial-CC-fraudsters and the simply can't afford to give up the money. Also, as reported here, http://outsidethecode.com/faq/non_qualified_rate.aspx   it's actually costing them more per transaction to process all their online donations. Even the ones that aren't fraudulent.

So they know this is a PR issue, and it's more expensive on a per transaction basis, yet the AVS remains disabled. I can only conclude that they know this is such a significant percentage of their overall revenue that in spite of the publicity they have to continue to allow the fraud in order to meet their budget goals. They must know just how many of those small donations are coming from fraudulent sources, and if they turn the security on it could drastically impact those $150 million donation months.

If they did publicly announce that they restored the security features and a big drop in the fundraising figures ensued, it would only confirm all the fraud up to that point. Meaning, if the fundraising reports were to show a big drop in CC transactions after they turned the AVS back on, it would be evidence of the crime.

The sophisticated gentlemen running the Obama campaign know exactly what they are doing. "John Galt" has caught on. Matthew Mosk doesn't quite get it, but at least he's making a show of trying. It's more than can be said of his illustrious colleagues in the MSM.

UPDATE: You can see the importance of the MSM's averted eyes on this story as you observe how Obama spins Charlie Gibson. Mark Steyn comments here.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021924.php

_________

"How Foreign Liberals (and Jihadi's for that matter) Can Contribute Illegally to the Obama Campaign

[UPDATE: A friend alerted  me to this Newsmax article which details extensive illegal donations to Obama by foreigners]

It’s pretty easy — all you need is a credit card (foreign card is OK), a phony name, phony US address, phony telephone number, and just keep each contribution less than $200 so your illegal contribution never needs to be reported.  As a foreigner you can even give more than Americans are allowed to legally contribute, by just using a different phony name each time you contribute, so that your contributions are never tallied, thus never exceed the limit.

And of course American supporters of Obama can also contribute more than the legal limit by following the same procedure.

Not to mention the fact that you can easily steal someone else's credit card number and contribute through it, not needing the correct name etc. (yes it has happened), and just hope the victim doesn't notice it. 

Last Friday I read on various web sites (e.g. NRO) that the Obama campaign was facilitating illegal credit card contributions by disabling standard security verification procedures. Normally, a credit card payment is rejected if the name you give does not match the name on the card. Duh. Not so the Obama campaign. I said to myself, "If Americans can do this, I wonder if foreigners could too?" I’m a US citizen, but I have lived in South Africa for the last ten years and have a foreign credit card, from a South African bank. So I googled the Obama campaign web site and used my foreign credit card to contribute $5 (the minimum accepted) to his campaign. Sure enough, my account was charged $5 (54 Rand) on Monday. I assume that if I could do it, all those French who want Obama to be president could do it too.

Money translates into votes, because propaganda is effective, including obvious lies which are endlessly repeated.

Here, then, are the step by step instructions for fraudulently contributing to the Obama campaign, and participating in the mother of all campaign swindles:

Go to the Obama web site, find the page where contributions are accepted (I won’t link to it, but it’s not hard to find).

Listen to Obama’s spiel which automatically plays, telling you that since he’s not taking money from PAC’s or Lobbyists (nothing about foreigners), he’s depending upon you to contribute.

Fill in the name, address, etc., according to your imagination. Nothing needs to be correct except the credit card number. I used the name "Good Guess", a phony address etc., and got the message that my donation was accepted; three days later the money was charged to my account. During those three days a couple of mainstream newspapers did some whitewashing work for Obama, failing to make clear the deliberateness of Obama’s disabling of standard security checks to prevent credit card fraud, failing to point out the obvious, that you cannot get away with such fraud on the McCain/Palin web site, etc.

Next I had the opportunity to have Obama e-mail my friends, inviting them to follow my example. I had them send an e-mail from "Good Guess" to one of my e-mail addresses, and a short time later the e-mail arrived.

I know from experience that the Obama web site could be set up to automatically detect if it is being accessed from a foreign country (South Africa, in my case). I know from experience that it could be set up to reject foreign credit cards, even if the names and addresses were correct (for example, I cannot use my American credit card for certain transactions in South Africa).

And by the way, you can also contribute to Obama anonymously through those pre-paid credit cards you buy at the drug store. 

As another Republican candidate said 12 years ago, "Where is the outrage?"

P.S. I am asking for my money back. "

 Documentation:

Here is a screen shot of Obama’s "thanks" for my contribution.

Here is a screen shot of the e-mail I got from the Obama campaign, soliciting me to join in this fraudulent enterprise.

Here is a screen shot of my online bank statement (personal names blacked out). "

http://postbiblical.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=32

"Murtha pleas for $1 million after racism comments 
By Roxana Tiron 
Posted: 10/30/08 01:53 PM [ET]

Source TheHill.com 

"Veteran Democratic Rep. John Murtha (Pa.) has sent out a last-minute plea for $1 million to save his hotly contested seat, endangered by his own remarks describing his district as racist.

In an e-mail sent to potential donors, Murtha’s campaign asked his supporters to maximize all campaign contributions.

“We need to raise another $1 million to compete,” his campaign fundraiser Susan O’Neill wrote in the e-mail obtained by The Hill. “We need money immediately.”

O’Neill blamed Republicans from outside Pennsylvania for Murtha’s problems. Polls show Murtha, running for his 18th term, ahead of his GOP opponent by just a few percentage points.

“Congressman Murtha is in a brutal reelection campaign,” O’Neill wrote. “The Swift Boaters have put up a candidate from Virginia and have raised millions of dollars against Congressman Murtha. In addition, other 527s and the [National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)] have spent millions to smear Congressman Murtha on TV, radio and in newspapers.”

Murtha’s race appeared to tighten after he called his western Pennsylvania district a “racist area.” After apologizing, he added more fuel to the fire by saying the district was, until recently, “really redneck.”

Murtha’s comments have been widely repeated, and the congressman was even parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

In a fundraising e-mail sent on Thursday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) asked her own supporters to help Murtha. “In Pennsylvania, my good friend John Murtha — a strong supporter for me during the primaries and an important voice against the war in Iraq — is depending on your help to win,” Clinton wrote.

GOP challenger William Russell, a 46-year-old Iraq war veteran and retired Army colonel, has outraised Murtha so far. As of Oct. 15, Russell had raised $2.9 million compared to Murtha’s $2.2 million.

Political action committees can donate up to $5,000 to candidates, while individuals may donate up to $2,300.

Murtha, a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), is a welcome target for Republicans, who otherwise are headed toward what appears to be a gloomy election night.

Russell moved from Virginia to run for Congress because of Murtha's criticisms of the Iraq war. Murtha’s comments about western Pennsylvania being racist have emboldened Republicans to give last-minute help to Russell.

Murtha, a decorated war veteran, first won his seat in a 1974 special election by a little more than 100 votes.

The NRCC this week bought a television ad that highlighted Murtha’s remarks. Separately, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) accused Murtha in a radio spot of “insulting his own constituents” and “apparently forgetting who he works for.”

Murtha is the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee. He has been very successful in the federal earmarking process, ranking as the highest recipient of earmarks in the defense appropriations bill.

His earmarks have revitalized Johnstown, the largest city in his district, and defense companies have opened offices and facilities throughout the region he represents. "

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/murtha-pleas-for-1-million-after-racism-comments-2008-10-30.html

Oblivious to the obvious.

__________________

__________

"Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate
How Parliament passed the Climate Bill
By Andrew Orlowski

Source The Register

29th October 2008 12:35 GMT

"Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday - the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session.

In order to combat a projected two degree centigrade rise in global temperature, the Climate Change Bill pledges the UK to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The bill was receiving a third reading, which means both the last chance for both democratic scrutiny and consent.

The bill creates an enormous bureaucratic apparatus for monitoring and reporting, which was expanded at the last minute. Amendments by the Government threw emissions from shipping and aviation into the monitoring program, and also included a revision of the Companies Act (c. 46) "requiring the directors’ report of a company to contain such information as may be specified in the regulations about emissions of greenhouse gases from activities for which the company is responsible" by 2012.

Recently the American media has begun to notice the odd incongruity of saturation media coverage here which insists that global warming is both man-made and urgent, and a British public which increasingly doubts either to be true. 60 per cent of the British population now doubt the influence of humans on climate change, and more people than not think Global Warming won't be as bad "as people say".

Both figures are higher than a year ago - and the poll was taken before the non-summer of 2008, and the (latest) credit crisis.

Yet anyone looking for elected representatives to articulate these concerns will have been disappointed. Instead, representatives had a higher purpose - demonstrating their virtue. And for the first 90 minutes of the marathon debate, the new nobility outdid each other with calls for tougher pledges, or stricter monitoring. Gestures are easy, so no wonder MPs like making them so much.

It was all deeply sanctimonious, but no one pointed out that Europe's appetite for setting targets that hurt the economy has evaporated in recent weeks - so it's a gesture few countries will feel compelled to imitate.

The US Senate has Senator James Inhofe, but in the Commons, there wasn't an out-and-out sceptic to be found. It was 90 minutes before anyone broke the liturgy of virtue. When Peter Lilley, in amazement, asked why there hadn't been a cost/benefit analysis made of such a major change in policy, he was told to shut up by the Deputy Speaker. "...........

...."However, Tim Yeo, the perma-suntanned Tory backbencher who wants us to carry carbon rationing cards, said it would "improve Britain's competitiveness". He didn't say how.  "
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/29/commons_climate_change_bill/

"The Great Obama Swindle of 2008

By Raymond Kraft
Source Family Security Matters

"PART ONE
OBAMA: THE ILLEGAL ALIEN

"I have become 100% convinced, to a moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barack Obama is not only not a "natural born citizen" as required by the U.S. Constitution to be president, but that he was not even born in the USA, not born in Hawaii, probably in Kenya, never naturalized. If he is elected, he will be the UnConstitutional President from the moment he takes the oath of office, the first president who is not a citizen of the United States.

Why I am so sure?

I was not convinced by the lawsuits filed by Philip Berg, Andy Martin, Jerome Corsi, and others seeking disclosure of Obama's birth certificate. I was not convinced by the books and articles that now abound contesting Obama's origins. I was convinced by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, asking the governor of Hawaii to seal Obama's birth certificate so it could not be seen, by anyone, and by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, sealing his records at Columbia University and Harvard Law. Barack Obama is hiding himself from America. And he wants to be POTUS, and Commander-in-Chief.

In the litigation business, one quickly learns that if somebody has a document that will be good for them, they can't wait to give it to you. And if somebody has a document that will hurt them, they'll be tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago to keep you from getting it.

Obama is tap dancing.

If I were Obama's lawyers, and if there was a good, authentic, birth certificate that proved Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii, I would tell him to instruct the Hawaiian Department of Health to provide a certified copy to every journalist who asked about it, to the Courts and plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, and to make the original available for inspection by any expert forensic document examiner any litigant or news agency engaged to examine the birth certificate for authenticity. I would tell him to come clean, and end the speculation. And I would tell him that the speculation could cost him the election.

But that's not what Obama's lawyers are doing, they're filling motions for summary judgment, not on the merits of the case, but on "technicalities," at least in the Berg case, arguing that Citizens, voters, do not have standing to enforce the United States Constitution, and at least one judge, Richard Barclay Surrick, has agreed.

But what Obama and his lawyers and the Democrat National Committee (DNC) are not doing is being open and honest with America. They're tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago. So we are forced to this conclusion as a matter of logical necessity:

1.    If Barack Obama could produce a good birth certificate that would verify his status as a "natural born citizen," he would. Failing to do so can only hurt him. Failing to do so can cost him the election.

2.    He hasn't, and is doing all possible not to.

3.    Therefore, we can only conclude that he can't, and that his birth certificate, if it exists at all, is either altered, forged, or shows him born outside the U.S. We have to conclude that producing his birth certificate, if he can, will prove he is not eligible to be president, not a natural born citizen, or not a citizen at all. We can only conclude that Obama and his lawyers know that producing his birth records will hurt him even more than not producing them.

Now, I could be wrong. Barack Obama can prove me wrong by producing a good birth certificate. But he hasn't. Will he? Can he?

PART TWO
NO "STANDING" TO SUE?

In the case of Berg v. Obama, US Federal Judge Richard Barclay Surrick agreed with Obama's lawyers and ruled that Berg, as a citizen, as a voter, has no "standing" to enforce the United States Constitution. I have read that other agencies have asserted that only another presidential candidate has standing to sue respecting the qualifications of a candidate, presumably because, arguendo, only another presidential candidate could be injured (lose an election) as a result of a non-qualified candidate on the ballot.

This may be the most patently absurd, illogical, incomprehensible, astonishing, mind-boggling, and utterly stupid argument I have ever heard in my life – and from a Federal Judge, at that. And if I didn't make myself perfectly clear, let me know and I'll try again.

Let's do the analysis.

1.    The U.S. Constitution is a CONTRACT between The People, The States, and The United States, the federal government, that defines and limits the role of the federal government, and the rights of the States and The People, and, among other things, defines and limits the qualifications for president, i.e., that the president must be over the age of 35 years, and must be a natural born citizen.

2.    Any party to a CONTRACT has standing to enforce it. This is as basic as it gets. Contract Law 101. First week of law school stuff. And it seems that lawyers and judges all over the country have forgotten all about it. Also, the Constitution was intended to benefit all American citizens, We, The People, and in basic contract law the intended beneficiaries of a CONTRACT, i.e., us, also have standing to enforce it.

3.    If We, The People, do not have standing to enforce the CONTRACT, the U.S. Constitution, then it is unenforceable, and if it is unenforceable it is just a historic curiosity that means nothing. It’s just an old piece of parchment. But that was not the intent, and to give intent to the CONTRACT it must be enforceable by its parties and beneficiaries.

4.    We, The People, have standing under the First Amendment "to petition the government for redress of grievances." If we have a grievance that a non-citizen, illegal alien, is running for president, I think the First Amendment unequivocally gives every American citizen standing to sue the government to redress that grievance and enforce the Constitution.

I think Judge Richard Barclay Surrick is dead wrong, illogically wrong, irrationally wrong, legally wrong, I think his legal analysis of this issue, in legalese, stinks.

PART THREE
THE DUTY OF CONGRESS

Article II, Section 1, requires that upon taking office the President of the United States shall take the following oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the
United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States."

Article VI, Clause 3, requires that Senators and Representatives requires:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution . . ."

Members of Congress take this oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Having taken this oath, Sen. Barack Obama has violated his oath of office if he is refusing to disclose a birth certificate that proves his candidacy for president is unconstitutional, and I believe this is a mandatory basis for his impeachment.

Having taken these oaths, the President, the Vice President (an executive officer of the United States), every member of the Senate and House, every member of every State legislature, and every executive and judicial officers of the United States and of each State, has a mandatory duty per Article VI Clause 3 of the US Constitution to "support and defend" the Constitution, and that would necessarily include taking whatever action is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President.

And every Federal Judge, and every Justice of the Supreme Court, having taken this oath, also have a mandatory duty to "protect and defend" the Constitution by doing whatever is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President. Indeed, I believe that the Supreme Court has a sua sponte duty to resolve this dispute by ordering, on its own initiative, the immediate production of all of Obama's birth records in order to confirm his place of birth, and prevent the election of an UnConstitutional President. So far, all Justices of the Supreme Court have failed this mandatory duty.

So far, the President, the Vice President, every member of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, ever Federal Judge and Justice, every member of every State legislature, and every governor, have failed in this duty. They have all failed to fulfill their oaths of office. Every one. They must all demand that Sen. Barack Obama either (a) produce a good birth certificate proving his status as a "natural born citizen," or (b) withdraw his candidacy before November 4th.

All those who do not should be impeached for having failed their oath of office.

PART FOUR
THE GREATEST SWINDLE IN HISTORY

If Senator Barack Hussein Obama cannot prove that he is a "natural born citizen," then Obama, the Democrat National Committee, the Democrats in the Senate and House who support him, and others such as former president Bill Clinton who openly support him, have perpetrated the greatest swindle in history by falsely and fraudulently misrepresenting Obama as Constitutionally eligible to be president, concealing the truth about his place of birth, thereby inducing millions of Democrats by the fraud of concealment, by the lie of non-disclosure, by "trick and device," to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Barack Obama presidential campaign to elect an UnConstitutional President.

My opinion.

Note, this is a fraud perpetrated by Sen. Barack Obama, the DNC, and hundreds of Democrats in Congress, on their own constituency, the Democrat voters of America. It is a fraud of the Democrats, by the Democrats, and perpetrated on the Democrats. And it has defrauded Democrats out of more than $600 million.

According to their oaths of office, every Democrat member of Congress has an affirmative duty to assure that their presidential candidate is constitutionally qualified. As soon as questions about Obama's birth arose, every Democrat in Congress had a mandatory duty to confirm his eligibility by demanding release of his birth records. But, they have not. Not to my knowledge. Instead, every Democrat in Congress is complicit in the cover up – the cover up – of Obama's birth certificate, by failing to demand full disclosure to confirm his place of birth.

In my opinion, unless Obama can produce a good birth certificate proving that he is a "natural born citizen," then every Democrat member of Congress, every person managing Obama's campaign, every officer and director of the Democrat National Commitee, and every person who has ever taken an oath to "support and defend" the Constitution and is now supporting an UnConstitutional candidate for president, has participated in a vast left-wing conspiracy to defraud millions of Democrats out of hundreds of millions of dollars to elect an UnConstitutional President.

In my opinion, every one of these people, hundreds of them, should be prosecuted for fraud under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), for if Obama is not a "natural born citizen," that is what the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has become. And every one of them should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for decades, for this is a $600 billion swindle of America's Democrats, a swindle perpetrated by the DNC and Barack Obama.

Now, I could be wrong. I could be wrong about every opinion I have expressed here.

Sen. Barack Hussein Obama can prove me wrong, quickly, simply, easily, by opening the doors of the hospitals and the Hawaiian Department of Health and showing us, showing America, showing the Democrats, all of his birth records.

Unless and until he does, I will remain convinced that Barack Hussein Obama is not an American citizen."

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney and writer in Northern California. He can be contacted at [email protected]. "
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1614/pub_detail.asp

Came in email. 

_______________

"YouTube - 1 More B4 11 04

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvc0tYG_YpA

Editorial Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Source Investors.com

http://www.investors.com/editorial/cartoon.asp

"The Obama campaign says it has "no ties" to ACORN, a ludicrous assertion given that the campaign has disclosed to the FEC a payment of $800,000 to ACORN's subsidiary, Citizens Services Inc. The depth of the relationship between the Obama campaign and ACORN was revealed today when a former ACORN staffer testified in a lawsuit brought by the Pennsylvania Republican Party:

A former staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified today that the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts.

Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.

Moncrief testified that ACORN and Project Vote were virtually identical.

So the Obama campaign gave ACORN a list of donors who had given the maximum allowable contributions to Obama and urged ACORN to contact those donors to get them to help Obama some more by contributing to ACORN.

There's nothing wrong with that, except that 1) ACORN is the country's number one source of voter registration fraud, and 2) the relationship between the Obama campaign and ACORN, which Obama insists is non-existent, is in fact symbiotic at a minimum.

Of course, no story of this sort would be complete without thuggish behavior by the Left:

Moncrief said she had received repeated warnings to "back off" from testifying today by people she knows at ACORN.

Hey, don't worry. In a few months these people will be running the Justice Department.

UPDATE: A little while ago, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis released this statement:

Today's testimony by a former employee of an ACORN affiliate proves Barack Obama is guilty of lying to the American people about his relationship with ACORN. At the last presidential debate, in front of sixty million people, Barack Obama said his campaign was not involved' with ACORN. We now know that Barack Obama's campaign was working hand-in-glove with an organization reportedly under investigation by the F.B.I. and in more than a dozen states. In addition to funneling $832,000 to ACORN for get-out-the-vote efforts, the Obama campaign and ACORN have been sharing donor lists, encouraging maxed-out Obama donors to contribute to this unethical organization."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021917.php

"OBAMA VIDEO VAULT: Always Late For Work... via Drudge

"Obama Late To Hearings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah9W24oMIRc

Awesome video.

Barack Obama promotes and encourages a mindset of POVERTY CONSCIOUSNESS

......... which is the total opposite of Law of Attraction also of FAITH and BELIEF both of which are the heart of all religous texts handed down through time.

______________

"The Redistribution of Wealth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A11h9xP9jvY&feature=related

"Smearing Joe the Plumber

Posted by John at 10:50 PM

Source Powerlineblog.com 

"Barack Obama reminds me a bit of John Gotti. Obama is no murderer, of course, but here is the analogy: John Gotti (before his incarceration) was a well-dressed, genial, smooth-talking guy. Not a visible threat in sight. But if you crossed him, his thugs were very quickly at your door.

Likewise with Barack Obama. He is always at pains to seem high-minded, but his tactics are anything but. If you cross him, his goons, too, are sure to retaliate, albeit in less deadly fashion than Gotti's.

The case of Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is an object lesson in how Obama and his supporters try to destroy anyone who even inadvertently gets in their way. Once Wurzelbacher was thrust into the limelight after Obama approached him in his driveway, Democrats swung into action to try to discredit the plumber by ransacking records on file with the State of Ohio. These efforts--the ones that have come to light so far--are recounted in the Columbus Dispatch:

Authorities in Toledo and Cleveland confirmed today that workers accessed Wurzelbacher's driving record and vehicle information through state computer systems in checks uncovered by The Dispatch. ...

The Toledo Police Department announced that a records clerk improperly pulled Wurzelbacher's information on behalf of a reporter for a Toledo television station the day after the Oct. 15 presidential debate. ...

Altogether, the Dispatch identifies four separate violations of Wurzelbacher's privacy by Democrats in Ohio's state bureaucracy who improperly accessed his records, hoping to find information helpful to the Obama campaign. This is the worst one:

Inspector General Thomas P. Charles also is investigating why the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services approved a check on Wurzelbacher through the state's child-support computer system.

Director Helen Jones-Kelley said that after a "team meeting," she OK'd the check because the department often runs inquiries to check for unpaid child support on people thrust into "the public spotlight."

Is that disgusting, or what? They actually held a "team meeting" to decide to spy on Wurzelbacher on Obama's behalf. As it happens, Wurzelbacher doesn't pay child support, but they apparently thought there was no harm in checking. The Director of the Department of Job and Family Services denies that she was trying to help Obama:

Jones-Kelley said there were no political motivations behind the check. The Democratic appointee has contributed the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Democrats often purport to be concerned about privacy rights, but those claims are about as credible as their claim to be tax-cutters. "

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021908.php

"Did The "Chicago Way" Work for Obama in Hawaii?

Joan Swirsky

Source Right Side News

"As I speculated in a recent article, Obama had a dual purpose in leaving his campaign for Hawaii. And whaddaya know? His plane had barely touched down from his trip to Honolulu - ostensibly to visit his ailing granny - when the Republican governor of the Aloha State, Linda Lingle, placed his birth certificate under seal, directed the state's Department of Health to bar access of the document to the press, and declared that the only people eligible to obtain it were the person born or someone acting on his behalf, a relative, or a legal guardian.

So did Obama request the document, the better to resolve the question of his eligibility to be president? With less than a week to go before the election - and with attorney Philip J. Berg's lawsuit questioning that eligibility on the way to the Supreme Court - we still haven't seen Obama's birth certificate!

The peculiar events of the last week leave more questions than answers.

If Lingle sealed Obama's birth certificate, then there is indeed a record of his birth in Hawaii. But as The Obama Nation author Jerome Corsi writes, there is still no answer about "whether the original document...was a hospital-generated birth certificate or a registration of birth that may have been filed subsequent to the birth." In other words, we still don't know if Obama was born in Hawaii or on foreign soil.

Corsi says that in Honolulu's downtown library, he found a published notice in the Honolulu Advertiser: August 13, 1961..."Mr. and Mrs. Barack II Obama. 6085 Kalanianaole-Hwy, son, Aug. 4." But the notice "does not list the hospital where the Obama son was born or the doctor who delivered the baby." Further, Corsi was told by government authorities in Kenya that "all documents concerning Obama were under seal until after the U.S. presidential election on November 4."

We have to wonder what took place between Lingle and Obama, and/or one of his representatives, to compel her at this late date to seal a document that is the very prerequisite of eligibility to be President of the United States.

The Chicago Way?

Was Lingle on the receiving end of "gentle persuasion"? You know the kind, where a political operative "suggests" that damning information will be kept under wraps for, say, a little bit of "cooperation."

Did Jimmy Hoffa's name come up?

Or did the Obama camp simply appeal to Lingle's sense of "decorum" and "decency"? You know the kind, where the revelation of a deep-dark secret could "embarrass my family, so let's not go there."

Suffice it to say that whatever "way" Obama had with Lingle, it did the trick. Like an operative on his payroll, she walked the walk and talked the talk he wanted her to.

What Is He Hiding?

Here's one plausible scenario, maybe to be revealed in the third of Obama's seemingly endless autobiographies. Obama learns - perhaps in his youth, perhaps later - that his mother's marriage to B. H. Obama, Sr., was unhappy. She has an affair with longtime family friend, Frank Marshall Davis, and gets pregnant. But she's afraid to tell her volatile husband and, besides, Marshall has five children. But Obama Sr. suspects something anyway and so whisks his wife away to his family in Kenya, where his son is born in Mombasa Hospital, a birth his Kenyan grandmother is alleged to have said she attended.

In Barack Obama's 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, he affectionately mentions an early mentor and influence, "Frank" - no last name, but later verified as Davis - who was a prolific writer, political activist in Chicago, Atlanta and - tada - Honolulu, longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and self-admitted pervert..

Interestingly, several bloggers have recently circulated pictures of Obama, Obama Sr., and Davis, allowing viewers to note the resemblance between Obama and Davis and the distinct non-resemblance between Obama and his "birth father."

Obama's birth father vanished after his 18-year-old wife had given birth, just as he had vanished while his first 18-year-old wife was pregnant. His mother subsequently met and married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro, and moved to Indonesia, where Barack Hussein Obama Jr. became Barry Soetoro.

Here the plot thickens. In August, Smithfiles.com reported that an AP story from January 2007 revealed Obama's school registration in Jakarta. The AP caption read:  "This registration document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta, Indonesia, shows the registration of Barack Obama under the name Barry Soetoro into the Catholic school made by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro. The document lists Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen, born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, and shows his Muslim step-father listed the boy's religion as Islam. (AP Photo/ Tatan Syuflana)."

See the document here  or here: http://smithfiles.com/2008/08/14/breaking-photo-documents-barry-soetoro-obama-indonesian-citizen-muslim-religion.

According to Smithfiles.com, this revelation means that:

1.    Barack Obama had Indonesian citizenship.

2.    Barack Obama had the legal name Barry Soetoro.

3.    Barack Obama was a Muslim, despite his "fight the smears" claim that he never has been.

4.    Barack Obama apparently lied to the Illinois Supreme Court when asked to provide former names, according to this Attorney's Registration Record.

Further, the website asks:

5.    Did Barack Obama travel to Pakistan in 1981 on an Indonesian passport?

6.    Does his birth certificate say Barry Soetoro?

7.    Did he ever legally change his name from Soetoro to Obama?

8.    Is the correct name on the ballot?

What is intriguing here is that the Indonesian document affirms Obama's birth in Hawaii, which you would think would make him rush to prove this fact to the public. But it also reveals a Muslim-Islam past he has vigorously denied. Which leaves us to ask: is Obama, as some have alleged, an out-and-out fraud or a pathological liar or someone infinitely more nefarious and untrustworthy than his slick persona suggests?

The Chutzpah Factor

Unanswered questions and suspect legalities aside, what equips Obama to be president? When the Illinois senator took office in November 2004, he spent a total of 143 days "on the job" - the number of days the senate was actually in session and working -before beginning his campaign for President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of America's Armed Forces, and the most powerful man in the world.

Here is what he could never become after 143 days of experience: District Manager at McDonald's, Chief of Surgery, Superintendent of Schools, a Colonel in the Army, or a nightly news anchor. Yet he and his acolytes think he's ready! As, of course, does his wife Michelle, who is perfectly in sync with her husband's campaign in taking every opportunity to ignite racial dissension.

Speaking to African Press International (API), which is based in Norway, Michelle Obama disclaimed: ""My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband's adoption by his step father."

Writes the editor of Canada Free Press Judi McLeod, "In other words, according to the overzealous, you're-all-racists wife of candidate for presidency Barack Hussein Obama, the fix is already in." 

"With an arrogance that can only be described as stunning," McLeod continues, "Michelle Obama said API would earn an invite to hubby's upcoming inauguration ceremony when he will be installed as the next President of the United States of America next year, if only they wrote a `good' story. Meanwhile, there is no doubt that without a single vote having been cast for her husband...Michelle is already off choosing her gown for his inauguration ball."

The Elephant In The Living Room

Was Obama born in Hawaii?

Was Obama born in Kenya?

Was Obama born in Indonesia?

Curious people and those who revere the United States Constitution want to know. But as lawyers, judges, investigators, journalists, and political operatives dance around those questions, the real elephant in the living room - the subject Obama and his supporters want to avoid like the plague - is the whereabouts of his birth certificate.

So, Mr. Obama, are you ready to come clean with the American people? "

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200810282366/editorial/did-the-chicago-way-work-for-obama-in-hawaii.html

Gold prices were referenced in this article.  Kitco has short term readings to short and long term charts.  http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

_________________

"Obama Billionaire Supporters Are Causing Market Headwinds

By Jason Schwarz

Source Seeking Alpha

"Market turmoil gets Barack Obama elected.  He knows this and more importantly, so do his supporters. A survey released by Prince and Associates, shows that 75% of voters worth $1 million to $10 million are favoring John McCain, but of those voters worth more than $30 million, two-thirds support Obama.  It's no secret that the majority of uber rich individuals despise the current administration and are willing to do whatever they can to get new blood into the White House; even if it comes under conditions of an economic collapse.

These Obama billionaires, led by famed market manipulator George Soros,  would love to kill two birds with one stone.  If they can get their man into the White House and buy back into the stock market at a once-in-a-generation low on November 5th they will be able to declare a double victory. 

While the billionaire's club lacks the actual resources to completely move the broad market, they definitely have the resources to start a snowball effect.  In 2005, George Soros convened with his group of 70 super-rich liberal donors in Phoenix to evaluate why their efforts to defeat President Bush had failed. They came away from that meeting with a plan to push even harder for a victory in 2008.  The recent overreaction in equity prices has been attributed to the hedge fund/mutual fund redemption crisis that caused record amounts of money to exit the market during the first half of October.  Could it be that the big money had something to do with the panic?

October 3rd was an especially vulnerable moment for the market, it was the day that the $700 billion bailout bill was passed.  As the market looked for direction on that pivotal day, the Dow rose to 10,844 but was pushed down in the last hour of trading to 10,325.  The downhill market snowball had begun even though a solution to the financial crisis had been passed.  We haven’t seen Dow 10,000 since.  But we have seen a lot of manipulation occur during the last ten minutes of trading on multiple days since October 3rd. 

The media went wild with predictions of another Black Monday mixed in with a feeling of doom and gloom like we haven’t seen since the Great Depression.  What for?  The government had just taken the systematic threat of bank failure off the table.  Conditions were vastly improved but the market still panicked and Obama slowly assured himself of a November 4th victory. 

Perhaps the most clear indication of market manipulation has been the price of gold.  If the market truly believed all of the doom and gloom that the media is preaching, that the Great Depression is upon us, gold would have quickly eclipsed its 52-week high of $1028.  Remarkably it has gone down; yesterday it closed at $742.  This price action indicates that the wild volatility we have experienced in the broad market may have been started from a small minority of wealthy players.   

So how should investors play this underlying market tussle?  You’ll want to own the ‘babies that have been thrown out with the bath water’.  There is a select group of stocks with pristine balance sheets and solid growth prospects who have been beaten down for no good reason.  I will be averaging into many of these stocks after the (unknown and usually incorrect) initial GDP report is released on October 30th in anticipation that big money will be getting back into the market post election. "

http://seekingalpha.com/article/101952-obama-billionaire-supporters-are-causing-market-headwinds

"Obama is Changing America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59EygF6SLtY

The Hon. James David Manning, PhD

James David Manning is the energetic and visionary pastor of the ATLAH World Missionary Church located in ATLAH, New York. He has founded three schools and developed a national church ministry.  He holds a PhD in philosophy, the author of The Oblation Hour book, a former Marketing Executive with  Proctor and Gamble and the Ford Motor Company.

http://atlah.org/

"If Bill Clinton was the first black president, Barack Obama, if elected, will be the first "gay" president. No, I don't mean he'll personally decorate the West Wing, open a bathhouse in the Rose Garden or take up with Barney Frank. I mean he'll be the most radically pro-homosexual, anti-family president in history. He's very quietly pledged as much to the homosexual "Human Rights Campaign" and other fawning members of his homofascist fan club.

In the wake of the current economic crisis, neither presidential candidate is talking much about social issues. But in the months and years preceding this election cycle, Obama did plenty of talking. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what he's said. If the mainstream media would do its job, quit shilling for their ideological messiah and objectively report on Obama's unwavering fidelity to extremist homosexual pressure groups, many of his unsuspecting supporters might kick him to the curb. Hence – radio silence.

You may have heard the term "San Francisco values" bandied about from time to time. These values do not so much derive from a geographical locale as they do from a shared, deeply engrained "progressive" worldview – a worldview marbled throughout in murky tones of secular humanism and moral relativism. Central to San Francisco values is the notion that the only thing immoral is to reckon there are things immoral.

While Barack Obama may hail from Illinois, Hawaii, Kenya or wherever, his set of core principles – his values – discernibly stem from the underbelly of San Francisco's hyper-sexualized Castro District. The very San Francisco values that brought you the behaviorally driven homosexual AIDS epidemic, San Francisco's public Folsom Street orgy and the preposterous and oxymoronic notion of "gay marriage" are the same values embraced by both homosexual activists and Obama, the latest politico to make 'em light in their loafers.

Still, don't take my word for it. Obama's own words betray his veiled extremism. Despite a series of utterly hollow and politically expedient platitudes to the contrary, the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that Barack Obama fully endorses the postmodern concept of "same-sex marriage." He's promised homosexual activists – in hushed tones – that if elected, he'll do everything possible to make it happen.

The only thing keeping counterfeit "gay marriage" from spreading state-to-state is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Due to the U.S. Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause – which requires that states respect the "public acts, records, and judicial rulings" of other states – "gay marriage," without DOMA, becomes a communicable social malady. DOMA is a boost of penicillin in America's arm. It inoculates states from being forced to recognize counterfeit marriages from other states like California, Massachusetts or Connecticut.

In 2004, Obama called DOMA an "abhorrent law" and said, "The repeal of DOMA is essential. … For the record," he continued, "I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying." Obama also came out earlier this year in favor of the May 15 California Supreme Court decision that unilaterally redefined natural marriage in that state to include same-sex duos. "I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks," Obama gushed. Despite assurances otherwise, these are not the words or policies of a man who opposes "same-sex marriage."

But Obama's contempt for the sanctity of natural marriage is only the beginning. As a candidate for the highest office in the land, his hostility toward the tens of millions of Americans who respect traditional sexual morality is unprecedented. He has enthusiastically signed off on every demand of militant homosexual pressure groups. Said Obama, "We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize – equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' military policy."

So, let's break it down. If elected, Obama has promised to sign radical thought-crimes legislation into law, effectively criminalizing respect for biblical morality. These laws would punish those who oppose sexual behaviors that every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology have coldly rejected.

ENDA and "hate-crimes" legislation will unconstitutionally compel Christians and other people with traditional values to abandon those beliefs and adopt – under penalty of law – the postmodern "anything goes" view of human sexuality. Such "sexual orientation" laws have been the precursor to even more oppressive "hate-speech" laws in Canada, Great Britain and throughout Europe. But as Obama has signaled, these laws will not remain confined to his beloved Europe. There is little doubt that such laws will be similarly enforced here in the U.S under his administration. If you happen to believe that God created human sexuality to be shared between husband and wife within the bonds of marriage, you'd better not say so or you'll suffer very real consequences.

Still, Obama's loyalty to America's sexual anarchists doesn't stop there. He's additionally sworn to turn the U.S. military into a cultural petri dish. Having no military experience of his own, he would nonetheless arrogantly disregard the vast majority of our military leaders and allow open homosexuals and cross-dressers to infiltrate the ranks of the armed forces – during a time of war – thereby disrupting military readiness and unit cohesion. To use the armed forces for such radical social experimentation is both dangerous and gravely irresponsible.

Finally, Obama's promise to require "gay" adoption in all 50 states is particularly troubling. Here, his blind arrogance billows over. Once again he and his homosexual activist cohorts presume to know better than both God and science. As if common sense weren't enough, studies have firmly established that children are best served with both a mother and a father. Although it's not always possible, mom and dad each provide unique qualities vital in healthy child development. To selfishly place untold thousands of children in intentionally motherless or fatherless homes so that Chad and Thad can dress up and play house represents the height of narcissism.

So yes, if elected, Barack Obama – the "change candidate" – will undoubtedly live up to his name. He will certainly institute sweeping change over the next four to eight years. But as you walk into that voting booth on Nov. 4, consider whether Obama's brand of change is change America can afford. Because isn't change – for the mere sake of change – really just chump change?"

http://townhall.com/columnists/MattBarber/2008/10/27/obamas_agenda_is_so_gay?page=full&comments=true

"The election is now eight days way.  If you've made up your mind for Obama; or if you're trying to noodle through some of the things he's been saying on the campaign trail, this should help.  And if you’re voting for Obama, clearly you need help.   I've taken four statements that The Chosen One repeats at almost every campaign rally. Now these statements are pretty powerful ... if unchallenged ... and we know that the MoveOn Media isn't exactly what we would call "eager" to challenge God's Candidate on any of these issues.

So, here we go again .. this simple talk show host (right wing, hate-filled shock jock, I believe they call us) is going to use some basic logic and the ability to actually read newspapers to catch you up to speed on just what the Big BO is saying here.  Now if you're educated in our wonderful government schools you may find this challenging.  Stick with it. In spite of what the government has done to you, you can generate some new brain cells that will help you deal with this stuff.  It would also help if you got your campaign news from somewhere other than Saturday Night Live. 

Here we go, front and center with Barack Obama!

"I'm going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans."

This Obama promise has already been pretty much debunked in the media.  The problem is that it hasn't been debunked on the Black Entertainment Television network or on Inside Edition or Entertainment Tonight.  Until these television outlets bring forth the facts most of Obama's supporters won't know the truth. 

And what is the truth? The truth is that almost one-half of working Americans eligible to vote don't pay federal income taxes in the first place.  This brings forth the interesting question of how do you cut taxes for people who don't pay taxes.  What Obama has done here is change the definition of "tax cut." 

It used to be that when the government walked up to someone who had just received their paycheck and said 'Gimme some of that," and the government then gave that money to someone else who had not earned it; that was called welfare.  Now apparently you can't get welfare if you're working ... so we'll just call it income seizure and redistribution.  Under Obama a couple earning, for example, $70,000 and owing no federal income taxes at all will get several checks from Obama's federal taxpayer-funded treasury.  These checks will be called "tax cuts." 

So .. for those who don't pay taxes, here are some of the "tax cut" checks you’ll be getting from The Chosen One.  I'm taking some literary license here and replacing the words  "tax credit" with the word "payment."  That literary flourish brings us much closer to the truth.  Here are your goodies; come and get ‘em:

• A $500 "make work pay" payment.
• A $4,000 payment for college tuition.
• A payment equal to 10% of your mortgage interest
• A payment equal to 50% of the amount of money you put into a savings account up to $1000.
• A payment equal to 50% of the amount of money you pay for child care up to $6000.
• A payment of up to $7,000 if you purchase a "clean car."  By that Obama means an environmentally correct car.
• Plus ... an expansion of the earned income tax credit .. increased payments on top of your earnings if the government doesn't feel you are earning enough.

There you go ... Obama's "tax cuts."  Sounds pretty good, doesn't it.  Well, I guess it is, if you're not too successful it IS pretty good.  Remember, the harder you work the lower these payments get.  Barack Obama's tax plans are all about punishing success and rewarding failure.  He understands that if it weren't for failures, Democrats would be scrounging in the alleys for votes. 

It's rather ironic that the Obama campaign will go to the mat with critics over the definition of "socialist," but feel absolutely free to change the definition of "tax cut" to anything that suits them. 

"95% of small businesses won't pay any more taxes."

Once people started hearing that the very people that Obama wanted to raise taxes on are the people we depend on for jobs, The BO campaign had to come up with a line to neuter the "small business" argument.  Barack Obama knows he's in trouble if  the voters find out that 70% of all extant jobs are in the small business sector and that 80% of all new jobs are coming from small businesses.  So, Obama comes up with this line about 95% of small businesses not paying any more taxes under his plan.

Here's the trick.  Let me illustrate reality with a simple comparison.  Let's say that we have 1000 small businesses. About 950 of them, that would be 95%, employ one or two people each for a total employment figure of 1,200.  Now let's assume that the other 50 businesses employ anywhere from 20 people to hundreds of people for a total of about 250,000 workers.  If someone comes along and says 95% of small businesses won't be affected by his tax increases, how do you feel?  You know that the tax increase is going to slam those businesses that employ 250,000 workers, while leaving the 95% of businesses that employ just 1,200 people alone.  Quite a deal, huh.  Aren't you impressed?

The point here is that it's not the percentage of small businesses your tax increases hit, it's the percentage of small business employees.  Unfortunately that nuance is lost on the majority of voters educated by the government, and the MoveOn Media sure isn’t going to take the time to explain it to you.

"John McCain voted with George Bush 90% of the time."

First of all, George Bush doesn't cast votes in the U.S. Senate, though McCain and Obama do.  The best way to judge how they vote is to see how often they vote with their respective parties.  You might want to get those nuisance resolutions proclaiming the need for a colonoscopy every once in a while out of the way.  That would leave some key votes for you to consider.  The Congressional Research Service did the work.  They looked at votes for Obama and McCain on KEY issues.  The results?  Barack Obama voted with Democrats 97% of the time.  John McCain voted with the Republicans 79% of the time.  Now .. just sit on your hands and wait for the MoveOn Media to report that one.  Sit on your hands, but for God's sake don't hold your breath.   

"John McCain wants to tax your health insurance benefits."

He's right, but here's the rest of the story.  Let's say that you and your brother work for different companies. Your company provides you with health insurance.  Your brother has to buy his own.  Your boss gets a tax deduction for the cost of your health insurance.  Your brother does not get a tax deduction for the cost of his health insurance.  In effect, he is paying much more than you are for the same policy.  Not fair.  There's a reason for this.  For decades government has wanted to coerce you into getting insurance through your employer.  This gets you acclimated to the idea of someone else -- someone besides yourself -- is responsible for your health care.  The end result is that the government, in effect, subsidizes the cost of your health insurance, but not your brother's.  Now McCain has this idea of a $5,000 tax credit for every family to pay for their own health insurance policy.  To make this work everyone has to start from the same starting line.  Remember, you're subsidized, your brother is not.  So McCain takes away the tax deduction your employer gets for your health insurance.  There ... now we're all of equal standing when the $5,000 tax credits start coming out.

Now that wasn't too hard, was it? 

Now .. just in case you've read something here, heard something on my show or gathered some information from some other source that might cause you to switch your vote from Obama to McCain ... just remember.  You're a racist.  There is only one reason NOT to vote for Barack Obama, and that's if you're a robe-wearing, cross-burning Klansman.  Just so you know.  You’re going to have that on your conscience.  "

http://townhall.com/columnists/NealBoortz/2008/10/27/decoding_barack

  Go Sarah!!!!!!  Thrift stores have some awesome clothes at equally awesome prices.

________________

"Palin makes lemonade out of wardrobe lemons

Source Chicagotribune.com
The Swamp reports:

Since bloggers have taken over reporting the news like the video below I posted earlier, the pajamas media has relegated the lamestream media to that of sub-tabloid. 

Very interesting perspective of one journalist from his position in the middle of the muck.

________________

"2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT"  Drudgereport.com 

"Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

______________

"The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.

Reporting Bias

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense … indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story … but it never happened.

The Presidential Campaign

But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Joe the Plumber

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes … and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Bad Editors

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the <snip>pit of power … only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country …

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News. "

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000. " 

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=6099188&page=1

"I don't think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin. Left-winger Andrew Sullivan gleefully posted a particularly disgusting example of the phenomenon today; it's a YouTube video titled "Red, White and MILF." Watch it only if you have a strong stomach. If you don't know what "MILF" means--I'm sure most of our readers don't--Google it.

I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left's decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The vileness of much of what passes for political "argument" on the Left has to be seen to be believed. The worst impulses of human nature have been not just unleashed, but rewarded. If you haven't looked at web sites like Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, you have no idea what the phrase "gutter politics" really means.

Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin. It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan's video, would look like. Frankly, I can't imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes--the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

I think this represents, in part, a conscious effort to drive decent people out of politics. How many Republican women, observing the vicious treatment to which Sarah Palin has been subjected, will decide to steer clear of public life? More than a few, I suspect.

Barack Obama can't be blamed for all of his followers' vile actions, but, like it or not, he trails in his wake a howling mob of barbarians. If he is elected, these bottom-feeders will have achieved their goal, and some of them, at least, will be rewarded for doing their leader's dirty work. This is not, folks, your father's Democratic Party. "

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021890.php

Interesting information.  Highlighted bold emphasis mine.

Copy of referenced letter below article.  Did not copy in correct paragraph form but content intact.

____________________

" The Real Obama—From Someone Who Knows   Friday, October 24, 2008  

Illinois State Rifle Association Executive Director Richard Pearson Issues Open Letter to Nation's Sportsmen Regarding Obama's TRUE History in the Illinois Senate 

"We've repeatedly warned readers not to believe Barack Obama when he claims to support our Second Amendment rights.  We have told you the truth--that Barack Obama is the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history!  Hands down. No question.  Barack Obama opposes the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding, freedom-loving, American firearm owners. 

We've given the facts, and provided the documentation.  But if you know someone who's still not convinced, you'll want to share with them a recent, open letter to our nation's gun owners, hunters, and sportsmen, written by Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) Executive Director Richard Pearson.  Pearson's credentials include deep involvement in the firearm rights movement for more than 40 years.  He's been the chief lobbyist for the ISRA for the past 15 years.  And, most importantly, because of his personal experience, he knows Barack Obama's true stance on the Second Amendment. 

In his letter, Mr. Pearson says, "I lobbied Barack Obama extensively while he was an Illinois State Senator.  As a result of that experience, I know Obama's attitudes toward guns and gun owners better than anyone.  The truth be told, in all my years in the Capitol I have never met a legislator who harbors more contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner than does Barack Obama." 

Mr. Pearson goes on to describe just some of Obama's anti-gun voting record, saying, "While a state senator, Obama voted for a bill that would ban nearly every hunting rifle, shotgun and target rifle owned by Illinois citizens.  That same bill would authorize the state police to raid homes of gun owners to forcibly confiscate banned guns."  Obama also voted FOUR TIMES against legislation that would protect a homeowner who use a firearm in defense of home and family! 

It doesn't get much plainer than that, folks.  This letter is a must-read for every pro-freedom, pro-self-defense, pro-Second Amendment American. 

To read the entire letter, please click here.  Then be sure to forward the link to every Second Amendment supporter you know.  The truth about Obama's stance on firearms and the Second Amendment needs to be told—again!  "

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=4221

______________

"Illinois State Rifle Association Executive Director Richard Pearson Issues Open Letter to Nation's Sportsmen Regarding Obama's History in the Illinois Senate CHICAGO, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

 The following is the textof an open letter to the nation's hunters and sportsmen issued today byIllinois State Rifle Association Executive Director Richard Pearson:

Fellow Sportsman, Hello, my name is Rich Pearson and I have been active in the firearmrights movement for over 40 years. For the past 15 years, I have served inthe Illinois state capitol as the chief lobbyist for the Illinois StateRifle Association. I lobbied Barack Obama extensively while he was an Illinois StateSenator. As a result of that experience, I know Obama's attitudes towardguns and gun owners better than anyone. The truth be told, in all my yearsin the Capitol I have never met a legislator who harbors more contempt forthe law-abiding firearm owner than does Barack Obama. Although Obama claims to be an advocate for the 2nd Amendment, hisvoting record in the Illinois Senate paints a very different picture. While a state senator, Obama voted for a bill that would ban nearly every huntingrifle, shotgun and target rifle owned by Illinois citizens. That same billwould authorize the state police to raid homes of gun owners to forciblyconfiscate banned guns. Obama supported a bill that would shut downlaw-abiding firearm manufacturers including Springfield Armory, Armalite,Rock River Arms and Les Baer. Obama also voted for a bill that would prohibit law-abiding citizens from purchasing more than one gun per month. Without a doubt, Barack Obama has proven himself to be an enemy of thelaw abiding firearm owner. At the same time, Obama has proven himself to bea friend to the hardened criminal. While a state senator, Obama voted 4times against legislation that would allow a homeowner to use a firearm indefense of home and family. Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a "friend" of the law-abidinggun owner? And speaking of friends, you can always tell a person by the companythey keep. Obama counts among his friends the Rev. Michael Pfleger - arenegade Chicago priest who has openly called for the murder of gun shopowners and pro-gun legislators. Then there is his buddy Richard Daley, themayor of Chicago who has declared that if it were up to him, nobody would be allowed to own a gun. And let's not forget Obama's pal George Soros -the guy who has pumped millions of dollars into the UN's internationaleffort to disarm law-abiding citizens. Obama has shown that he is more than willing to use other people'smoney to fund his campaign to take your guns away from you. While a boardmember of the leftist Joyce Foundation, Barack Obama wrote checks for tensof millions of dollars to extremist gun control organizations such as theIllinois Council Against Handgun Violence and the Violence Policy Center. Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a "friend" of the law-abidinggun owner? By now, I'm sure that many of you have received mailings from anorganization called "American Hunters and Shooters Association(AHSA)"talking about what a swell fellow Obama is and how he honors the 2ndAmendment and how you will never have to worry about Obama coming to takeyour guns. Let me make it perfectly clear - everything the AHSA says aboutObama is pure hogwash. The AHSA is headed by a group of left-wing elitistswho subscribe to the British view of hunting and shooting. That is, a stateof affairs where hunting and shooting are reserved for the wealthyupper-crust who can afford guided hunts on exclusive private reserves. TheAHSA is not your friend, never will be. In closing, I'd like to remind you that I'm a guy who has actually gonenose to nose with Obama on gun rights issues. The Obama I know cannot evenbegin to identify with this nation's outdoor traditions. The Obama I knowsees you, the law abiding gun owner, as nothing but a low-class lummox whois easily swayed by the flash of a smile and a ration of rosy rhetoric. TheObama I know is a stony-faced liar who has honed his skill at getting whathe wants - so long as people are willing to give it to him. That's the Barack Obama I know. The ISRA is the state's leading advocate of safe, lawful andresponsible firearms ownership. Founded in 1903, the ISRA has representedthe interests of millions of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners. WEB SITE: http://www.isra.org

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-15-2008/0004904149&EDATE=

Via Drudge "2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT

"Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

Allow me to preface my statements by stating I'm not Jewish by blood or conversion so the following is not based on that bias.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but have been given to undersand that Jews are a very ancient race of people, not just a religion.

That being true .... provided the following quotes from this article are accurate ... it gives a chilling insight into Obama's key advisors who will likely have a place in his administration.  Racist statements???  Decide for yourself.

"Merrill McPeak, vice chairman of Obama’s campaign and his chief military adviser, has similarly blamed problems in the Middle East on the influence of people who live in New York City and Miami (guess who) whom no ‘politician wants to run against’ and who he says exercise undue influence on America’s foreign affairs. Most revolting of all is Samantha Power, a very close adviser whom Obama fired for calling Hillary a ‘monster’ but who says she still expects to be in Obama’s administration. Not only has Power has advocated the ending of all aid to Israel and redirecting it to the Palestinians, but she has spoken about the need to land a ‘mammoth force’ of US troops in Israel to protect the Palestinians from Israeli attempts at genocide (sic) -- and has complained that criticism of Barack Obama all too often came down to what was ‘good for the Jews’. "

______________

"Is America really going to do this?

By Melanie Phillips

"The impact of the financial crisis on the American presidential election has somewhat obscured the most important reason why the prospect of an Obama presidency is giving so many people nightmares. This is the fear that, if he wins, US defences will be emasculated at a time of unprecedented international peril and the enemies of America and the free world will seize their opportunity to destroy the west.

Personally, I don’t give any credence to the ‘support’ for one candidate over the other that has been expressed by the enemies of civilisation (Iran and Hamas ‘support’ Obama, while an al Qaeda blogger ‘supports’ McCain). Their agenda is simply to sow confusion and promote American recriminations and disarray. Nor do I set much store by many of the remarks made by either candidate during the latter stages of this election campaign, since under this kind of pressure both will now say pretty much anything to win it. TheNew York Times has run a useful analysis of the candidates’ foreign policy campaign statements which shows how Obama has carefully tacked to the ‘hard power’ agenda while McCain has in turn nodded towards ‘soft power’.

No, the only way to assess their position is to look at each man in the round, at what his general attitude is towards war and self-defence, aggression and appeasement, the values of the west and those of its enemies and – perhaps most crucially of all – the nature of the advisers and associates to whom he is listening. As I have said before, I do not trust McCain; I think his judgment is erratic and impetuous, and sometimes wrong. But on the big picture, he gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies.

Here’s why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America’s original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west’s fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. That’s why he believes in ‘soft power’ — diplomacy, aid, rectifying ‘grievances’ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to America’s defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ‘cut investments in unproven missile defense systems’; he will ‘not weaponize space’; he will ‘slow our development of future combat systems’; and he will also ‘not develop nuclear weapons,’ pledging to seek ‘deep cuts’ in America’s arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America’s fault. ‘A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil,’ he said. Last May, he dismissed Iran as a tiny place which posed no threat to the US -- before reversing himself the very next day when he said Iran was a great threat which had to be defeated. He has also said that Hezbollah and Hamas have ‘legitimate grievances’. Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are a) the existence of Israel b) its support by America c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world. Does Obama think these ‘grievances’ are legitimate?

To solve world conflict, Obama places his faith in the UN club of terror and tyranny, which is currently fuelling the murderous global demonisation of Israel for having the temerity to defend itself and is even now preparing for a rerun of its own anti-Jew hate-fest of Durban 2, which preceded 9/11 by a matter of days.

McCain understands that Israel is the victim rather than the victimiser in the Middle East, that it is surrounded by genocidal enemies whose undiminished intention is to destroy it as a Jewish state, and that is both the first line of defence against the Islamist attack on the free world and its most immediate and important target.

Obama dismisses the threat from Islamism, shows zero grasp of the strategic threat to the region and the world from the encirclement of Israel by Iran, displays a similar failure to grasp the strategic importance of Iraq, thinks Israel is instead the source of Arab and Muslim aggression against the west, believes that a Palestinian state would promote world peace and considers that Israel – particularly through the ‘settlements’ – is the principal obstacle to that happy outcome. Accordingly, Obama has said he wants Israel to return to its 1967 borders – actually the strategically indefensible 1948 cease-fire line, known accordingly as the ‘Auschwitz borders’.

Obama would thus speak to Iran’s genocidal mullahs without preconditions on his side (the same mullahs have now laid down their own preconditions for America: pull all US troops out of the Middle East, and abandon support for ‘Zionist’ Israel) but has said he would have problems dealing with an Israeli government headed by a member of Israel’s Likud Party. In similar vein, it is notable that Obama opposed the congressional resolution labelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, which passed the Senate by a wide margin with support from both parties. And had he had his way, there would have been no ‘surge’ in Iraq and America would instead have run up the white flag, with the incalculable bloodbath and strengthening of the jihad that would have followed.

Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves. This is not surprising since many of his connections suggest that that the man who may be elected President of a country upon which the Islamists have declared war is himself firmly in the Islamists’ camp. Daniel Pipes lists Obama’s extensive connections to Islamists in general and the Nation of Islam in particular, and concludes with this astounding observation:

Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees. Islamic aggression represents America’s strategic enemy; Obama’s many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief.

The hatred that these Islamist connections entertain towards Israel is reflected amongst Obama’s own advisers. With one notable exception in Dennis Ross, whose late arrival in Camp Obama suggests a cosmetic exercise designed to allay alarm among Israel supporters, his advisers are overwhelmingly not only hostile to Israel but perpetrate the loathesome canard that Jews have too much power over American policy.

The former Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, not only denounced Israel’s war against Hezbollah thus:

I think what the Israelis are doing today [2006] for example in Lebanon is in effect– maybe not in intent – the killing of hostages

but also supports Mearsheimer and Walt’s notorious smear that the Jews have subverted America’s foreign policy in the interests of Israel. Merrill McPeak, vice chairman of Obama’s campaign and his chief military adviser, has similarly blamed problems in the Middle East on the influence of people who live in New York City and Miami (guess who) whom no ‘politician wants to run against’ and who he says exercise undue influence on America’s foreign affairs. Most revolting of all is Samantha Power, a very close adviser whom Obama fired for calling Hillary a ‘monster’ but who says she still expects to be in Obama’s administration. Not only has Power has advocated the ending of all aid to Israel and redirecting it to the Palestinians, but she has spoken about the need to land a ‘mammoth force’ of US troops in Israel to protect the Palestinians from Israeli attempts at genocide (sic) -- and has complained that criticism of Barack Obama all too often came down to what was ‘good for the Jews’.

There are, alas, many in the west for whom all this is music to their ears. Whether through wickedness, ideology, stupidity or derangement, they firmly believe that the ultimate source of conflict in the world derives at root from America and Israel, whose societies, culture and values they want to see emasculated or destroyed altogether. They are drooling at the prospect that an Obama presidency will bring that about. The rest of us can’t sleep at night.  "

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2545716/is-america-really-going-to-do-this.thtml

Bringing forward a post by Jarasan below my article following expands a bit farther on the same subject.

Live links.

_______________

"Obama Would Fail Security Clearance
By  Daniel Pipes "

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=25078&b=p

______________

"How do Muslims see Barack Hussein Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself – someone who has "never been a Muslim" and has "always been a Christian"; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.

Reports suggests that while Americans generally view the Democratic candidate having had no religion before converting at Reverend Jeremiah Wrights's hands at age 27, Muslims the world over rarely see him as Christian but usually as either Muslim or ex-Muslim.

Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute explains why: "Barack Obama's father was Muslim and therefore, according to Islamic law, so is the candidate. In spite of the Quranic verses explaining that there is no compulsion in religion, a Muslim child takes the religion of his or her father. … for Muslims around the world, non-American Muslims at any rate, they can only ever see Barack Hussein Obama as a Muslim." In addition, his school record from Indonesia lists him as a Muslim

Thus, an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri al-Youm, refers to his "Muslim origins." Libyan ruler Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi referred to Obama as "a Muslim" and a person with an "African and Islamic identity." One Al-Jazeera analysis calls him a "non-Christian man," a second refers to his "Muslim Kenyan" father, and a third, by Naseem Jamali, notes that "Obama may not want to be counted as a Muslim but Muslims are eager to count him as one of their own."

A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. Retorted the grocer: "He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." Arabic discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed.

"The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia," reports Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution from a U.S.-Muslim conference in Qatar, "that certainly speaks to Muslims abroad." Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times found that Egyptians "don't really understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name ‘Hussein,' it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations."

Some American Muslim leaders also perceive Obama as Muslim. The president of the Islamic Society of North America, Sayyid M. Syeed, told Muslims at a conference in Houston that whether Obama wins or loses, his candidacy will reinforce that Muslim children can "become the presidents of this country." The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan called Obama "the hope of the entire world" and compared him to his religion's founder, Fard Muhammad.

But this excitement also has a dark side – suspicions that Obama is a traitor to his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaeda has prominently featured Obama's stating "I am not a Muslim" and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as "bin Laden's dream candidate." Should he become U.S. commander in chief, she believes, Al-Qaeda would likely "exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror … to galvanize sympathizers into action."

Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react "with bewilderment and curiosity" when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme "has been notably absent" among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.

That latter claim is inaccurate, for the topic is indeed discussed. At least one Arabic-language newspaper published Burki's article. Kuwait's Al-Watan referred to Obama as "a born Muslim, an apostate, a convert to Christianity." Writing in the Arab Times, Syrian liberal Nidal Na‘isa repeatedly called Obama an "apostate Muslim."

In sum, Muslims puzzle over Obama's present religious status. They resist his self-identification as a Christian while they assume a baby born to a Muslim father and named "Hussein" began life a Muslim. Should Obama become president, differences in Muslim and American views of religious affiliation will create problems.  "

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5845

Please refer to one of my previous blog posts below for Obama's strategy

"AN OBAMA PANIC?MARKETS FEAR HIS POLICIES

Last updated: 1:45 pm
October 15, 2008
Posted: 4:09 am
October 13, 2008

"Barack Obama has re mained cool and confident amid the financial melt down, even as John McCain at times has been embarrassing, lurching from one proposal to the next. But while the polls are reflecting Obama's steady hand, the markets haven't. In fact, they're getting worse by the day as Obama's lead widens.

See Gasparino Talk About Obama's Economics on CNBC.

Most investors know the devil is in the details - and the details of Obama's economic plans are anything but reassuring.

Of course, the market turmoil is first a reflection of grim reality - the bursting of the housing bubble and the billions upon billions in writedowns and losses that have forced upon the hugely leveraged financial firms companies that had cranked big profits during the bubble years.

The resulting credit crunch is hitting Main Street harder than ever before. The country is headed for recession; the only question is: Just how low can the markets and economy go?

It could be a lot lower - it all depends on the policies of the next president.

And, as it looks increasingly likely that Obama will be that man, the markets are casting a vote of "no confidence."

To be fair, McCain hardly instills confidence among the Wall Streeters I speak to. Why has his campaign spent the last week focusing on Obama's friendship with former terrorist William Ayers - when it should be hitting Obama's blind loyalty to policies that bring together the worst elements of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter?

Recently, Obama said he wants to expedite loans to small businesses, so he seems to have a clue that they produce much of the country's job growth. Yet his income-tax hike on upper brackets will hit vast numbers of small businesses - they'd face the highest rates they've seen in decades.

Overall, his plan includes some of the most lethal tax increases imaginable, including a jump in the capital-gains rate. He'd expand government spending massively, with everything from new public-works projects to increases in foreign aid to a surge in Afghanistan - plus hand out a token $500 welfare check that he calls a tax cut to everyone else.

This is clearly the wrong way to go in the wake of an economic meltdown - yet Obama, for all his talk of how willing he is to compromise, of how he'd bring people together, is sticking to his tax guns.

I know at least one top Wall Street executive, an Obama supporter from the start of his campaign, who has recently urged Obama to rethink his tax plan - and that was before last week's record losses on the Dow.

But if Obama is rethinking, he's not saying. As his running mate, Joe Biden tells us that it's patriotic to pay higher taxes, Obama remains committed to squeezing businesses even if the recession grows.

The closest evidence I could find of compromise from Obama on taxes came in a June interview with CNBC, when he said: "Some of those [tax hikes] you could possibly defer. But I think the basic principle of restoring fairness to our economy and encouraging bottom-up economic growth is important."

It's easy to understand why so many of my colleagues in the media have fallen head over heels for Obama. He's smart, ambitious and cool under pressure. But what is he really like under the surface?

Some reckon that a President Obama won't go through with his plans. They look at his (thin) record and see a wimp who's never taken a firm stand on much of anything, much less enacting tax hikes during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

I look at Obama's record differently. From his days as a community activist, to his years in the Illinois Senate and now his brief time in the US Senate, he has shown little inclination to deviate from his party's tax-and-spend orthodoxy.

And if he governs like a liberal ideologue - with a belief that the government that works best is the one that's biggest and raises taxes the most - he won't even have to work hard to get his way. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't stop him - the Democratic majorities in Congress are only likely to grow.

And the markets know this - even if pundits (even many of the financial ones) refuse to face it.

No one can blame the faltering stock market solely on Obama's tax plans or McCain's own inanity on economic issues. But stock prices reflect current market conditions plus best guesses of what's coming down the road. And I keep hearing nervous traders and investors talk about "a lack of leadership from Washington."

Charles Gasparino is on-air editor at CNBC and author ....."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10132008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/an_obama_panic__133374.htm

TigerAngel had an absolutely brilliant post this morning "

"Hidden Hypnosis Techniques Of Obama" 

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?o=k&i=25044

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His article has a PDF link explaining mechanisms of hypnosis which I've excerpted below, linked to PDF .... these did not copy in correct paragraph format.

As I commented on TigerAngel's blog I've been hypnotized many times by a licensed professional highly respected hypnotherapist so have a working background over several years as to how hypnosis is ethically brought about with consent of the person being hypnotized.     

Hypnosis like meditation has 4 stages beginning with light trance/meditation such as daydreaming all the way down to a "deep sleep" level while maintaining full awareness of everything taking place.  Going through those stages is like gently turning a dial where you do deeper and deeper within yourself. 

Before every session any ethical hypnotherapist will tell you that you will not accept any suggestion which doesn't ring true within yourself and that you can bring yourself out of hypnosis any time you desire by simply waking up because you are in complete control.  That's the ethical way.

What is described in this PDF is more sinister, it is criminal because it is being done without specific consent.   

________________________

http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama%27s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf 

"An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis

Techniques in His Speeches

Barack Obama’s speeches contain the hypnosis techniques of Dr. Milton Erickson, M.D. who developed a

form of “conversational” hypnosis that could be hidden in seemingly normal speech and used on patients

without their knowledge for therapy purposes. Obama’s speeches intentionally contain:

- Trance Inductions

- Hypnotic Anchoring

- Pacing and Leading

- Pacing, Distraction and Utilization

- Critical Factor Bypass

- Stacking Language Patterns

- Preprogrammed Response Adaptation

- Linking Statements/ Causality Bridges

- Secondary Hidden Meanings/Imbedded Suggestions

- Emotion Transfer

- Non-Dominant Hemisphere Programming

Real “hypnosis” explained
Most people are hypnotized and fall into trance every day of their lives.2  It is a common, every day
occurrence, whether for a brief second, or minutes or longer.  A very basic example is when you are driving
a car while in deep thought, and you suddenly realize you are much further along with no memory of
driving the whole distance.  Another example, is when you are on an elevator watching the numbers change
and go into trance, and when everyone else gets off, you take that as a nonverbal suggestion to get off,
before you “wake up” and realize it is not your floor.  This elevator example is an example of mass
hypnosis, where the close rapport with the hypnotist is not necessary, because many people are both
hypnotized partly by whatever is causing the trance, and partly by the fact that you are being “paced” or also
hypnotized by everyone else in the elevator doing the exact same thing as you.  The reason you cry from
reading sad book simply by reading ink on paper is because of the mind’s interaction with that information,
which is also a hypnotic process.3 

Two separate definitions of “hypnosis”:
1.  First, hypnosis, is “a particular altered state of hyper-suggestibility brought about in an individual by a
combination of relaxation, fixation of attention, and suggestion.”4
2.  Second, hypnosis is also “bypassing the ‘critical factor’ and setting up acceptable selective thinking.5” 
The “critical factor” is the conscious part of the brain that you think with that has the ability to make rational logical judgments about what information is received.6  The critical factor acts as a filter, determining what can pass into the subconscious mind which is a non-rational computer-like system which accepts everything
in it as absolute truth.7  That is why sidelining it is so dangerous.
Milton Erickson, had a broader definition of the unconscious mind, described as, “both the functioning of
the dominant hemisphere of the brain that occurs below the level of awareness, as well as the functioning of
the non-dominant hemisphere.” 8   
Ericksonian trance induction has three dimensions which we will return to often and compare to Obama’s
language patterns.  They are:9
1.  Pacing and distraction of the dominant (language) hemisphere;
2.  Utilization of the dominant hemisphere, language processing which occurs below the level of
awareness;
3.  Accessing of the non-dominant hemisphere; 
This above three part process is extremely important to later analysis.  Essentially, hypnosis is an altered
and common state of mind involving intense focus, sidelining or disassociation of the rational critical
thinking, and the state of hyper-suggestibility brought about while the subconscious mind is the dominant
player.10  It happens while reading, listening to music, and even while hearing a great speaker.11
However, the power of such methods is what is difficult to grasp.  What we are talking about is
“transformational linguistics” – language that literally changes who you are at your deepest levels, your
deepest passions, drives, and emotions while you are completely unaware.   
Under Freud, there is the conscious mind that you think with, called the “ego.”  You also have a conscience,
called the “super-ego.”  Then, there is the largest part of the psyche, the id, which is the back-end of all our
memory, our most basic instincts and drives, emotions, and suppressed desires.12   “The unconscious mind is
the source of our energy, and no amount of conscious reasoning can override it.  The unconscious mind is
un-critical, it accepts as absolute truth any idea that is allowed to enter its computer-like system”13  The
messages of hypnosis, including mass hypnosis, can be far more powerful than just someone’s conscious
thoughts, as it affects their most basic biological drives and instincts.14  That is why many of Obama’s
followers are so passionate for him, why they are fainting in his presence, comparing him to Jesus, and
supporting him like no other candidate before.
 Bypassing the dominant hemisphere’s rational judgment (“critical factor”)
The critical factor is the part of the mind that logically analyzes and scrutinizes all information like a filter,
and decides what information is allowed to pass into your subconscious mind and become part of what your
mind accepts as unquestionably true, like your deepest and most powerful emotions, drives, and instincts.21 
It is the primary cognitive defense that usually stops all information and rationally analyzes it, whether
consciously or unconsciously.  It keeps your computer-like subconscious mind from literally believing that
you are a chicken when someone calls you a “chicken”, and keeps you from literally believing that you are a
square (box) when somebody calls you a “square”, and keeps you from literally believing you are a (snow
or cereal) flake when somebody calls you a “flake.”  you don’t consciously ponder it when someone calls
you a chicken, your critical fator stops that information below the level of awareness.     
The critical factor is the cognitive function best analogized to a security guard (critical factor) who searches
every person (information) entering into a nightclub looking for weapons. (and stops all information that is
questionable)22  The critical factor stops all information and allows your thinking and rationality to
determine whether it is acceptable to the subconscious mind or not.   
Hypnosis uses language patterns, visual tricks, body language, voice, tone, an Hypnosis uses language patterns, visual tricks, body language, voice, tone, and other aspects of
communication to get “suggestions” past the critical factor part of the brain and directly into the listener’s
subconscious.23  This is wonderful if the command is to be free of a phobia, or quit smoking.  The reason
hypnosis is used for such psychological change, is that the critical factor allows in only what it accepts as
true.  Without bypassing the smoker’s critical factor, a smoker has a difficult time quitting because they
have a difficult time accepting as absolutely true the information that they are a nonsmoker, because their
critical factor and conscious mind knows differently and doesn’t let the information through.
How one might simplify this point, is, in normal everyday life, calling someone a “chicken” will not cause
them to literally believe they are a chicken and act like one.  This is because the critical factor stops this
information from passing into the subconscious.  So how can a hypnotist get a subject to cluck like a
chicken believing they are one?  The hypnotist knows how to get the hypnotic suggestion that the subject is
a chicken past the critical factor part of the consciousness, and get the subconscious mind to accept it as
unquestionably true. Obama’s actions are far more deceptive than simply lying
If used by a politician and discovered, such hypnosis technique, if understood as it should be, to be the
height of manipulation and deception, would destroy a politician’s career.24  There is no other way to view
such a politician other than disturbingly and disqualifyingly deceptive, someone whom we apparently know
very little about, and cannot trust, who has been continually hiding something from us and manipulating us. 
To see a politician continue to perform a multitude of hundreds of deceptive acts, which he knows about but
we are meant not to know about, that affect our judgment and mental processes, and that manipulate us in
ways we are not even aware of, all the while thinking he is clever enough to get away with it until he finally
gets caught, is the height of immoral deception.  It is perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American
history.     
Most of our beliefs come to us from our own rational judgment and conscious analysis of the world.  For
example, we know it good to wake up in the morning and do something because we rationally know the
consequences of staying in bed all day.  When we like people, it is usually due to a combination of our
rational judgment and how that person naturally makes us feel about them.  We try to make people like us
more by following social norms, making people feel good, smiling, and so on.
However, a very small percentage of the population actually study subconscious manipulation of not only
how people feel about them, but how to manipulate and alter the beliefs we usually come to by our rational
judgment, reason, and experience.  These people study specifically how to sideline this rational judgment,
reason, and experience, and natural feelings, and bend people’s feelings and will through the application of
this branch of psychiatry to their interactions.   
Obama is an expert at this type of artificial manipulation.  His ability to convince rationally and any natural
“charm” is only part of how a person feels about Obama.  The rest is deceptive subconscious manipulation.   
His tactics are deceptive because he has mastered the science and art of lowering the effects of the rational
scrutiny parts of the mind through his speaking, actions, and presentation.  He gets you to believe not by
convincing you rationally until you decide to believe it, but by knowing how to say to your subconscious
mind literally the words that “you believe” in a way that your subconscious mind will simply accept the
message and believe without having rationally decided to believe.  He knows how to say to your
subconscious mind that it “chose” (Obama) even when it hasn’t, in a way that you will believe that you have
chosen.  He understands subconscious manipulation enough to know how to talk about families, and your
children, and John F. Kennedy, and conjure up feelings within you from speaking in certain rhythmic and
unnaturally slow tempos,  and then subconsciously transfer the emotions he conjures up onto him, such as
with hand gestures or hidden content in language.  You genuinely walk away from him feeling warm, and
viewing him as a JFK, except it is artificial.  He knows how to say one thing, but have your subconscious
mind ultra-powerfully receive a different message and feeling than you are aware of.  He is actually
implanting feelings and emotions into your subconscious.  They feel like your own.  Rationally he is an
unaccomplished man with shady connections, but you are tricked into feelings about him that overpower those, that feel like your genuine feelings about him because they come from inside you, implanted into the
deepest parts of your psyche.     
Obama’s deception here is not simply a few subliminal messages like those used in some advertisements. 
Obama is employing with art and skill a complex hidden system applying a multitude of the most advanced
techniques in subconscious manipulation known to psychology.  This entire system is designed to do one
thing - to make us feel like the decision to support Obama is our own when it is really, at least for many,
implanted artificially through hypnosis.   
What Obama is doing is in effect the same as if he dangled a silver watch in front of us and said “you are
getting sleepy and going into trance....you have an unstoppable urge that you cannot resist.....you must vote
for Barack.”  In fact, as discussed below, Obama was actually caught at least once saying something very
similar with his own lips.  Yes, Obama was caught giving an overt hypnotic command to vote for him.25 
People even made fun of it, but nobody realized it was actual intentional hypnosis until it is now explained. 
(see below)
Hypnotizing someone without their knowledge is the height of immorality.  The level of deception involved
here, in Obama’s use of covert hypnosis, and his presumption that he has the right to use hypnosis on us to
gain votes is just unconscionable.  If a stranger came up to you in a restaurant and tried to hypnotize you to
get you to do anything, even so much as buy them a cup of coffee, and you figured out that they were trying
to use actual hypnosis on you, you would run.   
If Obama simply lied, we voters would be able to use our rational judgment to make a logical decision about
what is the truth, and what we should believe, and what we shouldn’t.  However, because he is implanting
subconscious commands we are not aware of consciously, into the deepest parts of our emotional and
subconscious psyches, he is actually taking away our ability to make those rational judgments.  He is
making the decision to and taking away even our ability to question the commands he is hypnotizing us
with.  We never even know the commands are being implanted (until now with this document), and we are
tricked into believing that our feelings are coming from deep inside us.  Obama’s concealment of his
hypnotic techniques can only be looked at as deception.26   

The study of the effects of mass hypnosis
A widely held view among psychologists and experts is that conversational hypnosis is literally a form of
mind control.  One author says:
“Essentially conversational hypnosis allow users to gain control of their subjects mind through
spoken word, and literally get them to do as they wish - within reason of course. Essentially the
English language has various emotional triggers and tone's which can be utilised to induce people
into a trance. When people are in such a trance it is possible to alter their views and control their
actions.”28

Some video examples of the power of hypnosis are included in the footnotes.29  However, this particular one
at this footnote at the end of this sentence of hypnotist Derren Brown is amazing, and very exemplary of
how conversational hypnosis works, and is highly recommended for a quick understanding.30  To give you
an idea of the power of hypnosis in the wrong hands, hypnosis can be used to get a complete stranger to
hand over a wallet in seconds.31  MSNBC32 and BBC33 reports a man stealing from stores and banks using
hypnosis.   

One book that studied mass hypnosis called Rape of the Mind was written by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.,
Instructor in Psychiatry, Columbia University Lecturer in Social Psychology, New School for Social
Research, Former Chief, Psychological Department, Netherlands Forces.  It examines the dangers of mass
hypnosis.34
An except of the book discusses what a hypnotist could get a subject to do through hypnotic commands,

Chapter 3 – Hypnotism and Mental Coercion: There are many quacks who practice hypnosis, not to cure their victims but to force them into
submission, using the victim's unconscious ties and dependency needs in a criminal, profitable way.
One of the most absorbing aspects of this whole problem of hypnosis is the question of whether
people can be forced to commit crimes, such as murder or treason, while under a hypnotic spell.
Many psychologists would deny that such a thing could happen and would insist that no person can
be compelled to do under hypnosis what he would refuse to do in a state of alert consciousness. But
actually what a person can be compelled to do depends on the degree of dependency that hypnosis
causes and the frequency of repetition of the so-called posthypnotic suggestions.35

Rape of the Mind discusses psychological conditioning from World War II Nazi tactics, to Soviet Cold-War
theoreticians, to our own democracy.  (See Chapter 2 – Mass Conditioning Through Speech, and Political
Conditioning.36  The Book also discusses the dangers of the real phenomenon of mass hypnosis:

Illegality of Obama’s use of hypnosis

Hypnosis-type mental pressure has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States to be so unduly
influential as to deprive someone of their fundamental rights.  The US Supreme court case was Leyra v.
Denno, 347 U.S. 556 (1954), Leyra v. Denno, No. 635, Argued April 28, 1954, Decided June 1, 1954, 347
U.S. 556.  After police questioned a suspect day and night unable to obtain a confession, a hypnotist tried,
and did successfully get the suspect to confess.  The legal battles over whether the confession was voluntary
or not, undue influence or not, went all the way to the Supreme court of the United States, which decided
that his confession could not be used as evidence against him in court.  In discussing what the New York Court of Appeals held, that “were so clearly the product of ‘mental coercion’ that their use as evidence was
inconsistent with due process of law”, the United States Supreme Court said “exhausted suspect's ability to
resist interrogation was broken to almost trance-like submission by use of the arts of a highly skilled
psychiatrist.”  It violated the most fundamental rights of the suspect to have this confession used, because it
was not of his own free will. 

Hypnosis on a non-consenting person may arguably constitute fraud38, undue influence, and/or potentially
other violations of the law, depending on the jurisdiction.39  Undue influence is “persuasion that overcomes
the will without convincing the judgment.”40  Hypnosis works on mental and emotional weaknesses fitting
the legal definition precisely.  For example, with hypnotizing someone to get access to that person’s bank
account – even the hypnotist makes the person believe they want to do it, they are using techniques which
create an undue influence on the person. 

The Executive Committee of the American Psychological Association Division of Psychological Hypnosis
has said, “clinical hypnosis should be used only by properly trained and credentialed health care
professionals (e.g. licensed clinical psychologists), who have also been trained in the clinical use of
hypnosis and are working within the areas of their professional expertise.”  The Appellate Division of the
Los Angeles County Superior Court has held that practice of hypnotism as curative measure or mode of
procedure by one not licensed to practice medicine amounts to unlawful practice of medicine.41   

What Obama is doing is making some people’s support of him in this election not of our own free will.  He
us using hidden techniques so we cannot even question the commands he is slipping into our subconscious. 
Many genuinely want to support him like smokers want a cigarette, and as smokers, we find the logic to
justify how we feel.

 The hypnosis technique of “pacing and leading” to sideline rational judgment ..............."

http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama's_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf

"Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Source American Thinker

"America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. 

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org) 

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth. 

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention. 

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse. 

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.   

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely. 

• 1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
• 2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
• 3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards. 

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state. 

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation. 

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

 

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department. 

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.) 

Stanley Kurtz has been digging deep in Obama's past he'd rather have buried.  Several live links within this well written article

_____________________

"Something New Here
Radical? Check. Tied to ACORN? Check. Redistributionist? Check.

By Stanley Kurtz

Source National Review

"During his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995-96, Barack Obama was a member of, and was endorsed by, the far-left New Party. Obama’s New Party ties give the lie to his claim to be a post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist. Particularly in Chicago, the New Party functioned as the electoral arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). So despite repeated attempts to distance himself from ACORN, Obama’s New Party ties raise disturbing questions about his links to those proudly militant leftists. The media’s near-total silence on this critical element of Obama’s past is deeply irresponsible.

SOCIALIST?
While a small group of bloggers have productively explored Obama’s New Party ties, discussion has often turned on the New Party’s alleged socialism. Was the New Party actually established by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)? Was the New Party’s platform effectively socialist in content? Although these debates are both interesting and important, we needn’t resolve them to conclude that the New Party was far to the left of the American mainstream. Whether formally socialist or not, the New Party and its ACORN backers favored policies of economic redistribution. As Obama would say, they wanted to spread the wealth around. Bracketing the socialism question and simply taking the New Party on its own terms is sufficient to raise serious questions about Obama’s political commitments — questions that cry out for attention from a responsible press.

In 2002, Micah L. Sifry, a former writer and editor with The Nation magazine, published Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America, a book that contains what is probably our best account of the rise and fall of the New Party. Although Sifry leaves us hanging on the socialism question, his chapter on the New Party is more than enough to raise disturbing questions about Obama’s radicalism, and about his ties to ACORN.

Sifry reports a quip by New Party co-founder, Daniel Cantor: “The shorthand strategy for accomplishing all this is to get the Bruce Springsteen, Lauryn Hill, and Pete Seeger vote united in one party.” The Peter Seeger vote does sound like shorthand for the old-time socialist Left — but also for far-left-leaning baby boomers in general. Bruce Springsteen and Lauryn Hill point to young blacks and whites on the left, perhaps including, but not restricted to, openly socialist sympathizers. In short, the New Party was a mid-1990s effort to build a “progressive” coalition to the left of the Democratic party, uniting left-leaning baby boomers with minorities, relatively militant unionists, and “idealistic” young people.

PARTY WITHIN A PARTY
In contrast to Ralph Nader’s recent third-party campaigns, the New Party’s strategy was to work through “fusion.” Fusion parties were popular in the 19th century. Although these small parties had a separate line on the ballot, they often endorsed one of the major-party candidates. That meant these third parties didn’t have to act as “spoilers” in close elections. Yet by constituting themselves as separate entities and offering their endorsement as bait, fusion parties tended to push the major parties further to the right or the left. We see remnants of the old fusion-party pattern in New York State, where separate Liberal and Conservative parties sometimes shift elections by endorsing one or another major party candidate.

As the New Party’s founders put it, they were looking for a cross between the “party within the party” strategy favored by leftist Democrats and the “plague on both your houses” stance later adopted by the Naderites. That means Obama’s New Party ties place him on the far left end of the Democratic party, arguably with one foot outside and to the left of the party itself.

Does this make Obama “socialist?” Maybe so, but according to Sifry, the vague “New Party” name was chosen precisely to avoid such ideological pigeonholing. Maybe that vagueness was designed to avoid exposing the party as the socialist sympathizer it was. Or maybe the name was a way of avoiding complex internal struggles between competing ideological factions, some socialist and some not. (The answer is “both of the above,” I tend to think.) In any case, the New Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up of committed “progressives,” rather than conventional “liberals.” That is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a world-view well “beyond” his mother’s conventional liberalism.

To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace; Steve Cobble, political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion; prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven, coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN; economist Juliet Schor; black historian Manning Marable; historian Howard Zinn; linguist Noam Chomsky; Todd Gitlin; and writers like Gloria Steinem and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party’s goals as “social democratic.” In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.

ACORN CONNECTION
Unquestionably, ACORN was one of the most important forces behind the creation of the New Party. According to Sifry: “Wade Rathke, ACORN’s lead national organizer, was in on the founding discussions that led to the New Party, and the group’s political director, Zach Polett, also came to play a big role in guiding New Party field organizing for the party [in Chicago and Little Rock].” In fact, Sifry portrays ACORN’s leading role in the New Party as the result of a conscious decision by the organization to move into electoral politics in a more substantial way than they had been able to solely through their political action committee. In addition to Rathke and Polett, a key early supporter of the New Party was Obama’s closest ACORN contact, Madeline Talbott.

While ACORN played an important founding role for the New Party nationally, ACORN was clearly the main force behind the New Party chapter in Chicago. In general, New Party chapters built around an ACORN nucleus were the most disciplined and successful party outposts. Nationally, the New Party’s biggest wins were in Chicago, very much including Obama’s victory in his 1996 run for the Illinois state senate. Chicago’s New Party was actually formed around two core elements, ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 880. Yet, as Sifry notes, SEIU 880 was itself an ACORN offshoot.

Together ACORN and SEIU 880 were the dominant forces in Chicago’s New Party. True, there was also participation by open socialists, but these were not a majority of New Party organizers. You can certainly argue, as libertarian blogger Trevor Louden has, that whether openly or not, the New Party in Chicago and beyond was effectively socialist. It’s a powerful argument and worthy of consideration. After all, according to Rutgers University political scientist Heidi J. Swarts, ACORN’s leaders see themselves as “a solitary vanguard of principled leftists.” So a party outpost built around ACORN would be a party built around “principled vanguard leftists.” Sounds pretty socialist to me. Yet, as I’ve emphasized, we needn’t resolve the “socialism” question to conclude that the New Party, and particularly its Chicago branch, was far to the left of the Democratic party, and largely under the control of ACORN.

Consider “The People Shall Rule,” a look at some of Chicago ACORN’s electoral efforts co-authored by Madeline Talbott, Obama’s closest ACORN contact and a key New Party supporter. In describing former Chicago ACORN leader Ted Thomas’s successful run for alderman, Talbott stresses that, even after election, Thomas retained his ACORN ties. Thomas was invited to retain his seat on ACORN’s Chicago board, ACORN members continued to treat him as a leader, and Thomas continued to brainstorm and strategize with ACORN’s other organizers. Talbott is so busy detailing Thomas’s continued links to ACORN that she doesn’t even bother to mention that Thomas actually ran on behalf of the New Party. (See “NP Chair elected to Chicago City Council.”)

As so often with ACORN, technically separate organizations are often relatively meaningless designations for different branches of ACORN itself. And in Chicago, the New Party was very much an ACORN-dominated operation. Ted Thomas was a city alderman, de facto ACORN leader, and New Party chair all at once. So Obama’s ties to the New Party represent yet another important, and still unacknowledged, link between Obama and ACORN.

We already know that Obama’s ties to ACORN’s Madeline Talbott ran deep. Less known is that Obama’s links to Chicago ACORN/New Party leader Ted Thomas were also strong. Thomas was one of a handful of aldermen who stood with Obama in his unsuccessful 2000 race for Congress against Bobby Rush. Obama is also had long-standing ties to SEIU Local 880, an ACORN union spin-off and a bulwark of Chicago’s New Party. In his 2004 race for the Democratic Senate nomination, SEIU Local 880 strongly endorsed Obama, citing his long history of support for the group.

REVEALING TIE
So the fact that Obama received the New Party’s endorsement in his first run for office in 1995-96 cannot be dismissed as insignificant. On the contrary, Obama’s ties to the New Party, and the New Party’s backers at ACORN (often the very same people), are long-standing, substantial, and reveal a great deal about his personal political allegiances. Because it was a fusion party, the New Party did not require that all the candidates it endorsed be members. Yet the New Party’s endorsements were carefully targeted. There was no attempt to endorse candidates in every race, or even to set up nationwide chapters. Carefully selected races in carefully targeted cities were seized upon — and only when the candidate fit the profile of a decidedly left-leaning progressive Democrat. In this way, the New Party set out to form a hard-left “party within a party” among the Democrats.

More than this, we now have substantial evidence that Obama himself was in fact a New Party member. We even have a photograph of Obama appearing with other successful New Party candidates. Clearly, then, it is more than fair to identify Obama with the hard-left stance of the New Party and its ACORN backers. In her recent study of ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation, the two groups of community organizers to which Obama was closest, Heidi Swarts describes their core ideology as “redistributionist.” Joe the Plumber take note. Whether formally socialist or not, Obama ties with ACORN and its New Party political arm show that spreading your wealth around has long been his ultimate goal.

All this means that Barack Obama is far from the post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist he pretends to be. On the contrary, Obama’s ideological home is substantially to the left of the Democratic-party mainstream, so far to the left that he has one foot planted outside the party itself. And since the New Party Chicago was essentially an electoral arm of ACORN, Obama’s New Party tie, is yet another example of his deep links to the far-left militant organizers of that group. Obama’s account of his limited ties to ACORN in the third debate was clearly not truthful. Likewise, his earlier denials of ties to ACORN have fallen apart.

At what point will the press force Obama to own up to the full extent of his ties to ACORN? At what point will the press demand a full accounting of Obama’s ties to the New Party? At what point will the depth of Obama’s redistributionist economic stance be acknowledged? Barack Obama is hiding the truth about his political past, and the press is playing along. "

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTc3NzZkZDYxODZiZjE2OTg5YWRmNDkzM2U0YTIwZGQ=&w=MA==

"JUST WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?

"Sounds like an odd question, doesn't it? But have you ever actually thought for a moment about who has ownership rights to you? This is no silly or meaningless exercise here. You exist. You have value. That value belongs to someone. The question is who? This is an important question in this election because there are quite a lot of people out there who earnestly believe that you belong not to yourself, but to the government. For the first time in my memory we have a presidential candidate who wants to raise taxes on a few not so much to cover the costs of the essential functions of government, but to bring about some sense of what he calls "fairness" in the distribution of wealth. This would mean that in the eyes of this particular presidential candidate (I would mention his name, but that would be racist.) the government owns a portion of you; a portion to be used by the government to enrich the lives of others in the quest for economic "fairness."

Let me know how this works out for you.  "

http://boortz.com/nuze/200810/10232008.html#belong

"AP presidential poll: Race tightens in final weeks

Oct 22, 5:16 PM (ET)

Source My Way News

"WASHINGTON (AP) - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.  ...."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081022/D93VPI9O0.html

"The Obama Witch Project

Michelle Malkin Michelle Malkin – Fri Oct 10, 3:00 am ET
Source Yahoo news.

"Creators Syndicate – Republicans don't need to dress up for Halloween this year. They're scaring the pants off Barack Obama's followers by their mere presence. Anything they say, wear or do provokes instant cries of "RAAAAACISM!" Wink, blink or think critical thoughts about Obama? You're a bigot!

How many racial bogeymen have Obama operatives and sympathetic journalists discovered lurking in "coded language" and attire? Let us count the ways:

— During Tuesday's presidential debate, John McCain referred to Obama as "that one." Official Obama press agitator Bill Burton sent off an e-mail blast to reporters: "Did John McCain just refer to Obama as 'that one'?" Horrors.

Taking their cue from Burton, spooked Obama supporters hyperventilated like teenagers on the film set of "The Blair Witch Project." "The racial undertones were subtle but unmistakable," declared Maya Wiley of the leftist Center for Social Inclusion. "McCain was tapping into a current of superiority among white voters. It was an attempt to 'otherize' Obama."

"Otherize"? Sounds like something you do to your car tires to prepare for winter.

UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff was also haunted by "That One": "The phrase was meant to say, 'You and I are in the same area, but he's the outsider.'"

Memo to McCain: Next time, call him "The One."

— Obama supporters on the heavily trafficked Democratic Underground website (where such mainstream Democrats as Elizabeth Edwards hang out) saw the ghost of the Ku Klux Klan in Sarah Palin's white suit jacket. Yes, white clothes equal racism.

"Palin is wearing white again, inciting the racist crowds. She should just drop all pretense and put on her white hood and light up a cross. She is a despicable human being," fumed a DU poster. "Grand Princess of the KKK," proclaimed another. They're "trying to send subtle signals to their rabid base," declared yet another member of Obama's rabid base.

My racial decoder ring must be on the fritz. I'm not getting the signal. If she wears white stockings, drinks a vanilla milkshake and refers to budgetary black holes, are those incitements, too? And what about her gorgeous white teeth? Perhaps she should drink more coffee — hold the white cream! — to avoid emitting further racial radiation.

— Such paranoia is not limited to the fever swamps of the Internet. Earlier this week, the Associated Press disseminated an "analysis" accusing Palin of injecting a "racial tinge" into the campaign because she criticized Obama for his longtime relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Palin's comments were completely unobjectionable: "This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America."

I saw a vice presidential candidate drawing stark philosophical differences between two tickets. The AP saw Freddy Krueger with lipstick and a noose.

"Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as 'not like us' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American," the AP piece frothed.

Obama is half-black. Ayers is white. One of the Weather Underground's victims was black police officer Waverly Brown of Nyack, N.Y. Where do I buy a pair of the super X-ray glasses that can detect the racism in Palin's remarks about the Obama-Ayers alliance?

— I'll have to borrow those hysterical-colored spectacles from Time's Karen Tumulty, who spotted racist goblins in the recent McCain ad criticizing Obama for seeking advice from Fannie Mae corruptocrat Franklin Raines. "Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman," Tumulty balked in a blog post titled "McCain plays the race card."

Um, "sinister"? The ad's photos of Obama and Raines were standard shots — some with dour expressions, others smiling. The fact that Tumulty perceived them as "sinister" suggests that she should perform a self-racism exam before diagnosing anyone else.

— A parade of congressional witch hunters for Obama also detects the specter of George Wallace behind every policy bush. Democratic New York Gov. David Paterson says conservative criticism of Obama's community organizing days is code for "black." Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks complained to the New York Observer: "They are trying to throw out these codes." In the same piece, Democratic Rep. Yvette Clark divined segregationist intent in Palin's references to Joe Six-Pack and hockey moms. "It leaves a lot of people out."

And Democratic Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid echoed Time's Tumulty on the McCain camp's Obama/Raines broadsides: "The only connection that people could bring up about Raines and Barack Obama is that they both are African-American, other than that there is nothing."

The Washington Post reported that Obama's office phoned Raines for housing advice and has stood by its reporting. Is the newspaper part of the McCain/Palin hooded racists' coven, too?

Obama's witch hunters better beware. When there's racism in every hiccup, nobody's air supply is safe. "

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20081010/cm_uc_crmmax/op_197693

"Rock the Vote

Source Powerlineblog.com 

October 22, 2008 Posted by John at 7:16 PM

"We've heard a lot about young people, especially college students, who are devoted to Barack Obama. A lot of ink has been spilled speculating on how many young people will actually turn out to vote. But if this IBD/TIPP  http://www.ibdeditorials.com/Polls.aspx?id=309546869309178   poll is correct, Republicans had better hope the kids turn out in droves:

That's right: voters aged 18-24 are John McCain's best age demographic. That was true of Ronald Reagan, too; young people were his biggest fans. Obama's best cohort is the baby boomers--one more black mark, I guess, against our generation! Cultural stereotypes aside, though, it does seem odd that people in their peak earning years are most likely to support a tax-raiser.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021851.php

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/video/sky-news-video/Video/200810415126586?
 
"Footage Of Presidential Candidate As Prisoner Of War In Vietnam Released

10:09pm UK, Wednesday October 22, 2008

"Footage of John McCain being interviewed as a bedridden prisoner during the Vietnam War has been released by the French national archive.
Source Sky News
 
"McCain, who was filmed smoking, was emotional during the interview

The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.

In the footage an emotional and shirtless McCain passes a message to his wife saying he will get well and loves her.

He also describes being shot down over Hanoi in 1967, and parachuting into a lake.

At times, when speaking of his family, McCain's lower lip trembles and his voice breaks.

"I was on a flight over the city (Hanoi) ... and I was bombing and I was hit by a missile or anti-aircraft fire, I'm not sure which," he said, adding that his plane "when straight down."

After landing in the lake, McCain said he "was picked up and taken to the hospital, where I almost died."

In the interview, McCain said he was treated well by his Vietnamese captors. Asked about the food, he told his French interviewer, "It's not like Paris ... (but) I eat it."

French reporter Francois Chalais conducted the interview , which was first broadcast on French television program Panorama in January 1968.

The journalist's widow, Mei Chen Chalais, is seeking payment from several television broadcasters in France and the US for the unauthorised use of the footage.

Her lawyers have even written to the McCain campaign as its website features a few seconds of the footage, which Chalais said was done without her approval. "

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/US-Elections-2008/John-McCain-Footage-Of-Presidential-Candidate-As-Prisoner-Of-War-In-Vietnam-Released/Article/200810415126616

Quote from a previous article 

"You're (press) just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party"

 https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=25000

__________________

"Safety in Numbers? Poll-Driven Press Goes Out on a Limb

Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2008; Page C01

"The network maps are bathed in blue, the pundits contemplating a landslide, the conservative columnists preparing for the indignities of an Obama administration.

"With the numbers breaking Barack Obama's way, it's hardly surprising that poll-driven journalists are suggesting, insinuating or flat-out forecasting a Democratic victory. But could they affect the outcome? And what if they turn out to be wrong about John McCain being toast?

"One piece of press bias is they don't like losers," says CBS correspondent Jeff Greenfield. "When the whiff of defeat surrounds a campaign, the press picks up on it the way sharks smell blood in the water, and then it becomes a feedback loop."

NBC's political map has Obama at 264 electoral votes, just short of the required 270. Political director Chuck Todd told viewers that Obama is "one state away" and says he doesn't see how McCain can catch up.

"I think we have to be responsible," says Todd, adding that he won't hesitate to put Obama over 270 if his analysis supports it. "It'd be worse if somehow we were withholding it. That's crazy too. It looks like you're trying to create drama."

CNN projected Obama leading in states with 277 electoral votes last week, based on a new poll giving the freshman senator a 10-point lead in Virginia. "This is only a snapshot of where the individual states are," says political director Sam Feist. "We're not suggesting that Barack Obama has won this election." ABC's George Stephanopoulos says Obama would win more than 300 electoral votes if the election were held now.

But polls change, as many journalists were reminded when they wrongly predicted that Obama would beat Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. McCain accused the national media last week of having "written us off," as they did so embarrassingly last year.

"It's obvious the media have a preferred candidate in the race," says McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb. "It's obvious the media are eager to seal the fate of John McCain." At the same time, he says, "we know we have some ground to make up. We don't want our people to be demoralized looking at poll numbers that are rather erratic and that we don't think are reliable."

Obama, for his part, warned against <snip>iness last week when "the press starts getting carried away and we end up getting spanked."

"I don't think it's particularly helpful," says Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "And the people who are making these pronouncements are ignoring recent history that have shown very close results. This is a closely divided electorate, and we expect that nationally and in battleground states this race is going to go down to the wire."

News stories have hung their handicapping on partisans. McCain "failed to allay Republican concerns that the presidential race may be slipping beyond his grasp," says the Los Angeles Times. Republican leaders said "they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat," says the New York Times. "Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory," says Politico. And Newsweek has the senator from Illinois on the cover yet again today, with the headline "How a President Obama would govern a center-right country." Not much doubt there.

Opinion writers are even bolder in flouting Yogi Berra's dictum that it ain't over till it's over. "The Democrats are on the verge of a strange victory," writes National Review Editor Rich Lowry. "If Obama is elected, they will arguably have won the most left-wing government in American history."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/19/AR2008101902099.html?nav=hcmodule

"One of Barack Obama's most potent campaign claims is that he'll cut taxes for no less than 95% of "working families." He's even promising to cut taxes enough that the government's tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% -- which is lower than it is today.

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit." Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

The political left defends "refundability" on grounds that these payments help to offset the payroll tax. And that was at least plausible when the only major refundable credit was the earned-income tax credit. Taken together, however, these tax credit payments would exceed payroll levies for most low-income workers.

It is also true that John McCain proposes a refundable tax credit -- his $5,000 to help individuals buy health insurance. We've written before that we prefer a tax deduction for individual health care, rather than a credit. But the big difference with Mr. Obama is that Mr. McCain's proposal replaces the tax subsidy for employer-sponsored health insurance that individuals don't now receive if they buy on their own. It merely changes the nature of the tax subsidy; it doesn't create a new one.

There's another catch: Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year. One mystery -- among many -- of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama's 95% illusion to go unanswered.  "

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Found this link via Powerlineblog.com.

Can you say bullseye??????????????????? 

______________________

Source Meridian  http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

"Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

"An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups.  But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay?  They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here?  Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout?  Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal.  "Housing-gate," no doubt.  Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago.  So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President.  So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts.  This financial crisis was completely preventable.  The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party.  The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie.  Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What?  It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents.  Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link.  (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth.  That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans.  You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do.  Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences.  That's what honesty means .  That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one.  He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women.  Who listens to NOW anymore?  We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late.  You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city. "

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission. "

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

"Barney Frank: Plenty of rich people that we can tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

Poor John, had my doubts some time back but this just confirms everyone's suspicions.         

"Murtha Calls Western Pa. 'Redneck'
Congressman Says Western Pa. Was 'Really Redneck'

POSTED: 4:24 pm EDT October 20, 2008
UPDATED: 6:28 pm EDT October 20, 2008

CHARLEROI, Pa. -- U.S. Rep. John Murtha is calling many of the people who put him in office "rednecks."

The news comes one week after Murtha claimed the area is racist, then apologized for that comment. "

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/17764334/detail.html

"Freddie Mac Tried to Kill Republican Regulatory Bill in 2005

"WASHINGTON —  Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

"In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI's yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole," the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side.

In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel's bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote because Democrats also opposed it and the votes of some would be needed for passage. The measure died at the end of the 109th Congress.

McCain, R-Ariz., was not a target of the DCI campaign. He signed Hagel's letter and three weeks later signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill.

By the time McCain did so, however, DCI's effort had gone on for nine months and was on its way toward killing the bill.

In recent days, McCain has said Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were "one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire" of the global credit crisis. McCain has accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of taking advice from former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and failing to see that the companies were heading for a meltdown.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, or his lobbying firm has taken more than $2 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dating to 2000.

Obama has received $120,349 in political donations from employees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; McCain $21,550.

The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure.

Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed.

Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin oversaw DCI's drive, according to the three people.

"Hollis's goal was not to have any Freddie Mac fingerprints on this project and DCI became the hidden hand behind the effort," one of the three people told the AP.

Before 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democratic strongholds. After 2004, Republicans ran their political operations. McLoughlin, who joined Freddie Mac in 2004 as chief of staff, has given $32,250 to Republican candidates over the years, including $2,800 to McCain, and has given none to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

On Friday night, Hagel's chief of staff, Mike Buttry, said Hagel's legislation "was the last best chance to bring greater oversight and tighter regulation to Freddie and Fannie, and they used every means they could to defeat Sen. Hagel's legislation every step of the way."

"It is outrageous that a congressionally chartered government-sponsored enterprise would lobby against a member of Congress's bill that would strengthen the regulation and oversight of that institution," Buttry said in a statement. "America has paid an extremely high price for the reckless, and possibly criminal, actions of the leadership at Freddie and Fannie."

Nine of the 17 targeted Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter: Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Christopher "Kit" Bond and Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George Allen of Virginia. Aside from the nine, 20 other Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter.

McConnell's office said members of leadership do not sign letters to the leader. McConnell was majority whip at the time.

Eight of the targeted senators did sign it: Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Larry Craig of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, George Voinovich of Ohio and David Vitter of Louisiana. Santorum, Crapo and Bunning were on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and had voted in favor of sending the bill to the full Senate.

On Thursday, Freddie Mac acknowledged that the company "did retain DCI to provide public affairs support at the state and local level." On Friday, DCI issued a four-sentence statement saying it complied with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations in representing Freddie Mac. Neither Freddie Mac nor DCI would say how much Goodyear's consulting firm was paid.

Freddie Mac paid DCI $10,000 a month for each of the targeted states, so the more states, the more money for DCI, according to the three people familiar with the program. In addition, Freddie Mac paid DCI a group retainer of $40,000 a month plus $20,000 a month for each regional manager handling the project, the three people said.

Last month, the concerns of the 26 Republican senators who signed Hagel's bill became a reality when the government seized control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae amid their near financial collapse. Federal prosecutors are investigating accounting, disclosure and corporate governance issues at both companies, which own or guarantee more than $5 trillion in mortgages, roughly equivalent to half of the national debt.

Freddie Mac was so pleased with DCI's work that it retained the firm for other jobs, finally cutting DCI loose last month after the government takeover, according to the three people familiar with the situation.

Freddie Mac's problems began when Hagel's legislation won approval from the Senate committee.

Democrats did not like the harshest provision, which would have given a new regulator a mandate to shrink Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by forcing them to sell off part of their portfolios. That approach, the Democrats feared, would cut into the ability of low- and moderate-income families to buy houses.

The political backdrop to the debate "was like bizarre-o-world," said the second of three people familiar with the program. "The Republicans were pro-regulation and the Democrats were against it; it was upside down."

Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee chairman at the time, underscored that in a statement Wednesday, saying that with Democrats already on their side, it was not surprising that Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae went after Republicans. "Unfortunately," said Shelby, R-Ala., "efforts then to derail reform were successful."

In a sign of bad things to come, Freddie Mac was already having serious problems in 2005. Auditors had exposed massive accounting issues, so improved regulation was one obvious remedy.

Once Freddie Mac's in-house lobbyists failed to keep Hagel's bill bottled up in the committee, McLoughlin responded by secretly hiring DCI.

DCI never filed lobbying reports with Congress about what it was doing because the firm was relying on a long-recognized gap in the disclosure law.

Federal lobbying law only requires reporting and registration when there are contacts with a legislator or staff.

"To have it stealthy, not to let people know who is behind this, in my opinion is unethical," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University who long has taught courses about lobbying.

Goodyear is a longtime political consultant from Arizona who resigned from the Republican convention job this year after Newsweek magazine revealed he had lobbied for the repressive military junta of Myanmar.

McLoughlin, Freddie Mac's senior vice president for external relations, was assistant treasury secretary from 1989 through 1992 in the administration of President Bush's father. McLoughlin served as chief of staff to Sen. Nicholas Brady, R-N.J., in 1982 and to Rep. Millicent Fenwick, R-N.J., from 1975-79.

Seven of the 17 targeted Republican senators were in the midst of re-election campaigns in 2006, and according to one of the three people familiar with the program, Freddie Mac and DCI hoped those facing tough races would tell their Republican colleagues back in Washington that "we've got enough trouble; you're making it worse with Hagel's bill."

Five of the seven DCI targets who ran for re-election in 2006 lost, and Senate control switched to the Democrats.

A Freddie Mac e-mail on May 4, 2006 — the day before Hagel's letter — details the behind-the-scenes effort that Freddie Mac and DCI generated to hold down the number of Republicans signing Hagel's letter urging a full Senate vote. It said:

"What I'm asking is that DCI get a few of their key well-connected constituents from each state to call in to the DC office of their Republican senators and speak to the (legislative director) or (chief of staff) and urge them not to sign the letter. The following could be used as a short script."

The proposed script read: "We can all agree that Fannie's and Freddie's regulator should be strengthened but unfortunately, S.190 goes too far and could potentially have damaging effects on Georgia's — example — home buyers."

According to the third of the three people familiar with the program, "DCI was asked to help keep senators from signing; it was a big part of their effort that year and it was viewed as a success since many DCI targets did not sign the letter."

DCI's progress after the first four months of the campaign was spelled out in a 19-page document dated Dec. 12, 2005, and titled, "Freddie Mac Field Program State by State Summary Report."

A snippet of a senator-by-senator breakdown of the efforts says this about Maine's Snowe:

"Philip Harriman, former state senator, co-chair of Snowe's 2006 campaign, personal Snowe friend, major GOP donor and investment adviser, has written the senator a personal letter on this issue. Dick Morin, vice president Maine Association of Mortgage Brokers, has been in direct contact with Sen. Snowe's committee staff, has sent a letter to Snowe, and is pursuing a dozen(s) of letters from his members."

On Wednesday, Snowe's office issued a statement saying that she "literally gets hundreds of 'Dear Colleague' letters seeking support for their positions that she does not sign. Had this legislation come up for a vote in 2006, she certainly would have considered it on its merits — as she does every vote. Just last July, she voted for the housing bill that established a new, stronger regulator."

Rosario Marin, a staunch McCain supporter who spoke at the GOP convention in September, was among the people DCI used in carrying out the campaign.

Marin, the U.S. treasurer during the first term of the Bush administration, went to Missouri and to Montana, Burns' state, where she spoke out against Hagel's bill.

At the time, Burns, who ended up losing his re-election bid, was caught up in a Washington influence peddling scandal centering on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Marin's visit triggered a local newspaper story in which the reporter contacted Burns' staff for comment. Burns' office told the newspaper the senator was not supportive of the latest version of Hagel's bill.

On Wednesday, Marin, now state consumer services secretary in California, issued a statement confirming that her trips to Missouri and Montana were in her capacity as a DCI consultant.

The December 2005 summary listing 17 Republican targets outlines the inroads DCI was making.

"On day one" of the effort, Sen. George Allen of Virginia had not addressed Hagel's bill and his legislative aide for housing was not assigned to it, the report said.

"Today," the report added, "the senator is aware of the issue and ... at the moment he is undecided." Allen's deputy chief of staff "has said that the senator will take into consideration before he decides that Freddie Mac is located in Virginia and is one of the largest Virginia employers."

"Grasstops/opinion leaders James Todd, president, the Peterson Companies wrote to both senators," the report added. "Milt Peterson, the founder and CEO of the company is one of Allen's major donors."

In the end, Allen, who lost his bid for re-election in 2006, did not sign Hagel's letter. "

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,440681,00.html

Oct 16, 2008

"Washington, Oct 16 - House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today released an analysis showing that the left-wing group ACORN, currently under investigation by the FBI for a “coordinated national scam” of voter registration fraud according to the Associated Press, has received at least $31 million in federal funding from various federal agencies since 1998. This total does not count the untold millions more that ACORN has received indirectly through state and local agencies that receive federal block grants. Boehner, who last week called for an end to federal funding of ACORN following widespread reports of voter fraud by the group, released the following statement:

“Senator Obama recently said that he doesn’t need ACORN. Well, American taxpayers don’t need ACORN either. They don’t need ACORN’s voter registration fraud, and they no longer need to support ACORN with federal funds.

“ACORN’s free ride on the backs of taxpayers must end immediately. An initial review of federal records shows ACORN affiliates have received at least $31 million in direct federal funding from American taxpayers over the past 10 years, and millions more indirectly through state and local agencies that receive federal block grants. House Republicans worked together to stop the Majority from using taxpayer dollars to fill a slush fund created just for ACORN, but now we must go further to turn off the spigot of federal grants on which ACORN depends.

“Recent revelations of voter registration fraud on a massive scale in critical states are unacceptable. ACORN’s dishonest approach to voter registration, including fraudulently registering the cartoon character Mickey Mouse, shows a brazen disrespect for the law and our system of free and fair elections. In conjunction with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and its political allies in the Democratic Party, ACORN also played a key role in creating the financial crisis that ultimately put our entire economy in peril. It’s time for us to stop forcing American taxpayers to fund the ACORN machine.”

A review of the Federal Register shows that ACORN affiliates in 11 states received more than $31 million in federal funds from 1998 to 2008.

One of the grants to an ACORN affiliate, a Jan. 17, 2007 award to ACORN Associates Inc. of Albuquerque, NM, is notable because it appears to facilitate and encourage the use of risky subprime loans, now viewed by many as a contributing factor in the recent freezing up of international credit markets. The title for the grant? “Education and Outreach Initiative/Subprime Lending Component.”

Here is a breakdown of federal funds received by ACORN:

RECIPIENT CITY ST AMOUNT DATE
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,016,473.86 03/26/08
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,821,596.00 03/06/08
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION N/A N/A $7,850,939.00 02/24/08
ACORN INSTITUTE INC. WASHINGTON DC $362,378.00 01/28/08
ACORN INSTITUTE DALLAS TX $179,916.00 12/31/07
ACORN INSTITUTE DALLAS TX $124,915.00 12/31/07
ACORN INSTITUTE DALLAS TX $124,693.00 12/31/07
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION ST. PAUL MN $100,000.00 11/20/07
NEW MEXICO ACORN FAIR HOUSING ALBUQUERQUE NM $99,757.00 11/20/07
NEW MEXICO ACORN FAIR HOUSING ALBUQUERQUE NM $99,724.00 01/17/07
ACORN ASSOCIATES INC. ALBUQUERQUE NM $49,997.00 01/17/07
ACORN COMMUNITY LAND ASSOCIATION OF LOUISIANA
NEW ORLEANS LA $100,000.00 01/17/07
ACORN FAIR HOUSING WASHINGTON DC $80,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION ST. PAUL MN $80,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN INSTITUTE INC. NEW ORLEANS LA $80,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION OF TEXAS HOUSTON TX $49,865.00 09/08/06
ACORN COMMUNITY LAND ASSOCIATION ALBUQUERQUE NM $99,775.00 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION OF ARIZONA PHOENIX AZ $99,840.00 09/08/06
ACORN COMMUNITY LAND ASSOCIATION OF LOUISIANA
BALTIMORE MD $200,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN FAIR HOUSING WASHINGTON DC $79,988.00 09/08/06
ACORN INSTITUTE INC. NEW ORLEANS LA $79,896.80 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION ST. PAUL MN $80,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN COMMUNITY LAND ASSOCIATION OF LOUISIANA
NEW ORLEANS LA $80,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION OF ARIZONA PHOENIX AZ $95,000.00 09/08/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION ST. PAUL MN $100,000.00 09/06/06
ACORN FAIR HOUSING, A PROJECT OF AMERICAN INSTITUTE
WASHINGTON DC $100,000.00 09/06/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION ST. PAUL MN $100,000.00 09/06/06
ACORN COMMUNITY LAND ASSOCIATION OF LOUISIANA
NEW ORLEANS LA $100,000.00 09/06/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION N/A IL $351,000.00 08/29/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION N/A IL $527,000.00 08/29/06
ACORN ASSOCIATES NEW ORLEANS LA $1,999,920.00 06/14/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,197,255.00 03/21/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $78,354.00 03/21/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATIONPHILADELPHIA PA $323,439.00 03/21/06
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATIONPHILADELPHIA PA $275,000.00 03/21/06
ACORN HOUSING ST. PAUL MN $100,000.00 12/13/05
ACORN INSTITUTE DALLAS TX $96,952.58 12/13/05
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,812,471.00 05/02/05
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $325,000.00 05/02/05
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $275,000.00 05/02/05
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $2,024,511.00 02/23/04
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $380,282.00 02/23/04
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $ 250,962.00 02/23/04
ACORN ASSOCIATES NEW ORLEANS LA $999,974.00 11/25/03
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,167,044.00 01/13/03
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,032,192.00 01/16/02
ACORN FAIR HOUSING WASHINGTON DC $300,000.00 11/09/01
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION CHICAGO IL $300,000.00 04/11/01
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $597,474.34 04/11/01
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,000,000.00 06/23/99
ACORN TENANT UNION TRAINING AND ORGANIZING PROJECT
WASHINGTON DC $99,900.00 04/13/99
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION CHICAGO IL $751,500.00 02/12/99
ACORN HOUSING CORPORATION PHILADELPHIA PA $1,000,000.00 08/27/98
ACORN TENANT UNION TRANING PROJECT, INC.
BROOKLYN NY $250,000.00 04/08/98
ARKANSAS ACORN FAIR HOUSING LITTLE ROCK AR $100,000.00 02/19/98
TOTAL $31,049,984.58

http://www.letfreedomringusa.com/news/read/183

A friend sent me these video links. 

______________

http://www.neverfindout.org/

Hope live links below answer some of your questions.  Rampant spending has  proven the government unwilling to rein itself in.  Citizens controlling purse strings is the only way to force government to be responsible to all of us again.

_____________

Click on the questions below to view the answers.

1. What is taxed?
2. Exactly what taxes are abolished?
3. How does the rebate work?
4. Why not just exempt food and medicine from the tax? Wouldn't that be fair and simple?
5. Is the 23% FairTax higher or lower when compared to the income taxes people pay today?
6. Does the FairTax rate need to be much higher to be revenue neutral?
7. How is the Social Security system affected?
8. How does the FairTax affect Social Security reform?
9. Is consumption a reliable source of revenue?
10. How is the tax collected?
11. Why is the FairTax better than our current system?
12. Is the FairTax fair?
13. How does the FairTax protect low-income families and individuals and retirees on fixed incomes?
14. Is it fair for rich people to get the exact same FairTax rebate from the federal government as the poorest person in America?
15. What about senior citizens and retired people?
16. Are seniors taxed twice on savings, once when they saved it, and now again when the spend it?
17. How does the FairTax affect wages and prices?
18. Why not just exempt necessities from the FairTax instead of providing for a rebate?
19. Should the government tax services?
20. How does the FairTax affect income tax preparers, accountants, and many government employees?
21. What about the home mortgage deduction?
22. What will happen to charitable giving?
23. Will corporations get a windfall with the abolition of the corporate tax?
24. Does the FairTax burden the retail industry?
25. How are state tax systems affected, and can states adequately collect a federal sales tax?
26. How will the plan affect economic growth?
27. What economic changes come at the retail level with the FairTax?
28. What happens to interest rates?
29. What happens to the stock market, mutual funds, and retirement funds?
30. What happens to tax-free bonds?
31. How does this affect U.S. competitiveness in foreign trade?
32. What about border issues?
33. Does the FairTax improve compliance and reduce evasion when compared to the current income tax?
34. Can the FairTax really be passed into law?
35. What other significant economies use such a tax plan?
36. What about the flat tax? Would it be better and easier to pass?
37. Can Congress just simply raise the rate once the FairTax is passed into law?
38. Could we end up with both the FairTax and an income tax?
39. Is the FairTax just another conservative tax scheme? Or just another liberal tax scheme?
40. What assumptions have been made about government spending?
41. How does the FairTax affect government spending?
42. Why is it necessary to have a constitutional amendment?
43. How does the income tax affect our economy?
44. How will this plan affect compliance costs?
45. What about value-added taxes (VATs), like they have in Europe and Canada? Are they not consumption taxes?
46. What will we experience in the transition from the income tax to the FairTax?
47. I know the FairTax rate is 23 percent when compared to current income taxes. What will the rate of the sales tax be at the retail counter?
48. Since business purchases are not taxable, how does the FairTax keep individuals from pretending to have a business so they can buy things tax free?
49. Is the FairTax progressive? Do the rich pay more and the poor pay less as a percentage of their spending?
50. Is there any provision in the FairTax bill to prevent both an income tax and a sales tax?
    
    http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq

"ABOUT THE FAIRTAX

What is the FairTax plan?

The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax  administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.

The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax system.

The FairTax:

• Enables workers to keep their entire paychecks
• Enables retirees to keep their entire pensions
• Refunds in advance the tax on purchases of basic necessities
• Allows American products to compete fairly
• Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
• Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
• Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
• Abolishes the IRS

We offer a library of information throughout this Web site about the features and benefits of the FairTax plan. Please explore!

The FairTax Five    (live links)

The gloves are off as critics try to pick apart the FairTax. Trouble is, it's just a replay of the same five FairTax myths:

• "The 23% rate is misleading. It's actually 30%"
  Well, actually...
• "It's not enforceable and evasion will be rampant"
  Well, actually...
• "It will not be revenue neutral at 23%"
  Well, actually...
• "The FairTax is not politically viable"
  Well, actually...
• "The FairTax is regressive and shifts the tax burden onto lower and middle income people"
  Well, actually...
  
  http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main

"The FairTax replaces all federal taxes paid by you and by businesses. No income tax. No capital gains taxes. No death tax. No Social Security tax. No alternative minimum tax. All gone. The elimination of these taxes will remove these tax components from the price of everything you buy." Surely, ......you will understand that all of the taxes paid by all of the people who are responsible for bringing a loaf of bread, a movie theatre ticket or a gallon of gasoline to the marketplace are passed down the line and paid by the final consumer of that item. Think about this ... where ELSE would the money to pay those taxes come from? There is no other way to generate the income necessary to pay these taxes OTHER than to include them in the final price of everything sold in our economy. So, how much is this tax component? About 22%. The taxes included in some consumer items are higher, lower in others, but the average is about 22%. When this 22% tax component comes OUT of the price of everything you buy, it is REPLACED by the 23% FairTax. So, THE TRUTH is that the FairTax does not "add 23% to the cost of everything you buy." It replaces the 22% average tax component included in the cost of everything you buy with a 23% sales tax.

There's so much more to this, and you can get the details from Americans for Fair Taxation, Congressman John Linder's website, or by heading to your bookstore and buying a copy of The FairTax book. Promise ... those of you who were initially frightened by this DSCC lying attack on the FairTax will come away supporters if you educate yourselves." 

http://boortz.com/nuze/200810/10162008.html#fairtax

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"Just Trust the Government?

At the heart of the financial meltdown now bedeviling Americans is a simple and profoundly ignored fact that does not require an advanced degree in economics to understand: Our government spends more than it takes in—a lot more.

Sure, regulators could have done a better job but, in truth, politicians at every level have frustrated attempts to blow the whistle on bad loans, bad reporting and bad ethics. Why? Because politicians have been buying our votes with our money—and our future earnings—for a long time. And they don't want any interference from those they are "helping."

It's not just the naked bribes represented by "earmarks" for hometown voters; it is new entitlement programs like the prescription drug benefit, new rules governing the behavior of favored banks and investment houses and a headlong rush to buy the votes of the poor by guaranteeing home ownership, irrespective of one's financial ability to repay a loan. Lest we forget, let's also add up all the special tax breaks for favored contributors that have bloated income tax code rules to 67,500 pages. It's a bi-partisan betrayal of our future cloaked as concern for the common good.

Although our nation was founded on the principle that the citizen was sovereign, government spending increases and more and more taxes taken from our earnings, savings and investments have effectively transformed the American citizen into a serf working another's land for the privilege of taking a fraction of the fruits of his or her own labor.

Just Trust Us

"Trust us," we are told. "We have the best interests of the nation at heart." Citizens are now left with no rational choice to protect savings, college plans, and investments but to accept the new aristocracies' trillion dollar picking of our pockets to prop up institutions that must function. It is not the first time in recent years that we have accepted the grasping hand of the federal government in our wallets to avert a disaster not of our making.

In 1983 a "Blue Ribbon" panel of similar leaders including Alan Greenspan, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others "saved" Social Security from another big collapse by dramatically raising taxes on earnings of up to $97,500 annually. The promise, then, was that Baby Boomers would actually "pre-fund" their own retirement with astoundingly increased taxes, decades ahead of time. It was also promised as relief to the coming generations so they would be free of crippling taxes. Sounded good.

Lo and behold, the trillions of dollars taken in since then—far exceeding promised payments to senior citizens—have since been spent on everything else. Turns out, that it was nothing more than a new tax levied on those with earnings below $97,500 a year so executive and legislative branch office holders could have more of our money to spend extravagantly on "us" so they could win new terms in office. The FICA payroll tax has become a major factor in keeping the poor that way, retarding new business growth and keeping middle-class earners from moving up. Worst, it also turns out that our children and grandchildren will, in fact, still be burdened an ever-growing and mind-numbing national debt AND unbelievably high FICA taxes to support their parents.

In yet another example of playing fast and loose with politics and our money, 1986 saw Congress reject the tax policies of the Reagan administration and as consequence, the Savings and Loan industry collapsed. Turns out the definition of the tax value of real estate holdings had been changed overnight by the House Ways and Means Committee and banks no longer met liquidity rules. That politically inspired cat fight cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. And worse, we didn't learn.

It is past time--way past time--for hometown America to save America from our well-intentioned but criminally incompetent, at best, and cynically corrupted , at worst, national leadership. Do we have a moment to lose? Do we really need any more examples of how the new aristocracy can—and will—destroy the pursuit of happiness?

The reform that can save the nation and restore our identity as citizens who have empowered and limited government (instead of the other way around) is called the FairTax.

Because the FairTax allows every American to take home everything that is earned without any federal withholding, millions of distressed homeowners could actually afford home mortgage payments. The elimination of FICA taxes eliminates the highly regressive Social Security and Medicate tax but the FairTax provides a far broader stream of revenue into these faltering programs. Because the FairTax eliminates all exemptions, gimmicks and loopholes, Congress would be removed from the ability to buy votes with tax giveaways and billionaires pay taxes when they spend money. Because the FairTax makes nearly all federal government taxes entirely transparent, the sovereign citizen can know the score and put the brakes on extravagant new spending. Because the FairTax eliminates the price advantage now enjoyed by overseas producers, American jobs won't be leaving our shores. In fact, because the FairTax makes the USA the most favorable tax environment in the world, we can expect trillions of dollars of investment rushing into the US economy. With the FairTax, our money is ours first and only secondly devoted to government. Savings growth, investments and business decisions are guided by opportunity and real progress instead of tax avoidance tactics.

We've lost more than $2 trillion of our retirement savings in a week's time and our kid's future at college is in serious jeopardy. This didn't happen by accident but at the hands of the very same people who have given the FairTax a cold shoulder. Those candidates and incumbents of either party who would spend our future earnings to stay in office and who reject the FairTax for similarly self-interested reasons now need a strong reminder from voters about whose offices they occupy. Please pay attention to our voting guide and send that message. ....."

...."The plain fact is, we either now save ourselves from our new aristocracy or suffer the consequences as modern day serfs in a nation never contemplated by our Founding Fathers. "

http://townhall.com/columnists/KenHoagland/2008/10/15/just_trust_the_government?page=full&comments=true

"Knoxville's Joe the Plumber doubts Obama, too

Source knoxnews.com

"Joe the Plumber, of Knoxville, that is, says he's less concerned about whether he gets a tax break if his customers still can't afford to hire him.

Still, Joe Shanks, a licensed master plumber and owner of Joe's Plumbing Service in the Cedar Bluff area, has followed the presidential campaigns the same as his much-quoted counterpart in Toledo, Ohio,................." 

"L.A. Times: Joe the Plumber Has Liens!!!!1!!

"I think we can all agree that this is critical information.

Not because it says anything about Joe the Plumber, mind you. But it does serve a useful function: it warns any future citizen who might dare question Barack Obama that his life will be closely scrutinized for any irrelevant but embarrassing information.

So, you know. Critical in that sense.  "
http://www.patterico.com/2008/10/16/la-times-joe-the-plumber-has-liens1/

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"Operation Destroy Joe the Plumber

Source WorldNetDaily

If this is not "paid from high places" to go away, then its implications are very interesting. 

Story from African Press International is at the bottom of this page. 

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As a follow up to JAP69's post " I just went out in my vehicle and their was a talk host talking about comments that Jessie Jackson made about the muslim religion and Obama. It was not a good comment that Jessie made.
If I am correct on what I heard ......"  https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=24888

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To my knowledge below is the original interview, original article.  Please post correct article if it isn't.

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"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."

Jackson warns that he isn't an Obama confidant or adviser, "just a supporter." But he adds that Obama has been "a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family." Jackson's son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson's daughter went to school with Obama's wife Michelle.

"We helped him start his career," says Jackson. "And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged."

Will Obama's election close the chapter of black grievances linked to memories of slavery? The reverend takes a deep breath and waits a long time before responding.

"No, that chapter won't be closed," he says. "However, Obama's victory will be a huge step in the direction we have wanted America to take for decades."

Jackson rejects any suggestion that Obama was influenced by Marxist ideas in his youth. "I see no evidence of that," he says. "Obama's thirst for justice and equality is rooted in his black culture."

But is Obama - who's not a descendant of slaves - truly a typical American black?

Jackson emphatically answers yes: "You don't need to be a descendant of slaves to experience the oppression, the suffocating injustice and the ugly racism that exists in our society," he says. "Obama experienced the same environment as all American blacks did. It was nonsense to suggest that he was somehow not black enough to feel the pain."

Is Jackson worried about the "Bradley effect" - that people may be telling pollsters they favor the black candidate, but won't end up voting for him?

"I don't think this is how things will turn out," he says. "We have a collapsing economy and a war that we have lost in Iraq. In Afghanistan, we face a resurgent Taliban. New threats are looming in Pakistan. Our liberties have been trampled under feet . . . Today, most Americans want change, and know that only Barack can deliver what they want. Young Americans are especially determined to make sure that Obama wins."

He sees a broad public loss of confidence in the nation's institutions: "We have lost confidence in our president, our Congress, our banking system, our Wall Street and our legal system to protect our individual freedoms. . . I don't see how we could regain confidence in all those institutions without a radical change of direction."

Jackson declines to be more concrete about possible policy changes. After all, he insists, he isn't part of Obama's policy team. Yet he clearly hopes that his views, reflecting the position of many Democrats, would be reflected in the policies of an Obama administration.

On the economic front, he hopes for "major changes in our trading policy."

"We cannot continue with the open-door policy," he says. "We need to protect our manufacturing industry against unfair competition that destroys American jobs and creates ill-paid jobs abroad."

Would that mean an abrogation of the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico?

Jackson dismisses the question as "premature": "We could do a great deal without such dramatic action."

His most surprising position concerns Iraq. He passionately denounces the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "an illegal and unjust act." But he's now sure that the United States "will have to remain in Iraq for a very long time."

What of Obama's promise to withdraw by 2010? Jackson believes that position will have to evolve, reflecting "realities on the ground."

"We should work with our allies in Iraq to consolidate democratic institutions there," he says. "We must help the people of Iraq decide and shape their future in accordance with their own culture and faith."

On Iran, he strongly supports Obama's idea of opening a direct dialogue with the leadership in Tehran. "We've got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want," Jackson says. "Nothing is gained by not talking to others."

Would that mean ignoring the four UN Security Council resolutions that demand an end to Iran's uranium-enrichment program? Jackson says direct talks wouldn't start without preparations.

"Barack wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy," he says. "He also wants adequate preparatory work. We must enter the talks after the ground has been prepared," he says.

Jackson is especially critical of President Bush's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss," Jackson says. "Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all."

"Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims," Jackson says. "Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith."

 
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10142008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_o_jesse_knows_133450.htm?page=0

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/joe-the-plumber.html

Brought up by Obama last night, his false accusations revealed as pure BS.

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"Secret Service says "Kill him" allegation unfounded

"By  Andrew M. Seder 
Staff Writer 

Think CNN reporters must have been reading conservative blog(s) commentary about ACORN and massive voter fraud.  Saving face they followed with a report finally. 

Looking at dates on the videos, McCain called it first.

Think Obama's close ties with ACORN and William Ayres are becoming well established.  Do we really want this man as president???????

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Jarasan posted a video here of Obama's actual converstion with the plumber where Obama let it slip his real intention for the economy was Marxist redistribution of wealth "spread the wealth around."  Amounts to nothing more than stoking class/wealth envy.  Link to video below.

[ My note .... envy or resent someone else having something you'd like to have then you're definitely not in sync with creating it for yourself .... you push it away. ]

Bold emphasis mine for speed scanners.

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Jarasan's blog  "It slipped out."  https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?o=k&i=24851&b=p

____________

ACORN and others at it again, considering the sheer numbers it's light years beyond a few little mistakes.

Bold emphasis mine for speed scanners.

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"Stealing Pennsylvania: "Massive Fraud"
Posted by Jeffrey Lord on 10.10.08 @ 12:08AM
Source American Spectator

"A retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice says that she is "not confident we can get a fair election" in the state come November.

Justice Sandra Newman, accompanied by Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marsico and Pennsylvania Republican State Chairman Robert Gleason, expressed her concerns at a Harrisburg press conference this morning. A thick document replete with photo copies of phony registrations and aerial shots of vacant lots used as "addresses" for "voters" was handed out to journalists.

Gleason was even more explicit.

"Between March 23rd and October 1st, various groups, including ACORN, submitted over 252,595 registrations to the Philadelphia County Election Board" with 57, 435 rejected for faulty information. "Most of these registrations were submitted by ACORN, and rejected due to fake social security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, clearly fraudulent signatures, addresses that do not exist, and duplicate registrations. In one case, a man was registered to vote more than 15 times since the Primary election."

"Voter fraud is no longer just a Philadelphia problem," Gleason said, with ACORN targeting key counties across the state. Counties specifically cited included:

* Delaware County: One of four key suburban counties that surround Philadelphia and are at the heart of the campaign by the forces of Senator Barack Obama to carry the state. In one instance, an ACORN employee circulating voter registration forms in Delaware County was featured on the Pennsylvania "Megan's Law" website, described as having been arrested for "aggravated indecent assault" of a child. Other ACORN circulators had prior criminal records for forgery and giving false information to a police officer, among other charges. Gleason has provided copies of complaints from actual Delaware County voters who were notified by the local election board of their "new" registration to vote. One voter wrote that he "did not complete this form because this information does not match my info at all. I have been a voter for many years. Did not recently register to vote." Said another: "I did not submit any application for voter registration…While the spelling of my name and address is correct, the birth date and Drivers License (sic) number are incorrect." And another angrily wrote that the "personal information" on a form submitted in her name "IS NOT ME." She added: Please have the county investigate this. I feel my identity is being compromised."

* Philadelphia County: The situation in the state's largest city is so bad the Philadelphia City Commission, which supervises the registration of Philadelphia voters, voted unanimously to "voluntarily" turn over its extensive records to the United States Attorney's office for prosecution.

* Dauphin County: Dauphin County (the location of the state capital) District Attorney Marsico said the situation was so bad in Harrisburg that one ACORN worker is now being sought by authorities for submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms. The charge is 19 counts of perjury. One Harrisburg lobbyist, a voter for 30 years, had received notification she had recently filled out a registration form. The lobbyist went straight to the DA with her complaint. Marsico said that what was happening with ACORN "affects the integrity of the process" and that the volume of phony registrations made him "sure that others are going on" that have been undetected.

* Allegheny County: Pittsburgh. Here District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. and county police Superintendent Charles Moffatt have just announced, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that "they are investigating and considering charges against ACORN staffers and other voter registration groups."

* Centre County: The home of Penn State, which enrolls more than 40,000 students at its home campus. Justice Newman said there was a "massive effort" to fraudulently register students, with efforts aimed at "multiple registrations."

* Erie County: The county at the northwestern tip of the state with its largest namesake city, here too students at local colleges are being targeted in "student registration drives" designed to register voters 18 and over "multiples of times." Student registrants, registered to vote in their home states, had "pending absentee ballot applications" submitted so they could vote for president both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The Director of Elections in Erie has reported the telltale "same handwriting" on applications, according to Newman.

Marsico added that he believed the attempted fraud was being perpetrated in smaller Pennsylvania counties as well, counties where the resources to investigate simply don't exist.

Perhaps most humorously was the role of 21st century technology in tracking down several attempted frauds. Through the wonder of Google, aerial shots displayed the following:

* 2418 Curtin Terrace in Philadelphia is -- an empty field.
* 3103 S. 24th Street in Philadelphia -- ditto.
* 4543 N. 11th Street in Philadelphia -- ditto.

And so on. And on again.

Asked whether the Pennsylvania State Democratic Party had come forward to work with the GOP on the ACORN voter fraud issue, Gleason tersely shook his head. One source did say that much of the impetus for the fraud was "an Obama effort," as opposed to the Democratic Party as an institution.

All of this brings Pennsylvania into focus as yet another key battleground state where a serious effort is being made to, bluntly put, steal the presidency in a move reminiscent of the attempts made by the 2000 Gore campaign in Florida. Just as ACORN's efforts have been directed at key electoral states such as Florida, Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico Ohio, and Wisconsin, so within Pennsylvania have its efforts been targeted at key Pennsylvania counties. For decades the internal electoral math of the state for Republicans has been to overwhelm the heavy Democratic vote in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with strong showings in the Philadelphia suburbs, Central Pennsylvania, and western counties outside Pittsburgh.

Thus have ACORN's fraud efforts -- those at least that have been detected -- been directed at Philadelphia (where increasing the Obama total to counter less enthusiastic support from white ethnics becomes critical), Delaware County in the pro-GOP Philadelphia suburbs, Dauphin County (in the heart of Central Pennsylvania) and Erie in the Northwest.

Is it really possible that the presidency could be stolen for Obama by virtue of a massive voter fraud here in Pennsylvania? And elsewhere? ACORN seems to think so. One so-called "non-partisan" ACORN member, Gleason pointed out, has been captured on video tape saying the group's objective was to "beat McCain down." Not exactly "non-partisan" sounding, is it?

Newman, the retired Supreme Court Justice, was blunt on the evidence: "I don't want a president who does this."

http://www.spectator.org/archives/2008/10/10/stealing-pennsylvania-massive

Hope if the truth is repeated often enough it is realized as being the truth.

No quick snappy quips on my blog, just facts, just articles with live links referencing other proven facts. 

I'm confident when facts are clearly laid out people can connect the dots and decide for themselves.

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This is what a lawsuit currently filed states. 

TigerAngel just posted this video "The October Surprise"

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=24840

laying out the case which has been filed which states Obama has not released the correct birth certificate documents to refute these allegations. 

Video also states Obama was declared by adoptive stepfather to be an Indonesian citizen of the Moslem religion.

Below are excerpts from my August 30 post which discusses this lawsuit.

_____________

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=24068

"A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls "dual loyalties" due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

Even if Sen. Obama can prove his U.S. citizenship, Berg stated, citing the senator's use of a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts, the issue of "multi-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegiance to other countries" remains on the table.

In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama's mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, "apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight." As Sen. Obama's own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham--Obama's mother--gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth.

Berg cites inconsistent accounts of Sen. Obama's birth, including reports that he was born at two separate hospitals--Kapiolani Hospital and Queens Hospital--in Honolulu, as well a profound lack of birthing records for Stanley Ann Dunham, though simple "registry of birth" records for Barack Obama are available in a Hawaiian public records office.

..... citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age.  Sen. Obama's mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a "natural born" citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

that citizenship was lost in or around 1967 when he and his mother took up residency in Indonesia, where Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen. Berg also states that he possesses copies of Sen. Obama's registration to Fransiskus Assisi School In Jakarta, Indonesia which clearly show that he was registered under the name "Barry Soetoro" and his citizenship listed as Indonesian.

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=24068

For CNN video, click link.

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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/10/021768.php

"ACORN: The Fraud Continues

Bold emphasis mine for speed scanners.

Follow the crumb trail to ACORN whose actions precipitated todays economic meltdown.

_________________________________

" SPREADING THE VIRUS
By STANLEY KURTZ

Source New York Post
October 13, 2008 --

"TO discover the roots of to day's economic crisis, consider a tale from 1995.

That March, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to address a meeting of county commissioners at the Washington Hilton. But, first, some 500 protesters from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) poured into the ballroom from both the kitchen and the main entrance.

Hotel staffers who tried to block them were quickly overwhelmed by demonstrators chanting, "Nuke Newt!" and "We want Newt!" Jamming the aisles, carrying bullhorns and taunting the assembled county commissioners, demonstrators swiftly took over the head table and commandeered the microphone, sending two members of Congress scurrying.

The demonstrators' target, Gingrich, hadn't yet arrived - and his speech was cancelled. When the cancellation was announced, ACORN's foot soldiers cheered.

Editorial writers from Little Rock to Buffalo condemned ACORN's action as an affront to both civility and freedom of speech. Editorialists also pointed out that the "spending cuts" the protesters railed against were imaginary - Gingrich proposed merely to slow the growth in some welfare programs and turn control back to the states.

Yet ACORN had only just begun. Two days later, 50 to 100 of the same protesters hit their main target - a House Banking subcommittee considering changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that allows groups like ACORN to force banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers.

The CRA's ostensible purpose is to prevent banks from discriminating against minorities. But Rep. Marge Roukema (R-NJ), who chaired the subcommittee, was worried that charges of discrimination had become an excuse for lowering credit standards. She warned that new, Democrat-proposed CRA regulations could amount to an illegal quota system.

FOR years, ACORN had combined manipulation of the CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade, with help from Democrats in Congress, to push these high-risk "subprime" loans on banks is at the root of today's economic meltdown.

When the role of ACORN and congressional Democrats in the mortgage crisis is pointed out, Democrats reply that banks subject to the CRA represent only about a quarter of the loans that led to our current troubles. In fact, the problem goes way beyond the CRA.

As ACORN ran its campaigns against local banks, it quickly hit a roadblock. Banks would tell ACORN they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little - since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giants, refused to buy up those risky loans for sale on the "secondary market."

That is, the CRA wasn't enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a downpayment.

So ACORN's Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early '90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie.

But then the Republicans won control of Congress - and Rep. Roukema scheduled her hearing. ACORN went into action to protect its golden goose.

IT struck as Roukema aired her concerns at that hearing. Pro testers, led by ACORN President Maud Hurd, stood up and began chanting, "CRA has got to stay!" and "Banks for greed, not for need!" The protesters then demanded the microphone.

With the hearing interrupted and the demonstrators refusing to leave, Roukema called the Capital Police, who arrested Hurd and four others for "disorderly conduct in a Capital building" - a charge carrying a penalty of a $500 fine, six months in prison or both. As the police arrived, two of the protesters menacingly approached Roukema's desk, still demanding the hearing microphone.

Requests to the Capital Police to release the activists from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass,) failed. Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) showed up at the jail and refused to leave until the protesters were released; the Capital Police relented.

Meanwhile, instead of repudiating ACORN's intimidation tactics, Rep. Kennedy berated Roukema for arresting one of his constituents and accused the Republicans of preparing for "an all-out attack on CRA." He also promised to introduce legislation to expand the CRA's coverage to mortgage bankers and large credit unions.

THIS little slice of political life from 1995 had a variety of ripple effects. Above all, ACORN's intimidation tactics, and its alliance with Democrats in Congress, triumphed. Despite their 1994 takeover of Congress, Republicans' attempts to pare back the CRA were stymied.

Instead, Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Reps. Kennedy and Waters allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis.

ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond. By steamrolling the GOP that March, it had crushed the last potential barrier to "change."

Three months later, the Clinton administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push homeownership in America to new heights - regardless of the compromise in credit standards that the task would require. Fannie and Freddie were assigned massive subprime lending quotas, which would rise to about half of their total business by the end of the decade.

WHEN the ACORN-Democrat alliance finally succeeded in blocking Republicans from restoring fiscal sanity in 1995, the way was open to virtually unlimited lending quotas - and to a whole new way of thinking about credit standards.

Urged on by ACORN, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration helped push tolerance for high-risk loans through every sector of the banking system - far beyond the sort of banks originally subject to the CRA.

So it was the efforts of ACORN and its Democratic allies that first spread the subprime virus from the CRA to Fannie and Freddie and thence to the entire financial system.

Soon, Democratic politicians and regulators actually began to take pride in lowered credit standards as a sign of "fairness" - and the contagion spread.

And when financial institutions across the board saw that they could make money by trading what would once have been considered junk loans, the profit motive kicked in. But the bad seed that started it all was ACORN.

HOW does Barack Obama fit into all of this? Obama has been a key ally of Chicago ACORN going back to his days as a community organizer.

Later, as a young lawyer, he offered leadership training to the activists who were forcing Chicago banks into high-risk subprime loans. And when he made it on to the boards of Chicago's Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he channeled money ACORN's way.

Obama was perfectly aware of ACORN's intimidation tactics - indeed, he oversaw a Woods Fund report that boasted of managing to fund the radical group despite its shocking behavior.

And as a lawmaker, in Illinois and in Washington, he has continued to back ACORN's leglislative agenda.

ACORN's high-pressure tactics live on. And congressional Democrats are still covering for ACORN, funneling it money and doing its legislative bidding. ACORN also continues its shady ways, using a vast network of technically separate but in fact quite interconnected organizations to evade federal laws on the politicized use of government money.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, the Obama campaign appears to have little more regard for freedom of speech than Reps. Kennedy or Waters did when they backed up ACORN's thugs in 1995. The campaign actually practices ACORN-style tactics, sending out "action wires" that call on supporters to block Obama critics from radio appearances (a tactic once applied to me) and demanding legal actions against unfriendly political advertisers.

As a presidential candidate, Obama promises a massive national-service program closely allied with the nonprofit sector. He wants to remove "barriers for smaller nonprofits to participate in government programs."

In other words, he plans a massive effort to funnel America's youth into volunteer work alongside the likes of ACORN. So Obama's favorite community organizers may soon be training your child.

ACORN's alliance with the Democratic Party is at the root of the current financial meltdown. And Barack Obama has stayed true to ACORN's ways.

Pretty soon, the folks who poured into the Washington Hilton to shut down Speaker Gingrich in 1995 may no longer need to take over the microphone. They'll be in charge of it.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. "

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/10132008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/spreading_the_virus_133375.htm

We all need a laugh and if you like Redneck humor there are some new ones on Neal's site. 

Some videos, some definitely not PC.

"Redneck Tank Top 

http://boortz.com/more/funny/redneck_pics_tanktop.html

Regarding Democratic Nevada Caucus, copy of complaint filed by Hillary Clinton's Campaign Counsel against the Obama campaign in for "intimidation of voters by threatening them with the loss of their jobs if they caucused for Hillary Clinton, preference cards that were pre-marked for Obama, shutting Clinton supporters out of caucusing locations, stuffing the ballot box with the votes of unregistered voters and children".......

Looks like it's no longer a Republican plot.

___________________________

"Replace capitalism with Islamic financial system: cleric

......."The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength," .......

"All riches are ours... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil .......

He urged Muslims to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory." ...........

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081012151913.899p7n58&show_article=1&lst=1

Easy to connect dots establishing Obama-ACORN close ties, several articles with dates and times. 

Several links to people saying ACORN bribed them to register multiples of times, have read some have been asked to put their name on several registrations, volunteers would "invent" addresses. 

Bold emphasis mine for speed scanners. 

Embedded live links so readers can reference sources.

______________ 

"Obama Acorn Cover-up?   [Stanley Kurtz]

Source National Review Online

"Barack Obama is now apparently denying his ties with Acorn. Here’s what he’s posted on the subject at his "Fight the Smears" website. These claims are contradicted by several sources, a number of which I linked to in mypiece, "Inside Obama’s Acorn." http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=

In that piece, you’ll find a link to a Los Angeles Times piece in which Chicago Acorn leader Madeline Talbott is described as so impressed with Obama that "she invited him to help train her staff." You’ll also see a link to a statement by Obama himself, made in pursuit of Acorn’s endorsement. Obama says: "I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." In my piece, "No Liberation," you’ll find a link to a 1995 profile of Obama which says: "Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side." My articles provide background, but the quotes and links I’ve presented here, and in the past, pretty conclusively contradict Obama’s current claims at "Fight the Smears."

Perhaps the strongest evidence against Obama’s attempt to deny his ties to Acorn comes in an article by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader, and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board, in the journal Social Policy. That article appears on pages 49-52 of the combined Winter 2003-Spring 2004 issue, Vol. 34, No. 2, Vol. 34, No. 3. I provide a link to a pay-for-access page to that article in my "Inside Obama’s Acorn" piece. As I’ve just been informed by a reader, however, the journal Social Policy appears to have pulled the link to that article, rendering it inaccessible, even by purchase. You can find the apparently pulled link here.

A link to a second article also appears to have been pulled here. I was previously unaware of this second article, "Towards a Chicago School of Youth Organizing," by Alyson Parham and Jeff Pinzino. I would strongly suggest that people try to find this article in hard copy at a library. (What is it about Obama and libraries?)

The Toni Foulkes piece clearly contradicts Obama’s denials of ties to Acorn at "Fight the Smears." Here’s a key passage:

Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992...Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them)...

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. [Actually, the congressional race was in 2000, SK] By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.

Has Social Policy blocked access to those two articles to protect Obama? Was the Obama campaign involved? How does Barack Obama explain his denials of a link to Acorn in light of the evidence? Shouldn’t the press be asking him about this?  "
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNiN2YwMmQ4Njc2MzE4ZDUxYWVlYTA1NzZlMmY3YmM=

________________

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is the first national candidate ever to hire ACORN, a controversial non-profit accused of voter fraud across the country, for get out the vote activities.

Obama’s campaign paid $800,000 to a subsidiary of the liberally-leaning non-profit Association of Community Organizers for Reform called Citizens Services Incorporated campaign to increase voter turnout.

This information, however, was not properly disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. The Obama campaign said it hired CSI to do “polling, advance work and staging events” according to reports submitted to the FEC during the Democratic primary.

The FEC said the Obama campaign needed to disclose ACORN was engaging in get out the vote activities last August. At the time the Obama campaign called the mistake a “clerical error.”

To date, ACORN has been accused of voter fraud in 15 states this election cycle.

Obama has close ties to the organization. Before becoming a member of the Illinois State Senate, Obama represented ACORN in a lawsuit to help push for “Motor Voter” laws to make it easier for low-income persons to vote.

Later, as director of the Woods Fund and Chairman of the Board of Chicago Annenberg Challenge Obama helped steer funds to ACORN through various grants.

Obama sought ACORN’s endorsement in the Democratic primary telling ACORN members, “Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

“Project Vote” is the name ACORN’s voter registration drives are called. Obama worked for Project Vote for a period of roughly seven months in 1992.

ACORN endorsed Obama for president in February 2008. "
http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/09/obama_hired_acorn_for_gotv

______________ 

" The ACORN/Obama Voter Registration ‘Thug Thizzle’

Michelle Malkin

Source Jewish World Review

...... "ACORN, which receives 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers to pursue an aggressive welfare-state agenda, has already helped register over 1.27 million people nationwide. The rest of their funding comes from left-wing heavyweights like billionaire George Soros and the Democracy Alliance.

Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization, was founded by left-wing lawyer Sandy Newman to register voters in welfare offices and unemployment lines with the explicit goal of turning back the Reagan revolution.

The two groups are inextricably linked — and at their nexus is Barack Obama.

In 1992, Newman hired Obama to lead Project Vote efforts in Illinois. The Illinois drive's motto: "It's a Power Thing."

As previously noted in this column ("The ACORN Obama Knows," June 25, 2008), Obama also trained ACORN members in Chicago. In turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his Illinois campaigns and ACORN's PAC endorsed his primary bid with full backing and muscle.
Despite his adamant denials of any association with the group (his Fight the Smears website now claims "Barack Obama never organized with ACORN"), Obama's political DNA is encoded with the ACORN agenda. ..."

http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin100808.php3   

________________

1 VOTER, 72 REGISTRATIONS 'ACORN PAID ME IN CASH & CIGS'

"CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said. ".................
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10102008/news/politics/1_voter__72_registrations_132965.htm 

__________________

 "Alleging fraud, authorities raid voter group

ACORN's canvassers filled out forms with fake names, addresses, officials say

http://www.lvrj.com/news/30613864.html

_______________

"HOW ACORN GOT ME INTO VOTE SCAM

Text quoted from Powerline is self explanatory, both pages of letter plus signatures available by clicking either link in the center.

Bold emphasis mine for speed scanners.

_________________

....."One thing I hadn't realized is that McCain's reform legislation was passed through the Senate Banking Committee, but was not able to gain majority support on the Senate floor. All twenty Senators who signed the letter calling attention to the urgency of reforming Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were Republicans. After May 2006, the Democrats continued to use Fannie and Freddy as their private slush funds until the inevitable collapse, which McCain had warned against so eloquently, occurred.

For some inexplicable reason, John McCain seems unable to claim the credit he deserves for being one of the few politicians in Washington who saw the present crisis coming and tried to do something about it. He is even more unable to vigorously and unambiguously put the blame where it belongs: on the Democratic Party. Which is one of the principal reasons why, as everyone expects, he will lose in November."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/10/021750.php

Live video link below to view the speech for yourself.

Super stars, super models and anyone else elevated to super-whatever status is simply a human being like your or me, no more no less.  We're all connected to the same Source Creator (as our respective belief systems define) and have within us the same greatness as the "idol" being worshiped.

Just imagine the outrage if someone declared John McCain known war hero, to be a 'deified worthy' such as General Guan Yu of the Han Dynasty better know today as Kwan Kung.

Double standard indeed especially in light of the kids chanting Obama's name in the video Todd posted now removed from youtube by the thought police.  Thankfully we have free speech no matter how fleeting it may be. 

________________ 

Powerline is running with the info posted on the first link. 

Second link to Powerlineblog.com which has those web documents posted on their site if you care to read them for yourself.

_________________

"Web Archives Confirm Barack Obama Was Member Of Socialist 'New Party' In 1996

Jarasan this one's for you ...... think you hit it BLOGS seem to be getting info out thereby affecting polling, markets and other statistical numbers. 

Well known conservative blogs (many are quoted on Powerlineblog.com) which base their information on verifiable sources (hence all the live links in place on innuendo) seem to be trusted sources of in depth information deliberately omitted by the press.

Add Sarah Palin who won't be muzzled and game's on!

Thank you Todd for our blogs!

__________________________

Found this article via SteveQuayle.com, the Q Factor story of the day.  Below is one profound comment following the article which mirrors how the socialist press projects its attitude as if mirroring the mindset of all of America to the world. 

In answer to the 'world seeing us in disfavor' we can congratulate our press on a hatchet job well done.

_______________

Comment by "Nathan Redshield

First article has live links referring to other commentary in their bio of Ayres also a sidebar with other stories about him.

"Bill Ayres

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169

____________

"Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

______________

"The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1

Two audio clips

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/04/020358.php

__________

"The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2

"................ The audio clips in which Ayers and Dohrn reveal their still-radical views were uncovered by Guy Benson, a recent college graduate who works for radio station WYLL in Chicago. Guy writes to introduce this series of clips: ............."
 
11 audio clips

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/04/020362.php

___________

"Bill Ayers stepping on a US flag in 2001

http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2008/05/bill-ayers-stepping-on-us-flag-in-2001.html

Some of the quotes below are definitely not PC, do require a good stomach to read about domestic terrorists and Obama's 'denied' ties to them.  So he was 8 years old when this happened .... it's a part of history he had every means to research and investigate before becoming associated with Ayres.  Obama's about as believable as Barney Frank.

Bold blue my emphasis for speed scanners

___________________________________

"Peace Lovers All   
by Jonah Goldberg
Source NationalReview.com

"Mark - I love that statement from the noble scholars in defense of Ayers. Indeed one of my favorite things about the Ayers controversy is that it "heightens the contradictions" of the America left, as the Marxists might say. If I may say so, I was one of the first columnists to write about Ayers (back in Feburary), {article in full below}  and my chief interest in Ayers was what he represents:

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico's reporter that Ayers "is one of my heroes in life." Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said, "I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now - so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community."

It seems to me the liberal left needs to decide, was Ayers a horrible figure to be ashamed of, or a hero? If you don't like this choice, why?

And since I'm quoting myself here's a page from my book on the Weather Underground passionate civil rights and anti-war movement:

Many of us forget that the Weather Underground bombing cam-
paign was not a matter of a few isolated incidents.From September
1969 to May 1970, Rudd and his co-revolutionaries on the white rad-
ical left committed about 250 attacks, or almost one terrorist bomb-
ing a day (government estimates put that number up to 600 percent
higher). During the summer of 1970, there were twenty bombings a
week in California. The bombings were the backbeat to the sym-
phony of violence, much of it rhetorical, that set the score for the
New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rudd captured the tone
perfectly: "It's a wonderful feeling to hit a pig. It must be a really
wonderful feeling to kill a pig or blow up a building." "The real di-
vision is not between people who support bombings and people who
don't," explained a secret member of a "bombing collective," but
"between people who will do them and people who are too hung up
on their own privileges and security to take those risks."

Bourgeois self-loathing lay at the very heart of the New Left's ha-
tred of liberalism, its love affair with violence, and its willingness to
take a sledgehammer to Western civilization. "We're against every-
thing that's 'good and decent' in honky America," declared one
rebel. "We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of
your mother's worst nightmare." The Weathermen became the storm
troopers of the New Left, horrifying even those who agreed with
their cause. Convinced that all whites were born tainted with the
original sin of "skin privilege," the ?ghting brigade of the New Left
internalized racialist thinking as hatred of their own whiteness. "All
white babies are pigs," declared one Weatherman. On one occasion
the feminist poet Robin Morgan was breast-feeding her son at the of-
?ces of the radical journal Rat. A Weatherwoman saw this and told
her, "You have no right to have that pig male baby." "How can you
say that?" Morgan asked. "What should I do?" "Put it in the
garbage," the Weatherwoman answered.

Bernadine Dohrn [Ayers' wife], an acid-loving University of Chicago law stu-
dent turned revolutionary, re?ected the widespread New Left fasci-
nation with the serial-killing hippie Übermensch Charles Manson.
"Dig It! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same
room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach!
Wild!" In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a three-
?ngered "fork" gesture its of?cial salute.

Yep, nothing but a lot of singing "We Shall Overcome" and peaceful civil disobedience here!  "

"http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWEwNWI4ZmU1N2E1OGVlZWIwZjVjNmQ2NWIwMzRlOGM=

_________________________

"Radicals Never Say Sorry
Shouldn't past associations with radical leftists cost something?

Source NationalReview.com
By Jonah Goldberg

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon."

This excerpt from William Ayers' memoir appeared in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001 - the day al-Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ayers, once a leader in the Weather Underground - the group that declared "war" on the U.S. government in 1970 - told the Times, "I don't regret setting bombs," and, "I feel we didn't do enough."

Ayers recently reappeared in the news because Politico.com reported Friday that Barack Obama has loose ties to him. Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is apparently a left-wing institution in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, and Obama visited Ayers' home as a rite of passage when launching his political career in the mid-1990s. The two also served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago, which gave money to Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center, where Ayers' wife (and former Weather Underground compatriot who glorified violence) Bernardine Dohrn is the director.

I don't think Obama supports domestic terrorism, and I'm sure he can offer eloquent explanations for why he shouldn't suffer any guilt by association. The Hillary Clinton campaign, however, did try to score a few political points, meekly linking to the Politico story on the campaign website's blog. The campaign probably couldn't be more aggressive without calling attention to how Bill Clinton pardoned Puerto Rican separatist terrorists - perceived to be a way to gain support for Hillary's Senate bid from left-wing Puerto Ricans in New York.

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico's reporter that Ayers "is one of my heroes in life." Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said, "I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now - so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community."

Why, exactly, can Ayers and Dohrn be seen as "legitimate members of the community"? How is it that they get prestigious university jobs when even the whisper of neocon tendencies is toxic in academia?

The question of why Ayers isn't in jail is moot; he was never prosecuted for the Weather Underground's bombing campaign. Still, Ayers is unrepentant about his years spent waging war against the United States. "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at," Ayers was widely quoted as saying at the time.

Ayers is merely symptomatic. Academia, the arts, even business have readmitted one former (and a few not-so-former) violent radical after another. Thomas W. Jones, a leader in the armed takeover of Cornell University's student union in 1969, rose to the top of Citigroup and once ran TIAA-CREF, the pension fund of some of the very academics he threatened.

Hillary Clinton had her own brush with violent radical leftists during her years at Yale Law. The New Haven, Conn., trial of Black Panthers - racist paramilitary criminals who had murdered police and civilians in cold blood - was a cause celebre for The Yale Review of Law and Social Action, the journal she helped edit. According to some accounts, Clinton volunteered to monitor the trial to aid Black Panther leader Bobby Seale's defense, and one of Seale's lawyers, a major radical, was sufficiently impressed to offer her an internship.

I don't think such associations should necessarily cost people their careers or place in polite society, particularly if some sort of contrition is involved. But shouldn't this baggage cost something?

Why is it only conservative "cranks" who think it's relevant that Obama's campaign headquarters in Houston had a Che Guevara-emblazoned Cuban flag hanging on the wall? Indeed, why is love of Che still radically chic at all? A murderer who believed that "the U.S. is the great enemy of mankind" shouldn't be anyone's hero, never mind a logo for a line of baby clothes. Why are Fidel Castro's apologists progressive and enlightened but apologists for Augusto Pinochet frightening and authoritarian? Why was Sen. Trent Lott's kindness to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond a scandal but Obama's acquaintance with an unrepentant terrorist a triviality?

I have my own answers to these questions. But I'm interested in theirs. In the weeks to come, maybe reporters can resist the temptation to repeat health care questions for the billionth time and instead ask America's foremost liberal representatives why being a radical means never having to say you're sorry.  "

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGJiYzMzNjY3NTlhNzI4MDFkMjAzOTI1ODY3OGI5MDk=

Interesting to know who's buds with a potential next president.  Thanks to Powerlineblog.com for the link to this article written from first person perspective.

__________________

"John M. Murtagh
Fire in the Night

The Weathermen tried to kill my family.

30 April 2008
Source CityJournal.org

"During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up "a gentleman named William Ayers," who "was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He's never apologized for that." Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama's answer: "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George." Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers's Weathermen tried to murder me.

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we'd call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.

I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother's pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.

For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn't have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck's siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn't fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.

Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family's life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers's wife, promised more bombings.

As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Translation: "We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch." When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: "I don't want to discount the possibility."

Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his "politics of change." Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends' and supporters' violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama's own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.

At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: "I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire."

Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.

John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.  "

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html

    Verifiable facts and timeline.

_____________

"Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest

Friday , October 03, 2008
By Bill Sammon

WASHINGTON -
Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank's efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

So did Frank's partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency's push to relax lending restrictions.

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie's assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

"It's absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?

"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what's not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he's gay. It's the quintessential double standard."

A top GOP House aide agreed.

"C'mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?" the aide told FOX News. "No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank's political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley's wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain's wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation's housing and banking laws."

Frank's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress.

"I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus," Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. "On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover."

The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."

Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month's government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.

Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.

Three years later, President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today's economic crisis.

"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.

Bill Sammon is FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor. "

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432501,00.html

Seems if someone intends to occupy a position they should be clear about responsibilities of that office. 

I find this very amusing that with his umpty years in Washington he doesn't even know what the Constitution provides for .... yet he's backing up Obama's lack of experience.  But who cares the media's intends to elect 'em.

Hats off again to Powerlineblog.com.  I bold blue'd their corrections for speed scanners.

" October 3, 2008

Interesting short article about clearing residual energies left by previous inhabitants from your home or business.

_______________________________________

http://oracle20-20.com/magazine/2008/1008/space_clear.php

Came in email .... puts the Three Stooges to shame.

Decatur Daily news from Limestone County (Alabama)
 

Posted Tuesday, Sep 30, 2008
 
"Still explodes, burning 3 Limestone men

By Holly Hollman
Staff Writer
Source Decatur Daily

"ATHENS — It was a bad mash-making day for three Limestone County men as one lost part of his finger and an explosion then burned all three. Sheriff Mike Blakely said the men went to Athens-Limestone Hospital between 9 and 10 p.m. Saturday. The hospital staff thought the injuries were odd and called the Sheriff’s Department at 12:45 a.m. Sunday. Investigator Randy Burroughs said Doug Powers, who is in his late 50s, had third-degree burns on his back and part of a finger missing. Athens-Limestone transported him to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital’s burn center. Athens-Limestone treated and released Powers’ son, Joey, who is in his 20s and had minor burns to his face, Burroughs said. The third man, John Dunn, age unknown, was splattered with hot mash but had no serious injuries, Burroughs said. A 12-year-old relative who also was present was not injured, Burroughs said.
The investigator said the three were making the mash in Doug Powers’ garage at his home at 16896 Zehner Road, Athens. Burroughs said they were using barley and muscadine wine that Powers had made to produce mash in a still constructed from a 25-gallon barrel, burner, pressure cooker top and copper tubing.

Burroughs said Doug Powers lost part of his finger while using a potato grinder to crush muscadines.

“It was held on by a flap of skin, so he took his knife and cut it off,” Burroughs said.

Undaunted by that injury, the men cranked up the burner to make 20 to 25 gallons of mash. After the mixture was heated, they realized they had not removed the plug from underneath the pressure cooker lid.

“They couldn’t get the lid off, and instead of waiting for it to cool, they took a hammer and tried to beat the lid off,” Burroughs said. “That’s when it exploded. The mash spewed out of the barrel.”

Charges pending

Charges are pending against Doug Powers, who is still in the UAB burn center.

Burroughs said authorities found about 250 gallons of wine and mash in Powers’ cellar, some of which was in 55-gallon barrels. Authorities disposed of the alcohol.

Authorities also found the piece of finger Doug Powers’ cut off. Burroughs said a dog was eating it. "

http://decaturdaily.com/stories/19410.html

"Everything Begins With A Wish Part II

By David Vennells  October 1st, 2008
Source Dream Manifesto

" If you haven't read part I please click here...

"The next step is to try to 'hold' the positive attitude you have created, if you lose it repeat the process until it returns. Do this often enough and you will eventually find yourself reacting to problems in a new and positive way. Just through the power of familiarity you will start to view all challenging situations as part of your mountain.

Try to feel that life is a series of mountains to conquer, this feeling will inspire you to take every opportunity to grow. One of the main obstacles to a happy life is that we see difficult situations and people as just that. If we train our selves to look beyond this limited perspective we open up a whole new world.

Every time we choose to go in a more positive direction we are doing something very special with our mind. The processes of watching our mind, spotting negative thoughts or emotions at the earliest possible moment, not following these negative patterns, and actively developing positive thoughts and feelings is the process of successful mind training.

Memorize the four steps of mind training:

    * Watch
    * Identify
    * Let go
    * Live

Eventually the process of reprogramming our mind will become smooth and natural but to begin with it is useful to be aware of these four stages. To begin we need to WATCH our mind just by being aware of our thoughts and emotions in different situations throughout the day. By doing this it is easy to IDENTIFY uncomfortable or negative thoughts as soon as they arise and hopefully before they get a strong hold over us.

The sooner we spot or identify negative thoughts or emotions the easier it is to LET GO. If it is too late to let go just walk away from the situation if you can, or distract yourself with something else so that your mind is not being allowed to follow the negative path. Finally if we can we replace the negative with a positive and LIVE. I called the last stage 'live' because positive thoughts and emotions are life affirming, healing and mind expanding.

But don't become too obsessed with this practice if you over do it now it is easy to become tired, our training needs to feel enjoyable, gradual and natural if it is going to be continuous and successful. If you want to begin some kind of gentle training today just start by watching your own mind but again not obsessively or constantly just naturally.

Now and then think, 'how do I feel, how are my thought patterns today', without being hard or judgemental, just watch your mind and develop some self awareness. Then if you feel ready let go of any negative feelings and repeat some positive words to yourself like 'always rely on a happy mind' or 'may everyone be happy' or whatever feels right for you. Start slowly and when you are ready develop a gentle daily routine for training your mind in this way. This gentle but constant approach builds firm foundations for long term change and growth.

When we are going through a difficult time in our life we often dream about the things we would do if things were different and dwell on how lucky others are. Many people who are healthy or materially fortunate have no real appreciation of their freedom and good fortune. Illness and other problems can seem like a prison and good health and wealth the cause of real freedom and happiness.

It seems on the surface that good health and money are a definite cause of happiness and illness and poverty a cause of depression and mental torment. But if this is a universal truth everyone who had a healthy body and lots of money would always be happy and everyone who suffered illness and poverty would be miserable. But we know this is not true.

It can take a long time to really appreciate the depths of this truth but our personal happiness, although influenced by external conditions like illness, is really completely dependent on our mind. It is possible to be physically very ill but to have a positive and peaceful mind.

Take some time to think about this carefully, do you accept this truth? If you do then you have to accept that to fulfill your wish to be happy and free from suffering you must learn to develop a happy mind. Also if illness or poverty can be one of the conditions for this to happen you might be more fortunate than a rich and healthy person! Although they are enjoyable we do not actually need good health, wealth, relationships etc. All we need is a happy mind.

This is a great affirmation to use when you are feeling that the world is against you, just think over and over 'all I need is a happy mind' and slowly you will start to feel the truth of this. Of course we shouldn't abandon money, friends and health there is no need to and if we did we would be very unhappy and so would others. It takes time to change on a deep level so we have to accept that we will still need the temporary happiness we get from money and relationships until we are strong enough within to really let go.

Training the mind is an internal path so we do not need to change our external world too much. Eventually we will be able to let go of these things in our mind, whilst still being surrounded by them and living a normal life. This is important if we want to help others do the same.

We are very influenced by our external world because we are so familiar with it! We spend all our time wrapped up in the external world to the extent that we have almost forgotten that we have an internal world. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep we are generally completely absorbed in the business of everyday life.

It is very easy to go through the whole of our life without ever spending time getting to know our own mind, yet this is where the answer to all our problems can be found. In some ways having an illness or other kind of challenging difficulty can be very helpful, these things can help us to stop and think. We often need something or someone to help us take a fresh look at life, if we are not going in the right direction the kindest thing someone can do is to tell us and point us in the right direction. In this sense problems might be our best friend.

When we have a problem in life we tend to solve it by changing something outside our own mind. When we have problems with our partner, friends, career we think of looking for new ones. We are never satisfied for long, we always need new things in our life to keep our sense of well being. Consequently our mind is very discontent and dependent upon good external conditions and we experience very little natural happiness from within.

We are always looking for happiness outside of our mind, yet happiness is simply a state of mind. I can't repeat this enough! If we knew how to find inner happiness and 'stay with it' we would not need to put so much time and energy in to arranging our external world in such away that we occasionally find some fleeting pleasure.

Illness or any problem can be an opportunity to begin a new way of life. If we always get what we want when we want it we might easily become a very spoilt, shallow and superficial person. Often we need challenges and difficulties to help us grow, to help us become more whole and complete human beings. The big and little problems that come our way can be a great challenge to overcome and can really help us to develop special inner qualities.

If we ask our self what is the real meaning of a human life we have to finally say that if we leave this world a better person than when we entered it and if we have helped others to change and grow then our life has had been well lived. If we just accumulated wealth or followed our own selfish wishes what use is this? If this life was just a 'one off', if at the moment of death we ceased to exist then may be we could justify a selfish approach to life.

But our mind and our body are different entities when the body dies the mind does not cease because it is not produced from the body, in fact Buddhists believe that the body is produced from the mind! According to the law of Karma the body we have now is the result of our actions in previous lives. Positive actions bring positive results, if we have a healthy body this is good karma returning to us created by our previous positive actions.

Our mind is not a physical phenomena like the body, it has no form or shape or colour or taste, although it changes in character and ability from life to life, again according to our karma. We know that animals have a mind but it is less intelligent than most human minds. From the Buddhist perspective this is because animals are again experiencing the results of karma, but this doesn't last forever, when their animal karma comes to an end they die and new karma carriers them in to a new existence in a new body.

Obviously we will not all feel comfortable with this explanation of the different forms of life that exist but I mention it here because understanding the law of Karma helps Buddhists train their mind. If we feel deeply that our words, thoughts and actions shape our future beyond this life we are going to be very careful how we live and how we treat others.

If we know that swatting a fly or physically harming others may make us experience poor health in our next life we will let the fly live. In fact if we just consider that a fly has a mind and although quite limited in its mental capacity it can still experience pain this understanding will prevent us bringing more pain in to the world. If we are aware that anger is a cause of ugliness and patience a cause of beauty this will also help to change our behaviour!

So in conclusion everyone wants to be happy, even flies in their own way, and in this sense we are all the same, we never wish for suffering. So the real purpose of life is to fulfill this wish and find a pure happiness that never ends and to help others find this. You can find this, many people have, and your problems can help you!

The essential points from this chapter are:
Without a consistent wish nothing will change. Keep developing your wish and your power to change will get stronger. Develop your ability to watch your own mind and identify clearly which are positive and beneficial thoughts and feelings and which are negative and harmful to your self and others. If we can learn to let go of negative thoughts and feeling and develop positive ones over time our mind will become very peaceful, strong and happy. Eventually even the most difficult situation will not disturb our sense of inner peace.

Exercise:
Develop a realistic plan for learning to watch your own mind. Just start in a small way, but be consistent and remind yourself that this is important for your personal happiness. May be just begin with half an hour per day. When the time comes, just remember why you are doing this, the more you become aware of what thoughts and feelings are running through your mind the easier it will become to identify which are good and which are harming your happiness.

It doesn't matter if you cannot change your mind at this stage, just be gentle with yourself, your ability to change your mind will come in time. Don't change your daily routine, choose the same time everyday for mind watching and try to do it whether you are talking, driving, working or whatever. Don't over concentrate, just at the back of your mind try to be gently aware of whether your words, actions, thoughts and feelings are positive or negative.

Don't be hard or judgmental just watch and accept and continue to act naturally. Obviously if you suddenly feel you want to think or talk in a more positive way follow this positive notion! You could also keep a simple diary of your experiences this can help you to identify more clearly your mental habits and areas that you might like to improve in time.

Now try a meditation:
When your mind has settled down develop a good intention like 'may every living being benefit from this meditation'. Spend a few minutes doing the gentle breathing meditation explained in chapter 4. Then meditate using the following contemplation:

We need to develop the consistent wish to change. Think about how your life has been in the past and what it will be like in the future if you do not change. Then spend some time thinking and imagining what it would be like to be a different person, imagine if your mind was naturally confident, relaxed, strong, kind and peaceful all the time.

Imagine how it would feel to always meet challenging situations with a positive attitude. Think about how your quality of life would improve if your mind was like this. Then try to come to a deep inner determination to gradually move your mind in this direction, think 'I am going to spend the rest of my life steadily and consistently developing my mind', try to meditate on this positive thought for as long as is comfortable.

When you have finished make a short dedication like 'through the power of these positives thoughts may all living beings find lasting happiness' and try to carry your positive thoughts in to the rest of the day.  "

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/begins-part-ii.html
________

Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote

" No human would ever do anything to harm another if Connected to Source because when you're Connected, you're empowered; you don't feel insecure. And when you don't feel insecure, you don't need to do something to somebody else that you're afraid of, because you're not afraid. You understand that Well-Being is yours. "
_______________

" You are meant to live an expansive, exhilarating, good-feeling experience. It was your plan when you made the decision to become focused in your physical body in this time-space reality. You were born knowing that you are a powerful Being; that you are good; that you are the creator of your experience, and that the Law of Attraction (the essence of that which is like unto itself, is drawn) is the basis of the Universe, and you knew it would serve you well. And so it has. "
_________

" Two statements that will serve you very well. The first is: There will always be war. There will always be those who aggravate within others a sense of trouble in order to promote the solution that they already have their mind made up about. And so you're never going to come into agreement as a mass consciousness that this is "the way." There will always be disagreements; therefore, there will always be turmoil; there will always be war.

The other statement, that is our favorite is: Well-Being will always abound, so the dominant experience of the majority of people will always be one of Well-Being. So you can decide, at any point in time, in what part of this you want to play. You can use anything as your excuse to align with Well-being, or you can use anything as your excuse to not align. The thing that we think is at the heart of this discussion, is my own personal power. We think that's what you are, sort of, struggling for and reaching for. "