You can't blame Peggy the Moocher for viewing Obama as the superior Santa Claus. With a relentless messianic campaign, a grievance-mongering wife touting him as the country's soul-fixer and a national infomercial promising to take care of every need from night classes to medical bills to rent and fuel-efficient cars, Obama effectively channeled Oprah Winfrey's Big Give.

"Everybody gets a car!" "Everybody gets a car!" And gas. And mortgage payment relief.

But the damning reality for fiscal conservatives is that John McCain's plan for homeowners underwater on their mortgages was even more generous than Obama's. His $300 billion "rescue" involved directing the Treasury secretary to "purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers."

That was on top of the trillion-plus-dollar "bank" bailout supported by both presidential candidates, the White House and the Democratic leadership; the $85-plus billion to AIG; the $25 billion to automakers; and the $200 billion in capital and credit lines to Fannie and Freddie.

And who knows what else we'll be redistributing to the indebted states of New York, California, Massachusetts and all the other Peggy the Moochers, large and small, lining up for their piece of the bailout pie.

McCain assailed massive government spending — while promising to heap on more massive government spending to pursue homeownership and retention at all costs. It was the Republican, not the Democrat, who entrusted the Treasury Department to renegotiate individual home loans and become chief principal write-down agents for the nation. Both private and public entities are planning for a McCain-esque homeowner salvation plan for borrowers in the red.

It's a swell idea for everyone who bought overpriced homes with adjustable-rate mortgages. Those who rented, bought within their means or locked into fixed-rate loans that they could afford are out of luck, naturally. The only sane thing to do in response? Stop paying your mortgage and get in line.

"E pluribus unum" is no longer our national motto. These three words are: "Do for me." As in: What will the government do for me?

On Election Day, the federal government quietly reported that it will borrow a record $550 billion in the current quarter to fund the bipartisan bailout. The Treasury Department plans to borrow more than a half-trillion dollars in the current October-December quarter and another $368 billion in the first three months of next year.

Estimated total for the whole year: $1.4 trillion. Democrats plan to add another $500 billion in "stimulus"-palooza legislation. Credit-card companies, utilities, insurance companies, and car- and student-loan debtors await their turn.
The bailout bonanza blurred the differences between the two major political parties, but the Peggy the Moocher video shows that there are still basically two starkly contrasting views of government in this country among the rank-and-file electorate.

Unlike Joe the Plumber, Peggy sees government as her salvation and the president as her subsidizer-in-chief. She voted with the expectation that the Spreader of Wealth will reward her with payback. Joe just wants Washington to leave him alone to fend for himself.

Personal responsibility? Hah. Washington can't afford it.

By MICHELLE MALKIN
November 05, 2008

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=310775694363780

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Lefty lawyer Sandy Newman founded Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization, 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. Despite his denials of any association with the group, Obama's political DNA is encoded with the ACORN agenda.

www.nypost.com/news/p/obama_barack/obama_barack.htm

As I've noted previously,Obama trained ACORN members in Chicago. In turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his Illinois campaigns and ACORN's PAC endorsed him in this year's Democratic primaries back in February.

And Newman hired Obama in 1992 to lead Project Vote efforts in Illinois. The effort's motto: "It's a Power Thing." Today, the Obama campaign's "Vote for Change" registration drive is running in parallel with ACORN/Project Vote, targeting the same sorts of people.

It's an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama's big-government vision. "Our volume," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe bragged of the voter-registration program, "is going to be enormous."

Quantity over quality. That's the ACORN way - and the fraud allegations keep piling up:

* Yesterday, Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas office after election authorities accused the group of submitting multiple voter registrations with fake and duplicate names. Among the bogus monikers: names of former Dallas Cowboys players.

* Lake County, Ind., election officials this month rejected thousands of registration forms ACORN had turned in from its drives this summer. On a conference call yesterday, GOP officials noted that up to 11,000 of the applications were no good - tying up election officials and jeopardizing the voting rights of untold victims whose identities may have been stolen.

In what seems to be ACORN's standard operating procedure, vote canvassers had pulled names and addresses from phone books and forged signatures. According to a local paper (the Northwest Indiana and Illinois Times), "Large numbers of voter registration forms bore signatures all in the same apparent handwriting style" and "apparently the organization's canvassers broke rules to meet ACORN-set voter registration quotas to get paid." The fake registrants include dead people and underage kids.

* Milwaukee, Wisc., officials last month discovered at least seven felons employed as voter-registration workers for ACORN and another affiliated group. (State law bans felons from such work.) They also uncovered a raft of problematic voter-registration cards. The state GOP accuses the group of trying to get dead, imprisoned or imaginary people on the voter rolls. Fraud has plagued ACORN's Milwaukee chapter since the last election cycle.

* In Florida, in Orange County alone, ACORN workers turned in multiple, copycat forms for six separate voters over the summer. The Miami Herald reports: "One individual had 21 duplicate applications."

Election officials had flagged ACORN's negligent practices months ago. But it may be too late: In Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, ACORN has signed up 135,000 new voters, nearly 60 percent of them registered as Democrats - a fifth of all new voters in that region.

* In Ohio, large numbers of homeless people got free van and bus rides to register. Shelby Holliday, a reporter for Palestra.net, filmed ACORN shuttling in some prospects. She told me she spoke with one homeless woman who said ACORN "told her who to vote for if she wanted a 'better life,' and told her not to worry about jury duty (one of the reasons this homeless woman didn't want to register) because the government probably wouldn't be able to track her down. She was registering with a temporary address."

Holliday interviewed another homeless man targeted by the registration drive who exulted that he was voting for Obama because "I want him to do his thang. You know, do his thug thizzle."

"Thug thizzle" is street slang for performing your trademark move. Obama and ACORN have practiced their thug thizzle together for years: Organizing an ever-expanding community of ineligible and marginal voters to expand the Democrat power base. Rules be damned.

By Michelle Malkin
October 8, 2008

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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GOP leaders patted themselves on the back for their toughness. President Bush made a huge to-do in signing the bill into law. Never mind the lack of funding for the fence and the failure to address many other immediate reforms that could have been adopted immediately to strengthen immigration enforcement, close deportation loopholes and provide systemic relief at the border without the need for a single brick or bulldozer.

On the very day the bill was signed, open-borders politicians were already moving to water it down. Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn pushed for "flexibility to choose other options instead of fencing, if needed." Six months after passage of the Secure Fence Act -- now interpreted by Washington as the Flexible Non-Fence Act or, as I call it, the FINO (Fence in Name Only) Act -- 700 miles shrunk to "somewhere in the ballpark" of 370 miles. A 14-mile fence-building project in San Diego was stalled for years by environmental legal challenges and budget shortfalls. The first deadline -- a May 30, 2007 requirement for installation of an "interlocking surveillance camera system" along the border in California and Arizona -- passed unmet. GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of the few Republican presidential candidates to walk the talk on border security, blasted the Bush administration for suffering from "a case of 'the slows' on border enforcement."

More than a year after the law's passage, the citizen watchdog group Grassfire reports that just five miles of double-layer fencing has been built in the first 12 months of implementation of the act. Five lousy miles. The Government Accountability Office claims 70 miles were erected -- but most of that fencing failed to meet the specifications of the law.

Is Congress up in arms? Will there be accountability? Don't make me snort. Instead of demanding that the law be enforced, the pols are sabotaging the law. As part of the omnibus spending package passed this week, House Democrats incorporated Senate Republicans' provisions to remove the two-layer fencing requirements and the specific target list of fencing locations.

GOP Rep. Peter T. King, who sponsored the Secure Fence Act, told the Washington Times: "This is either a blatant oversight or a deliberate attempt to disregard the border security of our country. As it's currently written, the omnibus language guts the Secure Fence Act almost entirely. Quite simply, it is unacceptable."

But so totally, totally predictable.

Republican Leader John Boehner tried to blame the House Democrat majority: "The fact that this was buried in a bloated, 3,500-page omnibus speaks volumes about the Democrats' unserious approach on border security and illegal immigration," he said. "Gutting the Secure Fence Act will make our borders less secure, but it's consistent with the pattern of behavior we've seen all year from this majority." But it's border state Republicans who've been gunning to undermine the law while the ink was still fresh.

To add insult to injury and homeland insecurity upon homeland insecurity, Congress failed to adopt a ban on federal aid to sanctuary cities that prevent government employees and law enforcement officers from asking about immigration status; voted to stall implementation of stricter ID standards at border crossings; and miraculously found enough money to provide $10 million in "emergency" funding for attorneys of illegal aliens.

Next time you hear a leading presidential candidate try to woo you with his nine-point immigration enforcement plan or his secure ID plan or his Secure Borders platform, point to the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence. Poof! That is what happens to election-season homeland security promises. Why would theirs be any different?

Michelle Malkin
December 19, 2007
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1385927

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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