For starters, last Saturday William Ayers, one of Obama's neighbors and key socialist political mentors, re-emerged from his rat hole with another New York Times opinion piece. As you recall, Ayers helped launch Obama's political career from his home near Obama's Hyde Park mansion in Southside Chicago. In addition, he provided the job that Obama later identified as the "primary qualification" for his Illinois State Senate campaign.

Ayers, who on the very morning of 11 September 2001, opined in The Times, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough," and would later insist that Americans deserved the attack, now insists, "I was cast in the 'unrepentant terrorist' roll," adding, "Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn't me, not even close."

He admitted, "I co-founded the Weather Underground [which] crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism... But it was not terrorism." So, blowing up government buildings as a means of protest is not terrorism? Perhaps Ayers should have been called as a character witness for Timothy McVeigh in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Second up, Obama's spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright, was back in the pulpit last Sunday. Obama describes Wright as a father figure "who I have known for 20 years [who] led me to Christ ... a biblical scholar and well regarded preacher who is known for talking about the social gospel." In other words, a peddler of black supremacist doctrine and the gospel of Marx.

Wright was benched by Team Obama last summer after a video of one of his "social gospel" sermons surfaced, in which he proclaimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government gives [black people] drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, g*d d*** America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. G*d d*** America for treating our citizens as less than human. G*d d*** America for as long as she acts like she is god and she is supreme."

On the Sunday after 9/11, the Obama family was in church listening to Wright sermonize about how we deserved to be attacked: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Last year, Wright awarded anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan his church's highest honor, saying Farrakhan is a man who "truly epitomized greatness," and adding, "When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens. His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest."

When Obama was asked about his close association with Wright, he invoked his own version of Bill Clinton's "I didn't inhale" defense, and claimed he never even heard any of those controversial sermons. Perhaps he heard all of them, just not with the ears of a presidential wannabe.

Last Sunday (Pearl Harbor Day), Wright was back at it, insisting, "Any preacher who dares to point out the simple ugly facts ... is demonized as volatile, controversial, incendiary, inflammatory, anti-American and radical."

Obama's mentor is so blinded by his hatred for America that he built his comeback sermon around this distortion of history: "Today is December 7th, the day that this government killed over 80,000 Japanese civilians at Hiroshima in 1941, two days before killing an additional 64,000 Japanese civilians at Nagasaki by dropping nuclear bombs on innocent people."

As I recall from my elementary schooling, the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, resulted in Japan's surrender -- which was a far better alternative than the invasion of Japan, at a cost of a half million American lives and those of millions of Japanese civilians. Apparently Wright's exegetical interpretation of U.S. history rises to the same standard as his elucidation of Scripture.

All that being said, I am sure that Ayers and Wright are just affable dupes caught up in a big misunderstanding...

Next up: One of Obama's most influential political associates, the aforementioned Gov. Blagojevich, was awakened by a phone call Tuesday morning from an FBI agent who asked him to step outside and surrender to agents waiting at his front door. After asking, "Is this a joke?" and being convinced otherwise, Blagojevich surrendered.

Turns out, Blagojevich was trying to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder, and it appears that may have been Jesse Jackson Jr., who has a genetic predisposition toward sleazy shakedowns and "pay-to-play" politics.

Lest anyone try to imply otherwise, Obama has close ties to Blagojevich.

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's incoming White House chief of staff, told the New Yorker earlier this year that he and Obama crafted Blagojevich's first gubernatorial campaign. "We participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I..."

On 27 June 2002, then-state Sen. Obama said, "Right now, my main focus is to make sure that we elect Rod Blagojevich as governor." In 2004, then-Gov. Blagojevich returned the favor with his fervent endorsement of Obama for the U.S. Senate and in 2005, Obama endorsed Blagojevich for re-election.

Despite the fact that Obama knew Blagojevich was under investigation for serious corruption issues, he said of Blagojevich, "We've got a governor in Rod Blagojevich who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois."

Delivered for a price.

The complaint against Blagojevich outlines what federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald calls a "staggering" trail of corruption, and even ropes in another Obama benefactor, Tony Rezko, whose arrangements concerning Obama's home purchase are now the subject of a criminal investigation. Rezko is "cooperating with authorities."

Fitzgerald is tenacious, and will bulldog this investigation wherever it leads, unless, of course, the president-elect determines after 20 January that Fitzgerald's services are no longer needed.

Obama, in desperate need of his teleprompter, said Wednesday, "I had no contact with the governor what -- or, uhhh -- or his office, uhhh, and so we -- I -- I -- I was not aware of, uh, what was happening. And as I said, uh, it's a sad day for Illinois. Uh, beyond that, I don't think it's appropriate to comment."

"Not appropriate to comment?" How about showing some indignation and moral outrage, or a simple stumble-free assurance that he will support Fitzgerald's investigation going forward, no matter where it leads?

Asked whether any of his aides spoke with Blagojevich, Obama said: "Let me stop you there because it's an ongoing investigation. I think it would be inappropriate for me to, you know, remark on the situation..."

I guess Obama is borrowing a page from Bill Clinton's dictionary. Instead of "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is," Obama is claiming, "It depends on what the meaning of 'contact' is."

Complicating matters for Obama, on 5 November, KHQA-TV in Quincy, Ill., reported Obama and Blagojevich were about to meet: "Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled. That's one of Obama's first priorities today. He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss it." On 8 November, the station confirmed, "Obama met with Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this week to discuss it. Illinois law states that the governor chooses that replacement."

KHQA has removed the story from their Web site and denies any knowledge such a meeting took place.

Now, I would never suggest that the TV media always get it right, or that they ever get it right. However, there is a problem in regard to another televised interview, this one with Obama's senior advisor David Axelrod.

On 23 November, ABC carried an interview on Chicago's WFLD-TV in which Axelrod claimed matter-of-factly, "I know [Obama] has talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Within minutes of Obama's disclaimer about any such meeting, Alexrod released this statement: "I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the president-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject."

One of Axelrod's statements is false -- we may never know which one -- but he had no reason to lie the first time.
There is no suggestion in the Blagojevich complaint that Obama was directly involved in any of the shenanigans regarding who would fill his Senate seat, but the words "president-elect" appear 44 times in the indictment.

Like the Clintons, Obama is surely smart enough to have insulated any involvement in this racket with cutouts, disposable emissaries who can take one for the team if necessary. (Expect that player's name to surface soon.) But it is worth noting that the last guy Patrick Fitzgerald successfully prosecuted for perjury in connection with a federal investigation was Scooter Libby, who testified he had "no recollection" of the conversation that got him convicted.

Moreover, Blagojevich knows where all the Chicago political skeletons are hidden, and facing 30 years in the big house, he will certainly cut a deal and lead prosecutors to a few of them -- perhaps even one or two in the president-elect's closet. Of course, some 66 million voters did not care about any of this corruption six weeks ago, and are likely to turn an equally blind eye and deaf ear to it now.

By Mark Alexander
http://patriotpost.us/

Let's begin with Pardongate, when Eric Holder was involved in giving his nod to the pardon of fugitive tax cheat Marc Rich and in withholding information from the Justice Department. A Justice Department that he will now ironically head as Attorney General.

"A forthcoming Congressional report on the last-minute pardons by President Bill Clinton says Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was a "willing participant in the plan to keep the Justice Department from knowing about and opposing" a pardon for Marc Rich, the financier.

The 476-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, harshly criticizes the Clinton White House for its handling of the 177 pardons and commutations granted on its last day.

The most controversial pardon went to Mr. Rich, a commodities trader who fled the country in 1983 rather than face trial on charges of tax evasion, racketeering and trading with the enemy. The report says that Mr. Rich's lawyers tried to circumvent prosecutors, who would oppose the pardon, and take their case straight to the White House.

Mr. Holder, the report says, played a major role, steering Mr. Rich's lawyers toward Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel. Mr. Rich hired Mr. Quinn, whose Washington contacts and ability to lobby the president made the difference, according to the report. It says that Mr. Holder's support for the pardon and his failure to alert prosecutors of a pending pardon were just as crucial.

The panel criticized Mr. Holder's conduct as unconscionable and cited several problems. It cited his admission last year that he had hoped Mr. Quinn would support his becoming attorney general in a Gore administration.

It's 8 years later but the Crook Fairy finally granted Eric Holder his wish to become Attorney General. And Obama has an Attorney General who conspired in the illegal pardon of a fugitive criminal in the hopes of making himself Attorney General.

Criminal doesn't even begin to describe this. Eric Holder belongs in a jail cell on charges of conspiracy, instead of being put in charge of the same Justice Department he tried to sideline to serve his own political ambitions.

Of course Eric Holder's slime trial doesn't end there. Pardongate also involved the pardons handed out to Weather Underground terrorists Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg who were transporting 740 pounds of explosives for use in bombings.

Here is what those 740 pounds of explosives were intended to do.

On May 11, 1985, she was arrested again, charged and then convicted of acquiring weapons, fake IDs and safe houses, and of terrorist actions. Her targets included the U.S. Capitol Building, the National War College, the Navy Yard Computer Center, the Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI and the New York Patrolman's Benevolent Association. In her possession were 740 pounds of dynamite. Evans was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Certainly targets Al Queda itself would have approved of. And now Obama has an Attorney General that Bill Ayers and Marc Rich have thoroughly vetted.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Eric Holder and terrorists. Eric Holder also backed clemency for 16 FALN terrorists, withholding information from Congress and even Attorney General Janet Reno and overriding the FBI's own opposition to clemency for the FALN terrorists who were part of a terrorist campaign that included a wave of terror carrying out 130 bombings over nearly a decade.

"Holder, a Barbadian immigrant's son who grew up in Queens and received his law degree from Columbia, has played major roles in the probe of Democratic funny-money in the 1996 elections, the Sexgate scandal and the recommendation to President Clinton on whether to free FALN terrorists from jail. A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while Reno's role was minimal."

(Brian Blomquist, "Ailing Reno Yielding Reins Of Justice," New York Post, 12/15/99)

This allowed Eric Holder to sideline his own boss and the Attorney General and playing the key role in freeing the FALN terrorists. Which proved to be a convenient way of blocking and dead ending the objections of the FBI and just about everyone involved in the case.

Although The FBI Opposed Clemency, Holder Supported Clemency For The FALN Members. "Although The New York Times reported that the FBI, Bureau of Prisons and U.S. state attorneys opposed clemency, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, the Justice Department official most involved with this issue, reportedly supported clemency. 'Eric Holder told me he was recommending that,' a high-ranking official said. Ruff also supported clemency, sources said. Holder declined to comment."

(Edward Lewine, "How Bill Chose Clemency," [New York] Daily News, 9/5/99)

Nor was Eric Holder simply approving request pardons. Instead he was working on freeing the FALN terrorists, even though they had not made any such request... and was actually passing messages along to them to make a show of remorse in order to move the process along.

In 1997, Holder Met With Three Members Of Congress And Made Recommendations To Them About How The FALN Members Could More Easily Be Granted Clemency. "The committee's documents show that Mr. Adams and Eric Holder, the Deputy Attorney General, met on Nov. 5, 1997, with Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, and Representatives Jose E. Serrano of the Bronx and Nydia M. Velazquez of Brooklyn, both Democrats, to discuss the case of the Puerto Rican inmates.

According to Mr. Adams's notes, Mr. Holder told the members of Congress that because the prisoners had not applied themselves for clemency this could be taken that they were not repentant, and he suggested that a statement expressing some remorse might help. In their testimony today, both Mr. Adams and Mr. Holder declined to answer several questions about how the clemency decision was reached, citing executive privilege. Both said, however, that the Justice Department had acted appropriately throughout the process."

(Neil A. Lewis, "Records Show Puerto Ricans Got U.S. Help With Clemency," The New York Times, 10/21/99)

Clearly Eric Holder was fixated on freeing the FALN terrorists. So fixated that he was willing to sideline procedures, behave unethically and possibly even illegally. Arguably after this, Eric Holder should not be able to hold any position in the government, let alone that of Attorney General.

How wrong were Eric Holder's actions? So wrong that FALN afterward was identified as a National Security Threat.

A Subsequent Clinton Administration Justice Department Report Identified The Group As An "Ongoing Threat." "The Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, 16 of whose members were pardoned by President Clinton in August, poses an 'ongoing threat' to national security, according to a September report by Attorney General Janet Reno released yesterday during a combative Senate hearing on the clemency decision."

(David A. Vise and Lorraine Adams, "FALN A Threat, Reno Says," The Washington Post, 10/21/99)

Eric Holder's work on behalf of FALN resulted in a special congressional measure to reform the process.

And this is the carnage that Eric Holder's FALN buddies inflicted on the people of New York and the NYPD.

The editorial is written by the Director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of one of the pilots who died on 9/11.

It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.

"He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's how badly he was injured."

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.

"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."

A few dedicated Federal agents stood in their way... and future Attorney General Eric Holder stood in the way of the dedicated Federal agents.

Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony

We can only imagine what Eric Holder will perpetrate as Attorney General, what crimes he will cover up, what terrorists he will aid and loose on the American public. He has proven himself all too well in the Clinton Administration as the best friend that terrorists and criminals with political influence could ever hope to have.

For Joe Connor, whose father was murdered by FALN terrorists in a bombing only blocks away from the World Trade Center, Eric Holder's corrupt actions on behalf of the FALN terrorists carries a great personal price.

During the 1970s and '80s, the FALN waged a war against the people of the United States that included 130 plus bombings. Their most heinous attack was the January 1975 lunchtime bombing of Fraunces Tavern here in New York City. It killed four people, including my father, Frank Connor, 33.

Until then, President Clinton had denied clemency in 3,039 out of 3,042 cases. It's also worth noting that the Clinton administration consulted with representatives of the terrorists - but ignored the families of their victims.

I was trying to make the point that the release of the FALN killers would send a frightening invitation to other would-be terrorists. Little did I know that more anguish was yet to come.

Almost two years to the day after my Senate testimony, my father's god son, our cousin Steve Schlag, was killed on 9/11. My brother and I watched in helpless horror from our downtown offices, ironically only blocks from Fraunces Tavern.

The 9/11 connection is not accidental. Freeing terrorists sends a signal of weakness to other terrorists. Eric Holder's work on behalf of the FALN terrorists 2 years before 9/11 amounted to demonstrating that you can brutally participate in murder of NYPD officers and New Yorkers and walk away from it with the Federal Government on your side.

But Eric Holder's terrorist ties don't end there. Once out of the White House and working as a lawyer at Covington and Burling, Eric Holder represented Chiquita when the Justice Department charged the company with engaging in transactions with terrorists for the millions of dollars in protection money that Chiquita paid to Columbia Narcoterrorists.

And then of course back in the Clinton Administration days, Eric Holder was a big fan of using force... not against terrorists, but against a 6 year old boy and his unarmed family.

Eric Holder played a key role in the armed abduction of Elian Gonzalez by an army of border patrol agents with automatic weapons pointed at his head.

Holder Also Defended The Use Of Guns In The Raid. "Mr. Holder said his agents were heavily armed when they entered the house because they had 'intelligence that the possibility existed there were guns in the house. We had to make sure our people were protected and they were in a position to protect people within the house. I don't know if there were any guns in the house. I don't know if they found any guns. We had to deal, however, with the intelligence we had that we got from local sources and make sure everybody was adequately protected.' Apparently no guns were found."

(Jerry Seper and Clarence Williams, "Holder Defends Sudden Raid For Elian," The Washington Times, 4/24/00)

Just to clarify this, ruthless force had to be used because there was supposedly intelligence that there were guns in the house, though Eric Holder has no idea if there were any guns in the house or whether any guns were found in the house.

As Debbie Schlussel points out, Eric Holder's appointment along with Greg Craig reunites 2/3rds of the Elian Gonzalez kidnapping team. We can only look forward to the kind of gruesome abuses of the justice system these two will perpetrate on behalf of Barack Hussein Obama.

Of course Eric Holder was not too fussy to get involved in corporate crime either. And I don't mean on the prosecuting side.

Eric Holder lobbied on behalf of Global Crossing, one of the 10 largest corporate bankruptcies since 1980, on a level with Enron and WorldCom. It was the 7th largest filing in American history. While Global Crossing was accumulating debt like mad, its executives were spending like mad, taking tens of millions in personal loans from the company, operating corporate jets, and selling as much inside stock as Enron.

Meanwhile Global Crossing executives were covering their asses with a million dollar donation to Bill Clinton's library. The same bribe route used by Marc Rich, another Eric Holder beneficiary.

Now guess who the auditor for Global Crossing was? Arthur Andersen, made infamous by its ties to Enron. And guess who was its lobbyist, Eric Holder.

And just in case you think that the Eric Holder Scandal Train stops there, it's only the beginning of a long route which we, and probably in a few years, Federal investigators will be tracing in great detail.

Unless Congressional Republicans and the few honest Democrats do their job and vet Eric Holder. We know the media won't do it, it will just keep on repeating the fluff about Eric Holder's historic appointment as the first Black Attorney General, as if that's supposed to make us forget FALN, Elian, Global Crossing, the Weathermen pardons and Marc Rich.

It's time for Congress to take a stand against Eric Holder and for integrity in the Justice Department.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/11/eric-holder-obamas-crooked-pick-for.html

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. (emphasis added)

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.

Raymond Kraft
October 28, 2008

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1614/pub_detail.asp

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney and writer in Northern California. He can be contacted at rskraft@vfr.net.

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Response by Anonymous:

“… spare me from having to read this kind of garbage. … I don't have that much time to waste. Don't you find it odd that John McCain, and his minions of ex-Rove scholars -- who had the entire U.S. Intelligence arms (overt and covert) at their disposal -- would have figured out where Obama was born if they that it would disqualify him? And, if Obama were able to pull off the scam he's accused of, I'd say he's smarter than his supporters thought and his critics feared -- in which case who'd care where he was born.” Anonymous

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Response by Tom Wanamaker:

I've maintained all along that the quickest way to shut up the critics over the Obama birth certificate question is for the Obama camp to just put it out there and that would be the end of it. Their behavior sure makes it look like a cover-up.

Will Rogers once said, "The truth is ready to go at a moment's notice. A lie? Well, it needs a lot more dressin' up before you can take it out."

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Response by Marty Dillian:

Silence by both Obama and the U.S. Supreme Court only serves an insidious agenda. One can only hope that the U.S. Constitution, and their Oath of Office, is as important to Supreme Court Justices as it is to the rest of us. Should the Supreme Court refuse to address the constitutionality of the man assuming the Presidency (POTUS), the U.S. Constitution will, in the blink of an eye, become a dead national artifact along with the Rule of Law.

Think of the entire issue as an O.J. Simpson Redux (brought back, revisited), and the possibility of jury nullification on a far grander scale, this time by the U.S. Supreme Court. Should that occur, there will be one huge difference with the defendant O.J. Simpson. Rather than freeing a man accused of multiple homicides, the Supreme Court would, by their actions, for racial reasons be repudiating and discarding the most fundamental of our nation’s founding documents, the United States Constitution. In a very real sense they would be complicit in the murder of a nation. Should that unholy event transpire, our national culture will instantly and irreversibly become ‘every man for himself’.

I don't agree with the argument that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government is a one-off, that good old nonideological American pragmatism will temper their ambitions. Not true. With this election, the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point.

The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, "progressive" Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its "social market economy." Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create "wealth" so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.

The political planets are aligned to make this achievable. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, prominent Democrats, European leaders in France and Germany and more U.S. newspaper articles than one can count have said that the crisis proves the need to permanently tame the American "free-market" model. P.O.W. Alan Greenspan is broadcasting confessions. The question is: Are the American people of a mind to throw in the towel on the system that got them here?

This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan's "Cowboy Capitalism."

Of course Cowboy Capitalism built the country. More than any previous nation in history, the United States made its way forward on a 200-year wave of upwardly mobile, profit-seeking merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen and workers. They blew out of New England and New York, rolled across the wildernesses of the Central States, pushed across a tough Western frontier and banged into San Francisco and Los Angeles, leaving in their path city after city of vast wealth.

The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple -- the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."

What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.

As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection. This isn't an "agenda." It's a final temptation.

In partial detail:

Obama's federalized medical insurance system starts the transition away from private medical care and toward Obama's endlessly promised "universal health care." This has always been the sine qua non of planting a true, managed-market economy in the U.S.

Obama's refundable tax credits are direct cash transfers from the federal government. This would place some 48% of Americans, nearly half, out of the income tax system. More than a tax proposal, this is a deep philosophical shift, an American version of being "on the dole."

His stated intent to renegotiate free-trade agreements such as Nafta is a philosophical shift. It abandons the tradition of a hyper-competitive America dating back to the Industrial Revolution, toward a protected, domestic workforce, as in Western Europe. The Democratic proposal to eliminate private union votes -- "card check" -- ensures the spread of a static, Euro-style workforce.

Eliminating the ceiling on payroll taxes changes Social Security from an insurance to a welfare program. Obama's tax credits requires performing government-identified activities, the essence of a "directed economy."

All this would transform the animating American idea -- away from creation and toward protection.

Many voters -- progressive Democrats, the asset-safe rich, academics and college students -- regard this as where America should go. They explicitly want America's great natural energies transferred away from unwieldy economic competition and toward social construction. They want the U.S. to reduce its "footprint" in the world. Monies saved by stepping down from superpower status can be reprogrammed into "investments" (a favorite Obama word) in a vast Euro-style hammock of social protection programs.

One wishes John McCain had been better able to make clear what the truly "historic" meaning of Tuesday's vote is.

Once it's done, it's done.

By Daniel Henninger

http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122533132337982833.html

Hat tip: Pam Tulman

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Response by Marty D.:
Once it's done, it's done, not unlike a suicidal or delusional person putting a weapon to their head and pulling the trigger. There is no turning back at that point, not for 350 million people and their future generations. Excellence, initiative, integrity, faith, family, and the American Dream of success through the pursuit of personal achievement will have been exchanged for an 'existence' on the plantation.

One of the most important consequences of a Democrat-controlled Congress is that market forces will be tamed (regulated) and subordinated to the notions of politicians (even more so than they are now, which many argue is the source of the problem in the first place). If you are pleased with the state of our nation, it is Congress whom you have to thank, not some past or future president. Presidents come and go; Congress endures.

In the old U.S., when individuals achieved success in business, they were able to direct much of the profit into further expansion which resulted in jobs by the thousands and a high standard of living for everyone involved. Moreover, high profits acted as a signal to others that the market would be a good one to enter - providing even more jobs - and spreading prosperity. The social welfare state model sees profits as a resource to be endlessly tapped (expropriated by force of government) for use by politicians so they can "share the wealth" and fund their numerous "investments" in things that no one would willingly risk his own capital on.

Under democratic socialism, the goal is equal outcomes for everyone, except the elite who will be the politicians. Everyone else shares a meager existence and works for the state in one way or another.

The alternative is to work for yourself, instead of being the socialist slave of others, and be all that you can be, beginning young with your dreams and without government imposing limits (taxes) on your certain success. We have, of course, been sliding down the welfare state slope into a politicized economy for many decades, in fact for many generations, not unlike boiling a frog, but an Obama presidency would mean finally going over a cliff.

In the wake of the 2008 election, we will have plenty of time to play "catch-up" with American history and heritage. At some point those who can still read and write will realize instinctively they have lost something big.

Corporations by the thousands have already fled our shores, driven away by Congress, state legislatures, unions and the dismal state of American socialized education. Ambitious and talented young Americans might also want to start thinking about heading for the lifeboats. Their future looks dismal.

The United States of America was founded on the notion of a government of the people, by the people, for the people. In stark contrast, the antithesis is socialism, i.e., a government of the elite, by the elite, for the elite. Here's your chance to choose. Keep in mind that once it's over, it's over.

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Response by David R.: We may get economic "deliverance," like Ned Beatty got it in "Deliverance."

Upon seizing the instruments of government, the different factions begin a bloody struggle to become the dominant force in the new order. Quickly, the most organized, most ruthless group starts to become dominant. They then set about using violence to consolidate power and liquidate (kill, banish, or imprison) their enemies from amongst their revolutionary brothers. This phase of a revolution is called "the terror". It is frequently bloody to such a great degree that this period is forever remembered by the world for its barbarity. The guillotine days of the French Revolution, The Killing Fields, the Purges of the Soviet Union, the Genocide in Rwanda, the Cultural Revolution in China, to name but a few.

All revolutions have echoes of these patterns. Another common pattern in revolutions or power shifts, noted in countries around the world, is that the incoming regime tends to adopt what they believe to be the patterns and methods of the regime they replace. When Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, he reconstituted the Rhodesian instruments of state power, and began pursuing his political opponents in the same ways as he had felt pursued when he was the rebel. After the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks modeled their domestic intelligence methods and offices on the Czarist counter-revolutionary intelligence apparatus. This scenario has played itself out countless times around the globe thru ought history. From Asia, to Europe, to Africa, to Latin America, we see these patterns emerge time and again.

How is this relevant to the Presidency of Barak Hussein Obama? It is relevant because it is probably instructional as to what we can expect to see in the next four years. Barak sees himself, and has always seen himself as a "revolutionary". His clarion call for "change" is nothing more than a sanitized version of the causes he has always championed since his youth, his mothers condemnation of the status quo, "the way things are". Since he has surrounded himself with radical thinkers, ranging from Reverend Wright, to Bill Ayers, and even his wife Michelle, we know his world view is sympathetic to the idea that blacks and minorities, the "underprivileged" have been repressed in America. He likely believes that such organizations as the FBI, the NSA, the Justice Department, the IRS, the BATFE, and other instruments of state power have been used to attack and undermine left leaning political groups, movements, and individuals. What we do not know is how far he believes those and other government organs have gone in their efforts at "repression". Some of his fellow travelers go so far as to believe in Oliver Stone-like fantasies of assassinations, disappearances, secret imprisonment, arson, bombings, etc. Others in his circles merely perceive the government as working in secret cabal with the existing elites to advance their own financial enrichment. Since he has been disciplined in his public pronouncements, keeping his positions limited to generalities, much of Barak's personal beliefs are opaque. However, the degree to which he and his retinue believe in these conspiracies, will be the degree to which we can expect them to use the instruments of state power to practice these techniques, directed back on their real or perceived enemies. Due to the extreme degree of belief, by people he has associated himself with like Reverend Wright, those actions could be extreme indeed. We may see his administration work primarily towards legislation and rulings targeted for enriching themselves, or we may see the emergence of a truly sinister power apparatus, that will physically endanger his perceived enemies. (emphasis added)

We can expect an Obama administration to turn the Bush anti-terrorism powers, back on US citizens whose political views oppose Barak's "revolution". Anyone who opposes him or any of his programs will be considered as a counter-revolutionary, and a danger to the state. He will define himself, and his objectives, as "the State, and "the states interests". To the degree his people felt that their views were unexpressed in national media, they will seek to muzzle any national media which attempts to undermine him, or his objectives. They will use the powers of the FCC, and the Justice Department to do so. To the extent he believes the NRA or conservative gun owners may be hostile to him or his objectives, he will treat them as "domestic terrorists" or "suspected domestic terrorists" and will imagine plots against himself, his administration, and employees. Under this theory there will be close monitoring of any perceived "right wing" groups, and probably attempts at infiltration, trumped up charges, and prosecution. To the degree he felt the entertainment industry elements that were friendly to him were maligned, intimidated, or undermined, he and his people will use state power to pursue his enemies in the that industry. The degree of this will not depend on the degree to which his side was actually harried, but rather to the degree they believe they were. If historical world context holds true, the degree of his abuses will far exceed any actual behavior prior to his "revolution".

We can expect to see attempted nationalization of industries he deems important to his "change" agenda. We can expect Justice Department lawsuits, and attacks by regulatory agencies across the board to force compliance by private persons and business to comply with his agenda. We can expect his administration to push a "crush Rush" "fairness doctrine" type bill through his Democratic congress, mandating all FCC licensed stations or networks give free air time to anyone defending him, if some news or entertainment outlet dare criticize him. Those who blog, or post information critical of him or his policies, can expect to be attacked with litigation, as he wields full state power to destroy the "counter revolutionaries". The legal theories to support such action will be creative, possibly based on "hate" legislation, or libel, slander, or "national security". The IRS will become a regular instrument of state terror, used like the KGB or GRU and their counterparts in all countries that have been ruled by a "socialist revolution". Regardless of the legal validity, the result will be ruinous litigation costs, designed to silence opponents though their inability to withstand costly, interminable, litigation.

A close analogy exists in recent American history, the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The public was very unhappy with the presidency of Richard Nixon, and associated President Ford with the Nixon era. They were unhappy with foreign policy, the domestic economy, and the national media were committed to defeating the administration. President Carter, a largely unknown figure, was elected with a vague mandate to "clean up Washington". When his agenda became known, it did so by his actions, as he began trying to force American compliance with such policies as a national conversion to the Metric system, deep cuts in defense spending, and an international agenda based not on American interests, but rather on "human rights" (resulting in numerous regimes being taken over by forces hostile to the US, most notably Iran), his popularity plummeted. The backlash against Carter not only brought Ronald Reagan to the presidency, but also created a couple of generations of die-hard conservatives. The backlash against Carter and the Democratic Party was deep and long lasting. However, Carter at least had the benefits of seeming familiar to most Americans, being Caucasian, and having been to the Naval Academy, as well as his background as a farmer. Obama enjoys none of these sympathetic personal factors.

The backlash against Barak Obama will be phenomenal, as many of his erstwhile supporters will be horrified at how his vision contrasts with theirs, combined with those who opposed him to begin with, and those who never really understood what his policies would be. Like in any revolution, he will turn his power on his former revolutionary "brothers". Civil libertarians, opposed to Bush's security "Patriot Act" agenda, will among the first to realize Obama is not their savior, but merely a replacement of the frying pan, with the fire. Jewish groups, suspicious of Bush's association between Christianity and the government functions, will be next, as they find none of their personal interests served or protected by Barak's new regime. Many of the "educated elites" will rapidly become disillusioned as they discover the wealth that Barak intends to take for redistribution, will be theirs. Doctors, lawyers, and college professors never fare well when a socialist revolution takes place, and Obama's intentions are at least a quasi-socialist revolution, if not an outright one. The media may become justifiably frightened as they see comrades who are only slightly to the right of themselves, suddenly facing legal action, or persecution. The dilemma of Don Imus must have made some media members sleep less well at night, and what will come, will be more than merely un-nerving to them. Just as the communists found themselves hunted in Iran by the Khomeini Islamist faction after they had together overthrown the Shah, so too will many of Barak's supporters find themselves targets when they begin to question his methods. The more he does, the greater will be the resistance. In turn, the greater the resistance to his methods and agenda, the harsher and more heavy handed his methods will become. Typically, the socialist revolutionary becomes a dictator "to protect the revolution", as in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Russia, China, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Uganda, Romania, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, etc.

An unknown element of this will be the race factor. Some black American may feel compelled to defend him and his actions, regardless of what those actions entail, simply because they realize that his poor performance and unpopularity will reflect badly on them, undermining their case in the American psyche. Also, we do not know the degree to which Barak will publicly or privately attribute racism as the motivation of his perceived enemies. Theoretically, this could make Barak's revolution partially racial in nature, setting a stage similar to some truly horrific precedents. In those political struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, where there was a racial or ethnic component to the struggle, competing tribes turned the contest into one of violent conflicts, where the political power struggle became one of life and death, sometimes resulting in attempted genocide. Neighbor turned on neighbor, denouncing one another to the most violent elements of the other side, sometimes placing husbands and wives, and children on opposite sides of an insurmountable divide. Depending upon how embattled the Obama administration becomes, he may begin to surround himself with security and "law enforcement" functionaries, only of his own race, or perceived sympathetic groups. One recalls how the Michael Jackson clan turned to the "Black Muslims" for security at the height of his persecution by law enforcement, though his family had long only been associated with a deeply Christian background. If so, the perceived conflict will grow deeper and more intractable. Since black Americans only comprise about 12% of the population as a whole, this could be very dangerous for them, and even if the four years pass with only relatively mild conflict, it will do irreparable harm to race relations in the country, as they are cumulatively lumped in with Barak's defenders (whether they defended his actions or not).

Internationally, Barak Hussein Obama is perceived as a Muslim, or at least of Islamic heritage. While his supporters may hope that this will allow him to achieve favorable negotiations with our Islamic enemies, this will not be the case. Any student of the Middle East knows that the Islamic nations there, are bitter enemies of each other, and are quite aggressive with one another. The only point they can agree on is their hatred of the "Great Satan" (the United States), and the "Little Satan" (Israel). Their animosity against the Europeans is split, depending on which state was the colonial "sponsor" between WWI and WWII. Since they serve only the self interests of the individual families that control the states, we can expect them to remain hostile to US interests, regardless of whether or not they believe Barak Hussein Obama to be a Muslim. Their poor relations with the US are wholly independent of our connection to Israel, as they see themselves as our competitors both economically and for the domination of world culture. They want to increase our dependence on their product (oil), they want to extract the highest price from us that they possibly can, and they want to weaken us militarily, so that we are in no position to resist their efforts to extract ever higher payments from us, or interfere in their machinations in their region or around the world. If the election of Hussein Obama has any impact at all on their behavior, it will merely be to embolden them in their actions against Israel, since they may perceive him to be a less than enthusiastic supporter of Israel's right to exist.

If the United State sees fit to elect this young, radical, uninspected, freshman senator to the highest office in the nation, placing him at the helm of our military, economic, social, and diplomatic agendas, the great likelihood is that he will fail on nearly all counts. The repercussions of his failure will inflict a grievous wound on our body politic, economically, internationally, and on our internal cohesion. The price for our fit of pique, due to our dissatisfactions with the existing governments polices, will be high indeed. Those who seek to dispose of that, which is merely good, thinking they will acquire that which is perfect, usually end up with neither.

David Roth
10/09/08

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Response by Marty D:

"You have to pinch yourself – a Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And it's considered impolite to say so." Melanie Philips, The Spectator (UK) 10/14/08

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama.

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

Mark R. Levin
October 25, 2008

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTI1NmUxYjA4ODczZjgxOWJhMzQ3ODI0MDRkOWFlMDQ=

Hat tip: Jared Dillian, West New York
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A Second Point of View:
Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer

I must confess I was impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar.

When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late.

Khomeini promised there would be separation between religion and state. He lied and they did not care to look into his past to see whether he actually meant what he said. Had they done that they would have seen that he always believed in caliphate and the rule of Islam. People gobbled everything he told them uncritically. They wanted to believe and therefore closed their eyes so they did not see what they did not want to see. Eyes welled when he spoke. Masses poured into the streets by the millions, screamed and shouted to greet him. People kissed his pictures. Some saw his portrait reflected on the Moon.

Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch Khomeini, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell.

I was amused to hear a listener calling Fox News Radio's Tom Sullivan Show, (Feb 11) and saying: "Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell." ( Videos of Hitler’s speeches are available on Youtube. They are worth a look.)

Equating anyone to Hitler by highlighting the similarities between the two is a logical fallacy. This fallacy, known as reductio ad Hitlerum is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. I believe it is wrong to trivialize the holocaust and the horrors of Nazism by comparing our opponents to Hitler.

However, Hitler, prior to coming to power had not killed anyone. He was insane, but few could see that. Far from it, he was seen as a gifted man and hailed as the savior of Germany. He was admired throughout the world. He appealed to the masses of people – the working class and particularly to women, and did not just inspire them, he “elevated” them. Thousands rallied to listen to his passionate speeches. They shed tears when he spoke. Women fainted during his speeches. To Germans, he was not a politician, but a demigod, a messiah. They envisioned him as truly a magical figure of majestic wisdom and glory. They worshiped him. They surrendered their wills to him. He restored their national pride. He projected himself as their savior. He ran on the platform of change and hope. Change he delivered all right, but hopes he shattered.

I think it is fair to say that the Illinois senator puts the same passion in his speeches that Hitler used to put in his, and he evokes similar raw emotions in his audience. This much we can agree. Okay, we can also agree that both Hitler and Charlie Chaplin wore square moustaches. So what?

The Cult of Personality

There are other disturbing similarities. Like Hitler and Khomeini, Obama also likes to create a cult of personality around himself. As stated above, when a large number of a population is discontent, a charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and present himself as the agent of change. He can create a cult of Personality by associating himself with the idea of change. He convinces everyone that things are terrible and a drastic change is needed. He then casts himself as the only person who can deliver this revolutionary transformation that everyone is waiting for. He portrays himself as a benevolent guide; the only one who cares about people and their needs and can pull them out of their alleged misery. In reality, they have no clue about how to address the problem - have no experience, no track record. But they are convincing because they are self assured.

These revolutionary leaders need foes. They exaggerate the problems. They make everything look gloomy. They lie, cheat and slander their opponents while casting themselves as the saviors of the nation. Hitler chose the Jews to blame for everything that was wrong in Germany. Khomeini made the Shah and his westernization plans his scapegoats. Obama has chosen President George W. Bush to smear. He can rally people around himself, as long as he can instill in them the dislike of Bush and equate his rival, McCain to him. Sigmund Freud wrote, "It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness" (Civilization and Its Discontents).

A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.

Let us read a few of the comments Obama’s fans have made about him. Their unbounded adulation of this totally unknown figure is proof of my claim. Jon Robin Baitz is the creator of the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters." He writes:

Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones, those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor.

For twenty years Obama was part of Jeremiah Wright’s racist church and listened to all the hate which that man spewed against the Jews and the “rich White America.” Obama did not object to any of those hateful comments and even donated $20,000 dollars to his Trinity United Church of Christ. Baitz is willing to overlook all that and, mesmerized by Obama’s speeches, he embraces a man who up until yesterday supported the racist views of his spiritual mentor. He calls Obama’s speech "glorious," and concludes he is honest and moral. How did he come to that hasty conclusion? There is no evidence of that except his "gut feeling." That observation is subjective. We have not seen any evidence of Obama's honesty yet. On the contrary, he has been caught with a litany of lies.

Clearly Sen. Obama has a charming effect on his audience, who after listening to him are so moved that they willingly give up their reason and follow their hearts. Let’s see how Baitz adulates Obama to the point of worship.
Barack Obama's speech, perhaps one of the most important in modern political history pushed us as a people to move beyond race and gender, beyond Democrat and Republican, beyond politics and into reviving the spirit of the nation itself. To talk, to talk at home, at work, at the dinner table. To really finally talk. What a great day, and where else in the world but in the United States? Today I am very proud to be an American.

Remembering the reaction of Iranians to Khomeini’s speeches, this is all deja vu for me.

There is an old adage that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are.” Don’t the quality of Obama’s friends and associates tell us about the man? Shouldn't we look at the history of this man to ascertain his truthfulness? One characteristic of cult of personality is that people become ready to close their eyes. They find excuses and rationalize the sins of their leader.

Another Obama worshipper is Ezra Klein. He is an associate editor at The American Prospect. Klein wrote:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Obama is not seen by his admirers as a politician but as something holy. Klein says “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh.” The truth is that Obama is nothing but words! What is scary is that so many smart people are willing to fall for his empty words. Interestingly the same Ezra Klein had earlier said:

Obama is a cipher, an easy repository for the hopes and dreams of liberals everywhere...But if Obama avoided being battle-tested in 2004 by the grace of God, it's his own timidity that has kept his name clean since. Given his national profile and formidable political talents, he could have been a potent spokesman for Democratic causes in the Senate. Instead, he has refused to expend his political or personal capital on a single controversial issue, preferring to offer anodyne pieces of legislation and sign on to the popular efforts of others...Indeed, Obama is that oddest of all creatures: a leader who's never led. There are no courageous, lonely crusades to his name, or supremely unlikely electoral battles beneath his belt. He won election running basically unopposed, and then refused to open himself to attack by making a controversial but correct issue his own."

Quite a shift I would say. What did exactly Obama do, for Klein to change his views so drastically? Nothing! Obama has won this man’s heart only by the power of his mesmerizing words. He is making his conquests, through the sheer power of his oratory. That is how Hitler won the hearts of the Germans. As Obama’s life story shows, his words don’t have any bearing on reality. Words are powerful, but when they are not backed by any substance they are empty rhetoric.

Todd Gitlin, is professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. He is another worshipper of Obama. This is what he says about his leader.

This speech was a triumph on so many levels, does one dare hope it will turn the trick for hordes of parsing skeptics and listeners whose eyes did not water? First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to "move on" with a cursory acknowledgment that "mistakes were made." He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned.”

Let us pause here and examine what this professor of journalism and sociology says. Obama was a close friend of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and listened to his racist sermons for twenty years. Wright is a man who has intense hatred for the Jews, for whites and for America. This clip shows some of his remarks made from the pulpit. Here is a gleaning from his sermons:

• We [The White controlled America] have supported state terrorism against Palestinians and Black South Africans … Because of the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own home front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

• No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America. That is in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America.

• Government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew that Japanese are going to attack.

• They [Government] purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!

• What is going on in White America, U.S. of KKK?

• Black men turning on Black men? That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat.

• What we [America] is doing is the same thing Al Qaida is doing, under a different flag.

• Oh I am so glad, that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by and run by rich White people.

• Yes, 911 happened to us, and so did slavery happen to us. Yes the World Trade Center happened to us, and so did White supremacy happen to us.

• “Barack knows what it means to be a Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people.”

When all these came to light, at first the Illinois senator denied having heard them. That excuse was not believable. Wright was Obama's spiritual mentor and the most influential man in his life. And yet he expects us to believe he listened to his sermons for 20 years but did not pay attention to what he was saying? So he changed his position and admitted to having heard them, but he categorically condemned them. Obama went one step further. He did not just condemn the racist remarks of his Pastor, but he preached and he sermonized how bad are they are. Now, this requires some audacity that only a narcissist can muster. Instead of apologizing and recognizing his error, Obama turned the table and preached to others.

How can we understand this? The man himself is the sinner but instead of acknowledging his sins, he preaches to others about the vices of those sins. The answer can be found in the description of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists will never admit being wrong. They are always one step ahead of you.

Those who remember Rev. Jimmy Swaggart know that he was one of the most popular and successful televangelists of all times. During the 1980s, he had millions of fans all over the world. He mesmerized his audience. He was more than a rock star, he was a phenomenon. Swaggart was a preacher of "morality." He was so against promiscuity and unlawful sex that he went after two other televangelist magnates, Marvin Gorman and Jimmy Baker, exposed their adultery and brought their empires down.

However, what narcissists preach and what they do are two different things. Soon after exposing Gorman’s adultery, Swaggart himself was photographed with a prostitute in a motel room. He was banned from giving sermons for three months. But he could not stay away from the church that provided him with adulation and the people who fed his narcissistic need. He said, "If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell." So he returned to the pulpit and after shedding a few crocodile tears of repentance, he went right on preaching morality, chastising adultery and sermoning to others, how THEY should live a chaste life.

This requires audacity. How one who has been caught with a prostitute, literally with his pants down, could have the cheek to preach to others about the very thing he is guilty of? NPD provides the answer to both Swaggart and Obama’s responses, when caught red handed. The narcissist will not apologize for his own sins; he will go on preaching to you about the evilness of those sins. If Professor Gitlin had read a book or two on narcissism, he would have not been hoodwinked by Obama’s preaching about racial harmony after being caught with his proverbial pants down in his racist church. Giltin is not alone; millions of Americans have fallen for this narcissist’s mind games.

Prof. Gitlin continues: “The Reverend Jeremiah Wright,” he [Obama]said, “had spoken in an ‘incendiary’ manner,” but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

It is amazing to see to what extent people are willing to go to eulogize another human being. It is this excess that constitutes the cult of personality. The difference between admiration and cult of personality is in the degree of adulation. Is it not fair to say that Obama has the same effect on his fans that Hitler, Khomeini or other famous demagogues such as Joseph Stalin or Mao Ze Dong had? I am not equating Obama to those mass murderers. Obama has not killed anyone (at least not yet). I am only comparing their effects on their audience, particularly prior to their rise to power.

Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.

Obama’s speeches are grandiose. They are other worldly. He may talk about the war in Iraq, taxes or social security. It does not matter how mundane is the subject, he makes them sound transcendental and his audience is moved to tears. His worshippers do not go to listen to his plans. He has yet to offer any that is workable and different. They go to bask in his glory, to get high. Obama presents himself as someone with a unique vision and grasp of the entire problems affecting, not just the nation but the world, a pretense that is incomensurate with his track record. When in a meeting with House Democrats waxing lyrical about his trip to Europe, he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.” The world is waiting for Obama, according to Obama. In one of his rallies he reiterated this delusion of grandiosity and said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for." This sentence is logically absurd. What actually Obama wanted to say, which he masked with fake modesty is “I am the one the world has been waiting for.”

When you fall for someone to the extent that Obama’s followers have fallen for him, you surrender your reason and individuality to him willingly. When millions of people surrender their hearts and their minds to one person the result can be catastrophic. This is what happened in Germany with Hitler, in China with Mao, in the Soviet Union with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Iran with Khomeini, and so on and so forth. Today, we think these men were monsters, but that was not what millions of their worshipers thought. Those people loved them. Dictators can’t dictate, unless peole are willing to be dictated.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Cult of Personality:

"A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies.

"A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders."

Who is Obama?

Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love, also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”

Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Vaknin explains: “Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types [cerebral and somatic] equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven.” These were the very traits that distinguished Hitler and Khomeini.

Many of these traits can be seen in Obama. As for his ruthlessness, perhaps his support of legislation to let babies die if they survive abortion, gives a glimps into his soul, that he may lacks empathy, does not value life, and if in the position of power can be ruthless. Narcissists need power to show their ruthlessness. Considering the fact that Obama neglected his own half brother, George Hussein Obama, who lives on one dollar per month in Kenya, we can’t vouch for Obama’s empathy or say he is a caring person.

What is Narcissism?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes narcissism as a personality disorder that “revolve around a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement. Often individuals feel overly important and will exaggerate achievements and will accept, and often demand, praise and admiration despite worthy achievements.”

The third and fourth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of 1980 and 1994 and the European ICD-10 describe NPD in similar language:

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

• Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

• Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion

• Is firmly convinced that he is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special, unique, or high-status people (or institutions)

• Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, or failing that, wishes to be feared and notorious (narcissistic supply)

• Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his expectations

• Is “interpersonally exploitative” i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends

• Is devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others

• Is constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her

• Is arrogant, has haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted


Obama, inebriated with the fantasy of unlimited success.

Pathological narcissism, is not akin to typical narcissism—someone with a hedonistic or self-centered sense of self —but rather someone with a very weak sense of self. Obama’s narcissism is pathological.

Narcissists seek power. That is the whole purpose of their existence. Power for them is the elixir of life. Those who know about NPD can’t help but notice it in Obama’s posture, the tone of his voice, his demeanor and particularly his grandiose claims and unscripted adlibs.

Narcissim has degrees. When it is extreme it shows in the posture and the way the narcissist walks and talks. Obama's posture, exudes haughtiness. He is all puffery. Compare his posture to those of Hitler, Stalin and Saddam.

According to Vaknin, Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism:

- Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and "ideals" (e.g., about campaign finance, re-districting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, refuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

- Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality. Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he didn't publish a single scholarly paper or book).

- Feels that he is above the law.

- Talks about himself in the 3rd person singluar or uses the regal "we" and craves to be the exclusive center of attention, even adulation

- Has a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his "mission".

- Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)

- Displays false modesty and unctuous "folksiness" but is unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.

- Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.

- Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).

Obama sublimates aggression. Can he be trusted as the leader of the free world?

Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers’ souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it it’s too late.

One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then, his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”

In Vaknin’s words, “Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.”

The pathological narcissist has a very weak sense of self. He compensates his devalued and injured self with pomposity and by projecting a false image of majesty and authority. He retreats into a bubble universe of fantasy, in which he is loved, respected and omnipotent. All children create such a world. Narcissists simply don’t leave it. They carry this world of pretence into their adulthood. With the passage of time, this world becomes to them as real as the real world, to the point that they can’t tell the difference. When Obama acts presidential, he is simply acting out his childhood fantasy of omnipotence and grandeur. Emotionally, he is still a little hurt boy, neglected and unloved in the body and mind of a grown up man. Such people can be dangerous. Narcissists have the emotional maturity of a child, or even an animal, but the intellect of a man. They feel like a beast, but think like a human.

If we look into the childhood of all narcissists, we can see that invariably they were abused. Saddam was born to a widow who after losing her husband and her 12 year old son was so distressed that she attempted suicide. Before his birth, she would pull out clumps of her hair and pummel her pregnant abdomen with her fists. Saddam Hussein in his own official biography recounts his unhappy childhood. Hitler was the son of a very abusive man who would beat him regularly. From Saddam to Osama, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Khomeini, to Mao and to Kim Jong Ill, it is wounded childhood that causes NPD.

Obama’s chaotic childhood and his continuous struggle to find his identity make him a prime candidate for NPD.

Hitler was confused about his identity. His father was an illegitimate son of a Jew. He chose to be in denial of that part of himself and his response was the genocide of the Jews. Obama’s search for his identity led him to a racist church that preached “Black Power.” He changed his given name Barry to Barack, in an atempt to rid himself of the only vestige he had with his white heritage.

Narcissists have only one issue. They want power and will do and say anything to get it. Their words mean nothing to them. They do not intend to keep them. They look into your eyes and swear on a stack of Bibles that they are not going to do something when that is exactly what they intend to do. They break their promises when it suits them and annul their treaties when they can get away with it. They lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie.

Narcissists are pathological liars. They lie even to themselves. Ironically, they are the first to believe their own lies. When normal people lie, they show signs of distress.

Narcissists don’t. They can pass any polygraph test with flying colors. It is this conviction that fools people around them making them believe in their truthfulness and sincerity. In a twisted way they are sincere because, although they are conscience that they are not truthful, they believe in their own lies. This is difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain, but for a narcissist fantasy and reality are intertwined. The narcissist’s delusional thoughts of grandiosity are real to him.

Narcissistic Society

Germans are not particularly an evil race. They are no better or worse than any other nation. And yet, despite their advanced culture and civility they committed the most hideous crime in modern history. They murdered up to ten million people, because those unfortunate souls did not meet their "Master Race standards of ethnic purity.” Hitler did not kill anyone; the Germans did.

So the question is: What made these smart and highly civilized people commit such horrendous acts of savagery?

According to Vaknin, “The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.”

Is America a narcissistic society? Vaknin believes “Pathological narcissism is a ubiquitous phenomenon because every human being - regardless of the nature of his society and culture - develops healthy self esteem early in life [which he calls healthy narcissism]. Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse - and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By 'abuse, we mean any refusal to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual - smothering, doting, and excessive expectations - are as abusive as beating and incest.”

The emergence of so many cults in America is proof that America is not an exception to the norm. If demagogue narcissists, like Jim Jones, David Koresh or Jimmy Swaggart can find a fertile ground in America, why not one with a political message?

The Power of Manipulation

Narcissists are manipulative and extremely resourceful. They know how to the play their game, and how to get what they want, by using others. Obama is the least experienced senator among the Democrats. His political views are the most foolish of them all. He opposed the surge in Iraq saying it will make the situation worse and he was wrong. He thinks the solution to terrorism is to sit with terrorist states without precondition and negotiate with them. When Russia invaded Georgia, all this genius did was to urge both sides to "exert restraint". Everything this man has said so far reveals his ignorance in economical, political and military matters. Despite that, this junior senator has managed to rally the seasoned senators of the Democratic Party around himself and, not withstanding his ineptitude, he has emerged as the leader de facto of his party and their presidential candidate.

This is a remarkable feat. One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.

Anyone can be fooled by narcissists. Just as experienced and smart senators of the Democratic Party have surrendered to the charisma of Obama, a man who is inferior to them all in every sense; many members of the media also have fallen for his charm hook, line and sinker. The American media is soft on Obama, but extremely harsh and deceitfully unfair on Governor Palin. The “rich White Americans,” the very people he despised for twenty years are swooning for him. The Jews whom he opposed all his life are backing him. They are opening their wallets and supporting his campaign in an unprecedented way. He has managed to charm even the Kennedys. Ted Kennedy, the lion in Winter, passed the Kennedy mantle unto Obama. That was hugely symbolic. As for the great Clintons, he made them submissive, and for whatever reason, incomprehensible to me, they are playing his game.

Think about it. Obama is a cipher. In reality, he is nobody. And yet, thanks to his overbearing display of authority, the very mask that he is wearing to hide his devalued and injured self, he has overwhelmed all the giants of the Democratic party. Cults are full of smart people who have been hoodwinked by ally sick needy people.

Could all this phenomenal support and unbounded adulation erupt into violence? All the abuses and killings in Nazi Germany were done by the Germans, ordinary people who loved Hitler and believed in the glorious tomorrow that he was promising them. Hitler was insane, but those who did his bidding were not. Despite being smart, they did not hesitate to fulfill their fuehrer’s wishes and commit the most heinous crimes. The same thing happened in Iran. Ordinary people, once under the spell of Khomeini, acted like beasts. This is what happens when sane people follow insane people.

Could the same happen in America? Why not? Look how millions of people literally worship Obama. With some people I cannot even talk about Obama. They cannot tolerate any criticism of him. They get angry and, not only they want to end the conversation but threaten to end the friendship. I am familiar with this kind of religious devotion to a person. The reaction that I get from Obama worshippers is similar to that of Muslims when their prophet is criticized. They are even prone to insult you. See how they overlook Obama's blatant lies and are willing to forgive his major sins such as racism. Note how the mainstream media bends the rules, twists the facts, exaggerates Obama’s little virtues, absolves his sins, and even lies to sell him to the public. Compare the royal treatment that the liberal press has given to Obama to how unfairly they treat Governor Palin; how they smear her character and belittle her experience and achievement. ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Governor Palin was a stain on journalistic integrity. Is it more important that Palin has not traveled the world and has not shaken hands with heads of states, or the fact that Obama has lied so many times? Under what pretext should an ordinary citizen visit heads of foreign states? The question itself is preposterous.

While not shaking hands with foreign heads of states does not disqualify one to run for any office, The Logan Act (est. 1799) makes it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.

That is exactly what Obama did during his trip to Iraq, a charge that Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi confirmed, while trying to deny it. She said, “In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.”

This is high treason. Ordinary citizens have no right to enter into negotiations with foreign countries and make deals against the interest of their Government. Obama tells the Iraqis not to let the American soldiers go, so he can call them in January, supposedly when he is the president and claim victory for himself. Will Mr. Gibson or anyone in the liberal media question Obama for this crime?

Gibson’s questions were tricky. He asked the Governor, “what do you think of Bush’s doctrine,” and then, instead of explaining himself, he insisted that his interviewee define what he meant. After letting the Governor look puzzled, Gibson explained what he understands of "Bush Doctrine," which according to him is preemptive strike.

Assuming this is a “Bush doctrine,” is it his only doctrine? Isn’t being pro life also a Bush doctrine? Isn’t Christianity or creationism a Bush doctrine? Bush believes in a multitude of things. How can one know what Gibson has in mind? Do you see the trickery? Bush has many doctrines, and they change as his thinking evolves over time.

Many members of the media have been hoodwinked by the charm of the rising fuehrer. They have become his extensions, act deceitfully and dishonestly to make their beloved leader’s rise to power a reality.

How can smart people let themselves be manipulated by a psychopath to such an extent that they become quasi zombies? Recall what the smart Germans did under the spell of Hitler. Bear in mind what the Soviets did under the influence of Stalin. Consider what the Japanese did during WWII when they believed in the divinity of their emperor. Evoke how the Chinese Red Guard massacred millions of their own countrymen when they were blinded by their love for Mao and his faux notion of equality. Look at the Islamic terrorists. Can’t we say the same about them? Isn’t Islamic savagery the result of Muslims’ uncritical devotion to a long deceased narcissist? If you don't know what I am talking about, I invite you to read my book, Understanding Muhammad. When sane people fall for the lies of an insane man, they act insanely.

No one is born a terrorist. Terrorists are ordinary people who do the bidding of a pathological narcissist whom they love and worship as their liberator. They are so enamored with him that they stop thinking and act like automatons. To prove their love and devotion they can commit murder and even suicide. They can kill their own children, as the followers of Jim Jones did in Guyana. The narcissist encourages all of this behavior because it validates his delusion of omnipotence. It reassures him that he is loved, respected, counted, taken seriously. Did you hear the song played during the Democratic convention? It said, “This is the church.” And who do you think is the head of that church? Americans are as fallible and as gullible as everyone else. It is foolhardy to say "it won't happen to us." Just as today, Obama’s supporters happily engage in intellectual dishonesty, deceitful reporting, and even hooliganism, I predict they will soon, merrily commit the same crimes other nations committed under the spell of their narcissistic leaders.

The Sick Symbiosis

Narcissists need their narcissistic supply to fuel their narcissism. They get it through adulation from people around them. These people are often also needy people. They are known as co-dependants. The narcissist and his co-dependent therefore, form a sick symbiosis in which both benefit. Let me give you one example to explain this mechanism.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. In December 2006, in an article entitled “The Ridiculousness & Danger That Is Obama '08” Sirota lambasted the Democrats who wanted Obama, an incognito junior senator, to run for presidency.

Sometimes, you really just have to sit back and laugh at the ridiculousness of the celebrity-obsessed political culture we now live in.” wrote Sirota in his column. “Take this Chicago Sun-Times article by Lynn Sweet in which she predicts Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) will run for president. She goes through what he has to do to prepare for his run, and this is the one that just makes you chuckle: “Develop signature legislative initiatives: Once the Democrats control Congress come January, there's a chance to pass legislation. Watch for Obama to focus on alternative energy measures, health care and ethics reform legislation that stalled earlier this year."

Think about it. The national media is swooning over Obama, begging him to run for president. Yet, at the same time, they are implicitly acknowledging that he has actually not "developed significant legislative initiatives." In other words, we are to simply accept that the Obama for President wave has absolutely nothing to do with anything that the man HAS DONE and further, that whenever he does decide to use his enormous political capital to do something, it is all in pursuit of the White House - not any actual sense of DOING SOMETHING for the people who elected him to the Senate.

I don't blame Obama for not having accomplished much - he's been in the Senate for two years. As I wrote in the Nation, the main concern about him is that he doesn't actually seem to ASPIRE to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office), and doesn't seem to be interested in challenging the status quo in any fundamental way. Using his senate career as a guide, it suggests that any presidential run by him is about him, his speaking ability and his fawned over talent for "connecting" (whatever the hell that means).” (Read the rest of Sirota’s comment in his own blog.)

I could not say it better. Sirota understood the problem with Obama. He realized that not only this man has zero experience; he is actually a power hungry charlatan that aspires to nothing other than running for another higher office. He then expressed his outrage at the fellow Democrats who tried to make a leader out of this quack.

These Democrats laid all their hopes on Obama. They were captivated by his charm. They could not see that this man is wearing a mask of authority to cover his inner feeling of insecurity; that he is a fraud, a narcissist. When approached, Obama at first confessed to his inexperience, but the sycophants in the Democratic Party, were so desperate to find a charismatic leader that they could not let go of their prize. It does not take much to persuade a narcissist that he can do anything. He is already convinced that he is smarter and better that everyone else. So, despite his own confession of lack of experience, Obama could not resist the temptation.

To nurture his narcissism, the narcissist needs narcissistic supply. It is always people around the narcissist who provide that supply and encourage him in his psychosis. If it were not for Khadijah who reassured her husband that his hallucinations were not demonic, as he had thought, but divine revelations, Muhammad may never have started his prophetic career. It was she who encouraged him to launch a new religion, instead of calling an exorcist.

This is called co-dependency. The co-dependent, who also suffers from low self esteem, seeks his or her grandeur and narcissistic supply in the greatness of a narcissist of whom she seeks to become a part.

According to Wikipedia, “a ‘codependent’ is loosely defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for persons who depend on him or her. A ‘codependent’ is one side of a relationship between mutually needy people. The dependent, or obviously needy party(s) may have al, physical, financial difficulties, or addictions they seemingly are unable to surmount. The "codependent" party exhibits behavior which controls, makes excuses for, pities, and takes other actions to perpetuate the obviously needy party's condition, because of their desire to be needed and fear of doing anything that would change the relationship.”

The Democrats were desperately in need of a charismatic leader. They saw their hope in a needy man, a narcissist who portrayed himself as self assured, eloquent and authoritative and had sex appeal. It was love at first sight and they set on to polish him as their candidate. In this relationship the Democratic Party became the co-dependant of the narcissist Obama. They needed someone to shine so they can bask in his splendor. And Obama needed them to fulfill his delusions of grandiosity. This is how codependency works. It is a sick symbiosis of two needy parties. Behind every successful narcissist, there is always a co-dependent.

When the co-dependent and the narcissist team-up the result can be catastrophic. Now we have folie à deux. The delusional belief of the narcissist about himself is transmitted and shared by another needy, but ostensibly smart person. The codependent validates and encourages the narcissist's delusion. As the result, the narcissist becomes bolder, more assertive, more authoritative and more confident. The partnership of the narcissist and the codependent dons their delusion with the mantle of credibility. The codependent will then do everything to persuade others as well. The narcissist's cause is himself. The codependent will champion that cause. By recruiting others, they find validation for their own belief about the narcissist. Soon the folie à deux becomes folie à trois, then folie à quatre, and when you are a presidential candidate and are followed by a hoard of journalists and cameramen, before you blink there will be folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder.

The masses of people have no first hand knowledge of the narcissist, but they jump on the bandwagon thanks to a very human trait, misnomered as “herd mentality.” They reason, how can so many people can be wro,ng and satisfied by this fallacy blindly join the cult of personality worship.

Like gasoline being poured on a fire, the sycophants around the narcissist provide him with an abundance of narcissistic fuel to feed upon. The unbounded adulations poured at his feet further reinforce and escalate the unique and divine self-image of the narcissist. The larger the narcissistic fuel supply becomes, the more inflated becomes his ego, and the more firmly set in his own mind becomes the conviction of his own invincibility and superiority over other men. The narcissist reaches a stage that he will claim to be a revolutionary leader, an agent of change, a renascence man, the hand of God, even a messenger or prophet of God. Just as a fire can grow infinitely large as long as it receives its fuel, there is no limit to the delusional belief of a narcissist. When millions of people yell and scream and shout “I love you,” an ordinary narcissist is prone to believe that he is God. If the narcissist happens to be a person with power and authority, in a position of high leadership commanding armies and weapons of mass destruction, the result too often leads to the horrific slaughter of millions of innocent souls in the gulag, gas chambers, or killing fields.

Unbounded adulation reconfirms the narcissist that he is right and that anyone who disagrees with him is evil and therefore it is just to punish him. Narcissists do not understand the concept of the Golden Rule. Right is what benefits them and wrong is what harms them. So they fight for their own interest and are convinced that this is justice. Human rights and human lives are important only to the extent that they meet their narcissistic needs. They are worthless, and can be disposed of, if they don’t.

Ayatollah Montazeri, the man who was originally chosen to succeed Khomeini, recalled when Khomeini ordered the execution of 3000 youths who were captured during a demonstration against him. Montazeri protested and Khomeini angrily told him, “I will respond for my actions in the Day of Judgment.” Khomeini was a man of God.
However, as a narcissist, he was convinced that because he was a superior being and a chosen one, a delusional belief that was reconfirmed by millions of people when they cheered for him, anyone who opposed him was opposing God and therefore by killing them he was doing the maker of the universe a favor.

There is no cure for narcissism. However, deprived of adulation, the disorder will remain dormant. The narcissist, without the narcissistic supply, may become grumpy and complain that the world does not understand them or appreciate their importance. They will continue to cheat and lie when they can get away with it, but the damage that they can cause is not earth shattering. However, when a narcissist becomes the focus of unlimited narcissistic supply, where millions of people scream at his feet, he goes insane.

As narcissism maturates, the narcissist becomes more demanding for respect and compliance and more intolerant of criticism. He becomes paranoid, and divides the world into “us” vs. “them”. He casts himself and his minions as victims and instills in them the distrust of the “others”.


When criticized, Obama's soul can be seen in his eyes.

The narcissist’s anger and intolerance is projected on his servile followers who also become angry and intolerant of criticism of their leader. Remember the sick symbiosis between the narcissist and his codependents? The followers get their narcissistic supply by elevating the status of their leader. The greater he looks, the better they feel. They see their glory is his glory. Conversely, when the narcissist is criticized, his followers become offended. They take those criticisms personally and their instinct of self defense is triggered. They will become vigilantes and will silence their critics through intimidation, bullying, mocking, threats and violence (like calling those who disagree with Obama, racists).

This paragraph is a later addition. About a week after I wrote the above, Missouri sheriffs and top prosecutors formed Obama "Truth Squads" and threatened libel charges against Obama critics. I am no prophet, but see how my predictions are coming to pass. This is only the begining. Narcissists are intolerant of criticism and create a reign of terror to silence their critics. Please someone invite this Obama's "Truth Squad" to respond to his article and silence me.

Sirota was no fool. He saw what is wrong with Obama and was right on the money when he described him. But, as I have repeated many times, narcissists are gifted manipulators. Sirota is an influential man. Obama needed his support and called him.

It's not every day that God calls your cell phone,” wrote Sirota, sarcastically speaking of Obama, ‘This is Barack Obama.’ Thinking it was a good friend playing a joke, I said I didn't believe him. But no, the voice insisted with a laugh, it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama, otherwise known in cult-of-personality political circles as a deity, a rising Democratic star or, as George W. Bush recently called him, "the pope."

Narcissists are relentless and very convincing. They tell you exactly what you want to hear. They are full of promises. Their talent to manipulate is phenomenal. Well, not this time! Sirota apparently was not ready to sell his conscience (at least not yet) and endorse a man who according to him did not “aspire to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office.)” This is the kind of patriot America needs more of – citizens of integrity and conscience.

Where does David Sirota stand today? Errr!... Amm!… Why do you want to know? Emm!... How can I put it? Mr. Sirota…, Errr!…, Ah! Yes! Mr. Sirota has had an epiphany - a Pauline sort of experience. As he neared Damas... I mean Denver, on his journey to the Democratic Convention, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice on his cell phone say to him, "David, David, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" David asked. "I am Barack, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." That is how David Sirota became a believer of Obama. He stopped blaspheming his Lord by calling him inept and opportunist. Guess what? He has even defended Jeremiah Wright. Hallelujah! Surely “God” (the emerging one) can transform the hearts of his enemies.

Narcissists have an almost surreal power to manipulate others. They can literally charm their adversaries and turn them into cheerful scullion, who will even thank them for giving them the privilege to slave for them.

You see! The narcissist and the codependent need each other. Many members of the Democratic Party may know what Sirota knows, but they need Obama. They have to keep up appearances (think Hillary, who once said "shame on you, Barack Obama" because of his flip flopping and lies and now supports him).

Narcissists are amoral. They consider themselves to be above the law. Once in power, they will try to strengthen their hold by surrounding themselves with equally amoral people. A good example of what we should expect in Obama’s administration is the infamous NAFTA gate scandal. This is what happened:

A senior member of the Obama campaign called the Canadian government to say that “when Sen. Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t be worried; that it is just campaign rhetoric and shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Isn't it amazing? Obama tells the Ohio voters, who are unhappy with NAFTA that he is going to kill it, when actually he does not mean to do any such thing. For a narcissist, ends justify means. He feels warranted to lie and deceive in order to accomplish what he has to accomplish.

This story was denied by Obama, but confirmed twice by sources at the highest level of the Canadian government. This is how a narcissist operates. Obama will lie to Americans and he will surround himself with equally unethical people. With a Congress and Senate controlled by Democrats, and his ability as president to replace retiring Supreme Court judges, nothing will stop him from abusing his power.

The Cause of the Narcissist

The cause of the narcissist is himself. Everything else is a tool, a stepping stone for the narcissist to ascend to power. Narcissists don’t have any ideology. They champion the cause that has a better chance of making their ascent to power easier.

Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can't.”

Therefore, the question whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is pro Palestine, as he has been all his life or whether he is pro Israel, whether he is a black supremacist or an agent of racial harmony, are moot. Obama is anything you want him to be and situation dictates. He takes the side that is more expedient to his cause. To communists he is a comrade, to Islamists he is their man, to Palestinian fighters he is their hope and to the Jews he is a staunch Zionist. The narcissist’s creed is himself. Everything else is negotiable.

Obama will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama voted “present” in the Senate most of the time, (130 times to be precise) not because they were too difficult decisions, as Rudy Giuliani said at the GOP convention, but because those issues were not relevant to his cause.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which, he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father.

Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are magical thinkers. They live in a world of fantasy; fantasies of grandiosity and unlimited power. But they are convinced that those fantasies will become reality because they are special and destined for greatness. That is why Obama already sees himself as president and acts presidential. The very fact that he travelled abroad and visited with several heads of states is another sign of this man's delusions of grandiosity. He is not representing the government. Under what pretext he visited those heads of states and entered into negotiations with them?

Vaknin explains, “Bragging and false autobiography – The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘myself’, and ‘mine’. He describes himself as intelligent, or rich, or modest, or intuitive, or creative – but always excessively, implausibly, and extraordinarily so.”

Narcissists Are Dangerous.

Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.

Compare this to what the McCains did. They brought a child from Bangladesh with facial deformities - a little girl with no chance for a normal life – and with plastic surgery restored her beauty and adopted her as their daughter. Millions of ordinary people, who are not even wealthy, have fostered children of total strangers in third world countries and give about a dollar a day for their education and upbringing.

Narcissists can be very generous, but never without an ulterior motive. They are generous when their display of generosity is noticed and elevates them in the eyes of others. Obama donated $20,000 to his racist and anti-Semitic church, but neglected his brother who could get some education and live a lot better if only he had one dollar per day.

Narcissism is all about image. Vaknin says, “The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean. He likes to think of himself as a Renaissance man, a Jack of all trades. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field – yet, typically, he is ignorant of them all. It is surprisingly easy to penetrate the gloss and the veneer of the narcissist's self-proclaimed omniscience.”

Obama’s gaffes in history and world affairs are proof of that. This man does not even know the number of states in the USA, or that Canada does not have a president. That is why Vaknin says a narcissist is a shallow pond that pretends to be an ocean. Obama's ignorance about what should be common knowledge is mind boggling.

Narcissists have a profound sense of call, as they believe they have a “special purpose” or a “high calling.” In his autobiography Hitler wrote, “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” Politics and religion offer irresistible lure for the narcissist.

And this is what Obama said about his “calling:” "Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me," he said of his walk down the aisle of the Trinity United Church of Christ. "I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth."

At least one mental health professional believes that about 6% of Americans are pathological narcissists. The percentage in countries where child abuse is more prevalent is a lot higher. Although all narcissists are cunning, and bereft of conscience, not all of them have the wits to rise to power. A narcissist with smarts can be dangerous.

Hitler was smart, and so is Obama. Hitler would not have become the monster he became had he not risen to power and had he not received so much narcissistic fodder to feed on. One man who saw Khomeini prior to rising to power recalled he would gently push flies out of his window, but would not kill them. The same man massacred tens of thousands of Iranians. It is power that brings madness out of the narcissist.

America is at a crucial moment in its history. I cannot think of any disaster greater than putting a pathological narcissist in control of the world’s most powerful military machine.

Narcissists are empty in substance but full on promises. Obama has not proposed a single concrete workable plan, but he has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of people with his promises. The glorious tomorrow that he offers is no more real than the Styrofoam Greek columns that adorned his image during his acceptance speech.

Vaknin says, “The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments, His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.”

The narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first.”

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail - the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?

I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self serving and selfish. Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.

Vaknin says, “When the narcissist reveals his true colors, it is usually far too late. His victims are unable to separate from him. They are frustrated by this acquired helplessness and angry at themselves for having failed to see through the narcissist earlier on.”

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. Brendan Farrington, reported, evidence indicates that some black Republicans are switching parties to vote for Obama. He wrote, “Florida has 81,512 more black Democrats compared to a loss of 784 black Republicans; Louisiana has 34,325 more black Democrats, while the number of black Republicans dropped by 907; North Carolina has 92,356 more black Democrats and 2,850 fewer black Republicans. The only three states that track voting registration by party and race show black Republican registration dropping slightly since the beginning of the year."

Let us call a spade a spade. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards the blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks and to this day want to "stand up" to the whiteman. They seem to be stuck in 19th century.

The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will

In Hawaii, for example, the caucus organizers ran out of ballots, so Obama operatives created more from Post-its and scraps of paper and dumped them into ice cream buckets. “The caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants, a sure sign of voter fraud,” Long said.

In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary, flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets, and told union members they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.

In Texas, more than 2,000 Clinton and Edwards supporters filed complaints with the state Democratic Party because of the massive fraud. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign’s actions “amount to criminal violations” and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement, but nothing happened.

In caucus after caucus, Obama bused in supporters from out of state, intimidated elderly voters and women, and stole election packets so Hillary supporters couldn’t vote.

Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.

Obama’s win in the caucuses, which were smaller events than the primaries and were run by the party, not the states, gave him the margin of victory he needed to win a razor-thin majority in the delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention.

Without these caucus wins, which Long and others claim were based on fraud, Clinton would be the Democrats’ nominee running against John McCain.

Citing a detailed report on the voting results and delegate accounts by accountant Piniel Cronin, “there were only four pledged delegates between Hillary and Obama once you discount caucus fraud,” Long said.

Long has compiled many of these eyewitness reports from the 14 caucus states in a 98-page, single-spaced report and in an interactive Web site: www.caucusanalysis.org.

ACORN involvement

The Obama campaign recently admitted that it paid an affiliate of ACORN, the controversial community organizer that Obama represented in Chicago, more than $832,000 for “voter turnout” work during the primaries. The campaign initially claimed the money had been spent on “staging, sound and light” and “advance work.”

State and federal law enforcement in 11 states are investigating allegations of voter registration fraud against the Obama campaign. ACORN workers repeatedly registered voters in the name of “Mickey Mouse,” and registered the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys twice: once in Nevada, and again in Minnesota.

A group that has worked with ACORN in the past registered a dead goldfish under the name “Princess Nudelman” in Illinois. When reporters informed Beth Nudelman, a Democrat, that her former pet was a registered voter, she said, “This person is a dead fish."

ACORN was known for its “intimidation tactics,” said independent scholar Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., who has researched Obama’s long-standing ties to the group.

Fully 30 percent of 1.3 million new voters ACORN claims to have registered this year are believed to be illegitimate.

Long shared with Newsmax some of the emails and sworn affidavits she received from Hillary supporters who witnessed first-hand the thuggish tactics employed by Obama campaign operatives in Iowa and elsewhere.

Jeff, a precinct captain for Clinton from Davenport, Iowa, thought his caucus was in the bag for his candidate, until just minutes before the voting actually began.

“From 6-6:30 p.m., it appeared as I had expected. Young, old males, females, Hispanics, whites, gay and lesbian friends arriving. Very heavily for Ms. Clinton, a fair amount for Edwards and some stragglers for Obama,” he said.

That makeup corresponded to what he had witnessed from many precinct walks he had made through local neighborhoods.

“My mind began to feel victory for my lady,’ he said. “THEN: at 6:50 p.m., over 75 people of African-American descent came walking in, passed the tables and sat in the Obama section. I knew one of them from my canvassing. I knew another one who did not live in this precinct. And aside from four or five families that live on Hillandale Road, there are no other black people in this unusually white precinct. And one of those black couples were in my Hillary section,” he said.

Thanks to the last-minute influx of unknown Obama supporters, Obama won twice the number of delegates from the precinct as Hillary Clinton.
After it was over, “a very large bus was seen in the parking lot afterwards carrying these folks back” to Illinois, Jeff said.

Obama’s flagrant busing of out-of-state caucus participants from Illinois was so obvious that even Joe Biden — today his running mate, then his rival — pointed it out at the time.

At a campaign stop before the Jan. 3 caucus at the JJ Diner in Des Moines, Biden “said what we were all thinking when he got on stage and said, ‘Hello Iowa!’ and then turned to Barack’s crowd and shouted, ‘and Hello Chicago!’” another precinct captain for Hillary told Long.

Thanks to Illinois campaign workers bused across the border into Iowa, all the precincts in eastern Iowa went for Obama, guaranteeing his win in the caucuses, Long said.

Obama supporters were also bused into northeast Iowa from Omaha, Nebraska, where Obama campaign workers were seen handing out “i-pods and free stuff: T-shirts, clothes, shoes, and free meals” to students and people in homeless shelters,” according to eyewitness reports Long collected.

In Iowa City, red and white chartered buses with Illinois license plates arrived from Illinois packed with boisterous African-American high school students, who came to caucus for Obama in Iowa after being recruited by Obama campaign workers.

2,000 complaints in Texas

In a change in the Democratic National Committee rules for this year’s election season, four states had caucuses and primaries: Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, and Texas. “But Texas is the only one that counted both the caucus result and the primary result,” Long told Newsmax. “The others didn’t count the primary at all, calling it a ‘beauty contest.’”

Because caucuses are more informal, and can last hours, they tend to favor candidates with a strong ground operation or whose supporters use strong-arm tactics to intimidate their rivals.

“There is inherent voter disenfranchisement in the caucuses,” Long said. “Women are less likely to go to caucuses than men, because they don’t like the public nature of the caucus. The elderly are less likely to go to a caucus. People who work shifts can’t go if they work the night shift. And parents with young children can’t go out for four hours on a week night. All these people are traditionally Clinton supporters,” she said.

But Obama’s victories in the caucuses weren’t the result of better organization, Long insists. “It was fraud.”

In state after state, Hillary was leading Obama in the polls right up until the last minute, when Obama won a landslide victory in the caucuses.

The discrepancies between the polls and the caucus results were stunning, Long told Newsmax. The most flagrant example was Minnesota. A Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute poll just one week before the Feb. 5 caucus gave Hillary a 7-point lead over Obama, 40-33.

But when the Minnesota caucus results were counted, Obama won by a landslide, with 66.39 percent to just 32.23 percent for Hillary, giving him 48 delegates, compared with 24 for Clinton.
“No poll is that far off,” Long told Newsmax.

Similar disparities occurred in 13 of 14 caucus states.

In Colorado and Idaho, Obama had a 2-point edge over Hillary Clinton in the polls, but won by more than 2-1 in the caucuses, sweeping most delegates.

In Kansas, Hillary had a slight edge over Obama in the polls, but Obama won 74 percent of the votes in the caucus and most of the delegates. In nearly every state, he bested the pre-caucus polls by anywhere from 12 percent to more than 30 percent.

This year’s primary rules for the Democrats favored the caucus states over the primary states.

“Caucus states made up only 1.1 million (3 percent) of all Democratic votes, but selected 626 (15 percent) of the delegates,” says Gigi Gaston, a filmmaker who has made a documentary on the caucus fraud.

In Texas alone, she says, there were more than 2,000 complaints from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards supporters of Obama’s strong-arm tactics.

One Hillary supporter, who appears in Gaston’s new film, “We Will Not Be Silenced,” says she received death threats from Obama supporters after they saw her address in an online video she made to document fraud during the Texas caucus. “People called me a whore and a skank,” she said.

John Siegel, El Paso Area Captain for Hillary, said, “Some people saw outright cheating. Other people just saw strong-arm tactics. I saw fraud.”

Another woman, who was not identified in the film, described the sign-in process.

“You’re supposed to sign your names on these sheets. The sheets are supposed to be controlled, and passed out — this is kind of how you maintain order. None of that was done. The sheets were just flying all over the place. You could put in your own names. You could add your own sheets or anything. It was just filled with fraud.”

Other witnesses described how Obama supporters went through the crowds at the caucus telling Hillary supporters they could go home because their votes had been counted, when in fact no vote count had yet taken place.

“I couldn’t believe this was happening,” one woman said in the film. “I thought this only happened in Third World countries.”

On election day in Texas, Clinton campaign lawyer Lyn Utrecht issued a news release that the national media widely ignored.

“The campaign legal hot line has been flooded with calls containing specific accusations of irregularities and voter intimidation against the Obama campaign,” she wrote. “This activity is undemocratic, probably illegal, and reflects a wanton disregard for the caucus process.”

She identified 18 separate precincts where Obama operatives had removed voting packets before the Clinton voters could arrive, despite a written warning from the state party not to remove them.

The hot line also received numerous calls during the day that “the Obama campaign has taken over caucus sites and locked the doors, excluding Clinton campaign supporters from participating in the caucus,” she wrote.

“There are numerous instances of Obama supporters filing out precinct convention sign-in sheets during the day and submitting them as completed vote totals at caucus. This is expressly against the rules,” she added.

But no one seemed to care.

Despite Clinton’s three-and-a-half point win in the Texas primary — 50.87 percent to 47.39 percent —Obama beat her in the caucus the same day by 56 to 43.7 percent, giving him a 38-to-29 advantage in delegates.

Linda Hayes investigated the results at the precinct level in three state Senate districts. Under the rules of the Texas Democratic Party, participants in the caucuses had to reside in the precinct where they were caucusing, and had to have voted in the Democratic primary that same day.

When she began to see the results coming in from the precincts that were wildly at variance with the primary results, “I could see that something was wrong,” Hayes said.
Hayes says she found numerous anomalies as she went through the precinct sign-in sheets.

“Many, many, many Obama people either came to the wrong precinct, they did not sign in properly, they did not show ID, or they did not vote that day.” And yet, their votes were counted.

In a letter to Rep. Lois Capps, a Clinton supporter calling himself “Pacific John,” described the fraud he had witnessed during the caucuses.

“On election night in El Paso, it became obvious that the Obama field campaign was designed to steal caucuses. Prior to that, it was impossible for me to imagine the level of attempted fraud and disruption we would see,” he wrote.

“We saw stolen precincts where Obama organizers fabricated counts, made false entries on sign-in sheets, suppressed delegate counts, and suppressed caucus voters. We saw patterns such as missing electronic access code sheets and precinct packets taken before the legal time, like elsewhere in the state. Obama volunteers illegally took convention materials state-wide, with attempts as early as 6:30 am.”

The story of how Obama stole the Democratic Party caucuses — and consequently, the Democratic Party nomination — is important not just because it prefigures potential voter fraud in the Nov. 4 presidential election, which is under way.

It’s important because it fits a pattern that Chicago journalists and a few national and international commentators have noticed in all of the elections Obama has won in his career.

NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher described Obama’s first election victory, for the Illinois state Senate, in a recent commentary that appeared in the London Telegraph.

“Mr. Obama won a seat in the state Senate in 1996 by the unorthodox means of having surrogates successfully challenge the hundreds of nomination signatures that candidates submit. His Democratic rivals, including Alice Palmer, the incumbent, were all disqualified,” Fletcher wrote.

Obama’s election to the U.S. Senate “was even more curious,” conservative columnist Tony Blankley wrote in The Washington Times.

Citing an account that appeared in The Times of London, Blankley described how Obama managed to squeeze out his main Democratic rival, Blair Hull, after divorce papers revealed allegations that Hull had allegedly made a death threat to his former wife.

Then in the general election, “lightning struck again,” Blankley wrote, when his Republican opponent, wealthy businessman Jack Ryan, was forced to withdraw in extremis after his divorce papers revealed details of his sexual life with his former wife.

Just weeks before the election, the Illinois Republican party called on Alan Keyes of Maryland to challenge Obama in the general election. Obama won a landslide victory.

“Mr. Obama’s elections are pregnant with the implications that he has so far gamed every office he has sought by underhanded and sordid means,” Blankley wrote, while “the American media has let these extraordinary events simply pass without significant comment.”

Hillary Clinton supporters, belatedly, now agree.

Kenneth R. Timmerman
October 27, 2008

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/obama_voter_fraud/2008/10/27/144303.html?s=al&promo_code=6E3F-1

------------------------------
Response by Red State Patriot:

It now appears certain (from numerous sources) that Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to Barack Obama as a direct result of massive voter fraud in state caucuses – which begs the question seven days before the election: Are Democrats too stupid to be angry? Are there no limits to lawless and unethical behavior? Do liberals, who in the past have cast a blind eye on fraudulent voter registration and fraud at the ballot box, have any angst over the outcome of what was supposed to be a democratic process?

Sadly, most Americans of African heritage do not appear to care about anything but race, given their public statements and voting patterns – with a ready willingness to sanction any means that will justify the end, i.e., electing a Caucasian Arab who falsely professes to be a “black man.” The unifying theme in voters of African heritage would appear to be race, combined with a consuming hatred of all things American and the Caucasian race. I personally find that beyond distressing. The conclusion is statistically irrefutable with voters supporting Obama by demographic margins as extreme as 95 to 5 in some districts.

But what about the rest of America? Will they vote using race as their primary determinant? And if so, what will they prove? Will they vote for Barack Obama, and in the process, sanction massive voter fraud of historical proportions, fraud so massive that it resulted in the theft of the Democratic Party’s nomination from Hillary Clinton, and in all likelihood, the theft of the general election from Hillary Clinton?

Is that the kind of country that Democrats (of every ethnic heritage) want? Well, standby Democrats - you’re going to get what you vote for, and unless you put an immediate end to the theft of the democratic process, it will get worse and worse with each and every subsequent election, that is, if there are any more elections – since this one was meaningless, especially for Democrats.

Somebody please tell me why Democrats are not angry. Instead, they are cavorting in the streets, celebrating prematurely an Obama victory from Los Angeles to Iran, from Kenya to Cuba to North Korea! If I was a Democrat, and for the record I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I’d be looking at civil unrest and the whole thing. I would not go quietly into the night. I would want to tar, feather and skin alive the people who denied me a valid democratic caucus selection process and a general election.

If I were a Democrat, I sure as hell wouldn’t be voting for the architect and beneficiary of the voter fraud. In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “… stupid is as stupid does.”

The entire world will be watching Democrats on November 4th, 2008 and will take the measure of us accordingly.

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

Hat tip: Paul Uitti

Although Obama claims to be an advocate for the 2nd Amendment, his voting record in the Illinois Senate paints a very different picture. 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 and forcibly confiscate banned guns. Obama supported a bill that would shut down law-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 the law abiding firearm owner. At the same time, Obama has proven himself to be a friend to the hardened criminal. While a state senator, Obama voted 4 times
against legislation that would allow a homeowner to use a firearm in defense of home and family.

Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a “friend” of the law-abiding gun owner?

And speaking of friends, you can always tell a person by the company they keep. Obama counts among his friends the Rev. Michael Pfleger - a renegade Chicago priest who has openly called for the murder of gun shop owners and pro-gun legislators. Then there is his buddy Richard Daley, the mayor 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 international effort to disarm law-abiding citizens.

Obama has shown that he is more than willing to use other people’s money to fund his campaign to take your guns away from you. While a board member of the leftist Joyce Foundation, Barack Obama wrote checks for tens of millions of dollars to extremist gun control organizations such as the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and the Violence Policy Center.

Does Barack Obama still sound to you like a “friend” of the law-abiding gun owner?

By now, I’m sure that many of you have received mailings from an organization called “American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA)” talking about what a swell fellow Obama is and how he honors the 2nd Amendment and how you will never have to worry about Obama coming to take your guns. Let me make it perfectly clear - everything the AHSA says about Obama is pure hogwash. The AHSA is headed by a group of left-wing elitists who subscribe to the British view of hunting and shooting. That is, a state of affairs where hunting and shooting are reserved for the wealthy upper-crust who can afford guided hunts on exclusive private reserves. The AHSA is not your friend, never will be.

In closing, I’d like to remind you that I’m a guy who has actually gone nose to nose with Obama on gun rights issues. The Obama I know cannot even begin to identify with this nation’s outdoor traditions. The Obama I know sees
you, the law abiding gun owner, as nothing but a low-class lummox who is easily swayed by the flash of a smile and a ration of rosy rhetoric. The Obama I know is a stony-faced liar who has honed his skill at getting what
he wants - so long as people are willing to give it to him.

That’s the Barack Obama I know.

Sincerely,
(original signed)

Richard A. Pearson
Executive Director
Illinois State Rifle Association
October 10, 2008

420 E. Locust
P.O. Box 637
Chatsworth, IL 60921
Phone: (815) 635-3198 or (815) 635-3166
Fax: (815) 635-3723
Website: www.isra.org

Hat tip: Vic Conner

Posted at www.redstatepatriot.com

Okay, if my assumptions are true, we’ve now established three principles:
(1) that it is wrong to vote for a candidate who advocates an immoral policy;
(2) that just because a policy is legal and supported by the majority of voters in a so-called nation of laws, it is not necessarily moral; and
(3) that it is wrong to choose the lesser of two evils.

Having established the three principles, let’s now look at the actual platforms of the two presidential candidates. We’ll focus only on the moral question of confiscation and not on other moral questions, such as war and abortion. The reason for this selectivity is that if the candidates’ platforms don’t pass moral muster on confiscation, there is no need to examine the more complicated questions, for a failing grade on the one question would be reason enough to withhold your vote.

Both candidates advocate confiscatory policies that are similar in kind but not necessarily degree to the hypothetical policies in the opening paragraph--that is, they advocate confiscating money from politically weak or politically out-of-favor classes of Americans for the direct benefit of politically strong and politically favored classes and special interests.

The most egregious example is their policy of sending a bill of nearly $1 million to each American under the age of 18 for the unfunded liabilities of entitlements. In other words, they are planning to confiscate the future earnings of children in order to appease the well-organized members of AARP, many of whom are financially well-off and don’t fall under the Christian precept of helping the poor. As a result, today’s children will face tax rates of 60-75 percent as adults, according to reliable estimates.

If you believe that it would be wrong to confiscate 60 percent of the income of East-Indian Americans and 75 percent of the income of Chinese Americans, then to be morally and intellectually consistent, you must also believe that it is wrong to confiscate the same percentage of future earnings from children.

Granted, McCain advocates the partial privatization of Social Security, but he has said that the much larger unfunded liability of Medicare would not be touched. This makes him the lesser of two evils on this issue but evil nonetheless.

Other examples abound, including subsidies, handouts, tax breaks, protective tariffs, transfer payments, racial spoils, and bailouts for a variety of organized and influential special interests, such as farmers, rent-seeking corporations, teacher unions, ACORN, the NAACP, La Raza, sub-prime borrowers, and Wall Street scoundrels.

Where does the money come from? It comes from the studious, the productive, the frugal, and the law-abiding--from individuals who have deferred gratification, invested their own money in their future, and lived below their means. Outnumbered and out-organized, they are no longer the Silent Majority but are the Pillaged Minority.

The country’s moral compass is so askew that the thousands of empty talking heads on network TV, 24-hour cable news, and talk radio don’t raise a moral objection to the confiscation or point out that Congress has become a huge chop-shop operation, but without the honesty of tattoos, razor wire, and pit bulls. Instead, they treat the thieves with respect.

Recently for example, a young woman said to an empty head that she shouldn’t have to pay college tuition. It didn’t dawn on the empty head to ask her why she thought it was moral to confiscate money from other people for her college expenses, including from people of modest means who don’t attend college.

Without a properly functioning moral compass, we get a nation that thinks like the young woman. We also get housing bubbles and economic meltdowns. The compass will never be fixed as long as we keep voting for candidates who advocate immorality.

By Craig J. Cantoni
Oct. 18, 2008

An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

"Before the ban was overturned, Mr. Obama supported the position of the Court's dissenters -- that gun bans are fine and the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights does not protect people, it protects 'collective rights' of states," Korwin notes. That position had little to support it in the historical record, but was favored by people seeking to ban firearms from public hands. The "collective rights" theory, a recent creation, was dismissed with ridicule by the Court (equating it to Alice in Wonderland). The Amendment itself speaks of "the security of a free state," and "the right of the people."

As the first book released about the landmark gun-rights decision, "The Heller Case: Gun Rights Affirmed" describes the events leading up to the case, and precisely what the Court said, word-for-word and in plain English. If Obama follows the Court's decree, the civil rights of the general public should be fairly well safeguarded with respect to owning and using firearms.

If he instead follows the lead of his endorsers in the Brady Campaign, gun rights as America has known them for more than two centuries could easily end. His campaign positions so far suggest the latter, if he is elected. His widely available voting record is 100% consistent -- voting for every restriction on law-abiding gun use, and against every proposed protection for innocent individuals.

Virtually all recent gun-law proposals fall into those two categories -- bans on honest ownership and rights, or support for honest ownership and rights. New laws targeting criminals are rare, since every imaginable criminal activity with guns is already against the law and carries severe penalties.

The only thing left, according to leading experts, is to ban guns for non-criminals, a policy choice adopted in some circles. Gun bans on criminals have had embarrassingly little effect on street gangs, the drug war and career criminals in general. Facing abject failure of crime-related social policies, and unable to disarm criminals, many politicians are turning instead to civil-disarmament schemes. Working against this trend, "Disarm Criminals First" says one campaign slogan in the Marksmanship Movement.

The three publicly announced elements of the Brady-Obama anti-gun positions include:
1- Ban the freedom to sell firearms from one innocent person to another, euphemistically called the "gun-show loophole";
2- Allow all law enforcement officers to fish through gun-dealer records looking for paperwork or other violations, and compile data as they see fit, euphemistically known as "repealing the Tiahart Amendment" (which prevents them from doing so currently); and 3- permanently ban an enormous list of perfectly legal firearms and accessories based on looks, names and operating characteristics, euphemistically called an "assault-weapons ban."

First, knowledgeable observers know assault is a type of behavior, not a type of hardware, plus the ban seeks to outlaw all semiautomatic firearms. Second, it's already completely illegal for criminals to buy firearms under any circumstances, so the proposed private-sale ban would only affect innocent citizens. And third, the Tiahart Amendment protects the innocent from government registries and abuse, so all three proposals, as noted above, have virtually no effect on stopping crime, but do crush freedoms Americans currently enjoy.

A long wish list of other gun-freedom repeals have been previously announced by Brady, Obama and their supporters, but have not shown up in the candidate's platform yet. See some of them here:

http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm
and many more here:
http://www.gunlaws.com/Left-wing%20Gun%20Plan.htm
including (as listed during the Clinton administration):

THE FIVE YEAR PLAN:

1. National Licensing of all handgun purchases.
2. Licenses for Rifle and Shotgun owners.
3. State Licenses for ownership of firearms.
4. Arsenal Licenses (5 guns and 250 rounds of ammunition).
5. Arsenal License Fees (at least $300.00, with a cap of $1,000.00).
6. Limits on Arsenal Licensing (None in counties with populations of more than 200,000).
7. Requirement of Federally Approved Storage Safes for all guns.
8. Inspection License. (Gun safe licenses, yearly fee for spot inspections).
9. Ban on manufacturing in counties with a population of more than 200,000.
10. Banning all military style firearms.
11. Banning machine gun parts or parts which can be used in a machine gun.
12. Banning the carrying a firearm anywhere but home or target range or in transit from one to the other.
13. Banning replacement parts (manufacturing, sale, possession, transfer, installation) except barrel, trigger group.
14. Elimination of the Curio Relic list.
15. Control of ammunition belonging to certain surplus firearms. (7.62x54R and .303).
16. Eventual ban of handgun possession.
17. Banning of any ammo that fits military guns (post 1945).
18. Banning of any quantity of smokeless powder or black powder which would constitute more than the equivalent of 100 rounds of ammunition.
19. Ban the possession of explosive powders of more than 1 kg. at any one time.
20. Banning of high powered ammo or wounding ammo.
21. A national license for ammunition.
22. Banning or strict licensing of all re-loading components.
23. National Registration of ammunition or ammo buyers.
24. Requirements of special storage safe for ammunition and licensing.
25. Restricting Gun Ranges to counties with populations less than 200,000.
26. Special Licensing of ranges.
27. Special Range Tax to visitors. ($85.00 per visit per person).
28. Waiting period for rentals on pistol ranges.
29. Banning Gun Shows.
30. Banning of military reenactments.

PLUS:

a. Ban of all clips holding over 6 bullets.
b. Elimination of the Dept. of Civilian Marksmanship.
c. Ban on all realistic replica and toy guns (including "air soft" and paintball).
d. The right of gun-violence victims to sue, with financial assistance from government programs, the gun manufacturers.
e. Taxes on ammo, dealers, guns, licenses to offset medical costs to society.
f. The eventual ban on all semi-automatics regardless of when made or caliber.

[Backgrounder: Phoenix-based Bloomfield Press, founded in 1988, is the largest publisher and distributor of gun-law books in the country. The website, gunlaws.com, features a free national directory to gun laws and
relevant contacts in all states and federally, along with our unique line of related books and DVDs. "Gun Laws of America" for news-media review is available on request, call 1-800-707-4020. Our authors are available for
interview, call to schedule. Call for cogent positions on gun issues, informed analysis on proposed laws, talk radio that lights up the switchboard, fact sheets and position papers. As we always say, "It doesn't make sense to own a gun and not know the rules."

By Alan Korwin
Oct. 16, 2008

Bloomfield Press
"We publish the gun laws."
4848 E. Cactus, #505-440
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
602-996-4020 Phone
602-494-0679 Fax
1-800-707-4020 Orders
http://www.gunlaws.com
alan@gunlaws.com
Call, write, fax or click for free full-color catalog

Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

African Village

In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.

The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.

Rites of Passage

To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”

The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”

We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.

Jacob Carruthers

Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.

Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”

Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “...some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.

America as Rape

Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist....” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.

Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.

More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”

According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey....” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”

When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.

Asa Hilliard

Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)

Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.

Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.

Ayers’s Pals

An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.

Obama’s Knowledge

Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so.

By Stanley Kurtz
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

-------------------------
Response by Red State Patriot:

Redistribution of any right what-so-ever, or income from any family to any ethnic group, because they are an identifiable ethnic group, by any other name is dhminitude, i.e., cultural and institutional subservience of the victim to the recipient. Arguably, this is the core ideology of black liberation theology. Think not? Read the foundation principles of Obama’s church of 20 years, and Reverend Wright:

About Us
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community. Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They must reflect on the following concepts:

1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the Black Community
3. Commitment to the Black Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the Black Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of "Middleclassness"
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the Black Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting Black Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the Black Value System.

Is this what Obama’s voters of European, Latin American and Asian heritage are naively voting to advance? If so, the magnitude of their historical, economic and religious ignorance is greater than the sum-total knowledge of the known universe.

Message to Senator Obama's probable voters: Get off my back. Call a cab.

When you look at the unpopularity of the current administration, the financial crisis that has overshadowed all other issues, the fawning media and the promise of a charismatic young figure offering change, it would appear this race is over. In fact, it would not be surprising if that candidate were leading by twenty points by now. Prospects are certainly looking good for an Obama win at this time, but there are a few factors that can still work in John McCain's favor. Obama's liberal voting record, his far left associations and the fact that Democrats control the Congress could all still cause trouble for Obama.

Obama is spending significantly more in my state of North Carolina than McCain, so I see a lot of Obama ads. One I saw several times this week was incredibly reminiscent of some Bill Clinton ads from 1992. I remember the Clinton ads because even though I opposed him, I was impressed by how good and how persuasive they were. Bill Clinton sat in what looked like could be a living room, or perhaps a large homey office, with natural lighting, and talked directly to the camera. He told voters that he was for a middle class tax cut and for "ending welfare as we know it." I couldn't argue with either of those ideas. I knew enough about the Democratic party at the time to know it was pretty unlikely that would happen, but I had to admit it sounded good.

When Clinton promised those things, the economy had already begun, and was maintaining, a steady recovery. That didn't stop him from referring to it as the worst economy in 50 years, though, and the nation bought it. Now we have an economic situation that both candidates agree is one of the most dire our country has faced. In spite of the fact that Democratic policies are largely to blame, the unpopular sitting Republican President and his party are going to be saddled with the majority of the blame. Those in the media will ensure they are, regardless of whether or not they are deserving of it.

In the Obama ad I have seen many times this week, he is sitting in a setting very similar to the one Bill Clinton used in 1996. Also like Clinton, he talks directly into the camera and promises tax cuts for the middle class. Will this approach be as effective for Obama as it was for Clinton?

A big difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is that Clinton could credibly claim to be a moderate. He was a governor from a southern state. Southern Democrats are sometimes just as conservative as their Republican counterparts. Barack Obama is from Chicago and he has an unbelievably liberal voting record both as a state legislator and in the United States Senate. Barack Obama has voted against tax cuts or for tax increases 94 times. Obama has a liberal track record that should set off voters' alarm bells. Why should anyone believe he would now cut taxes when he has consistently opposed them for so many years?

Bill Clinton promised tax cuts, but even in an economy that was recovering nicely, he came back to voters barely a month in office and said that in spite of working as hard as he had ever worked, he was not going to be able to deliver them. There are certainly many excuses Obama could find to back out of his tax cut promise, but even if he did come through on it, there is another problem with it. Obama's tax plan is hard on small businesses. Even though many lower and middle income individuals would see less taxes personally, small businesses would face a bigger tax burden. Those small businesses employ lower and middle income people. If voters understand that the same tax policy that might allow them a bit more money in their refund checks could also put them in the unemployment line, they might not be so eager to vote for it. The only way they will know that though is if John McCain can successfully make that point.

The only reason Bill Clinton delivered on his "ending welfare as we know it" pledge was because after vetoing it twice, he was told that he had to pass it or he would lose his re-election. He therefore signed a welfare reform bill that a Republican majority had passed. That brings up another factor that could work in McCain's favor. Voters favor divided power.

The Democrats currently control both the House and Senate and barring some extreme unforeseen circumstances will not only continue to hold, but most likely increase their margins of control. Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Most far left liberal policies are not terribly popular with American voters, but if the Democrats control the White House and all of Congress, voters will have essentially given them a blank check to do just about anything they want. One only has to look at the extreme liberal voting record of Barack Obama, as well as the liberal agendas and records of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to see what they can expect in an Obama presidency.

It should be obvious to voters that an Obama presidency along with a Democrat-controlled Congress would result in the most liberal (read: Marxist) policies many of us have seen in our lifetimes or imagined in our wildest nightmares. Add to that the very real possibility that a President Obama would appoint two or three Supreme Court judges. There would be virtually no check on the power held by liberal Democrats and they would feel emboldened by the election to claim a mandate for anything they proposed.

This is a scenario that should frighten all but those in the most extreme left wing of the Democrat Party, but I don't think it is a scenario that most voters have really considered. Those in the media are not going to write or talk about Obama's extreme liberal voting record, just as they have not, and will not, investigate his associations with the likes of domestic terrorists, slumlords, and fat cats that fleeced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is up to the McCain campaign to draw that picture for the voters.

Those on the left will say it is fear mongering, even though for years they have warned of the extreme right wing and the fascist dictator state that America would become under Republican governance. They can't do that with John McCain, who has so often been in opposition to conservatives. Since he would almost certainly have a Congress controlled by Democrats, any attempt to scare Americans with a rightwing fascist state is absurd.

Those on the left can neither credibly argue that a far left agenda would not prevail in an Obama administration. Barack Obama's voting record is Exhibit One that is exactly what voters should expect. The case against Obama and complete Democrat control of government is bolstered by crooked associates of Obama such as William Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Rev. JeremiahWright. Additional clues to the leftist paradise that might exist under Obama can be seen in the thuggish attempts to silence his critics, whether it be his goons trying to shut down talk radio interviews or his operatives in state offices who are threatening to sue anyone who makes claims about Obama they deem false.

It would be no mystery to voters that an Obama presidency would be dominated by a far left liberal agenda if they were looking at the track records and associates of the candidates. Instead they are largely being shown an illusion of a modern day Messiah who is ready to unite the country and solve all its problems. They are being shown images of adorable children singing songs of worship and praise to Obama who is going to "rearrange" things to make them right. They are being given fluffy, puffy stories about the candidate by those who profess to be news reporters. The veil is so thin, really, if you know what stands behind it. Whether or not the McCain campaign can lift that veil in the final month of this campaign will determine the course of the country in ways we can only now imagine.

Lorie Byrd
October 03, 2008

http://townhall.com/columnists/LorieByrd/2008/10/03/factors_that_could_lead_to_obamas_downfall

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).

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit. (emphasis added)

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

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.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"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)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

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.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:

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.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.

The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.

The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violently demanding their "rights." According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls... for every two working in the city's private economy."

According to another City Journal article titled "Compassion Gone Mad":

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.

The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for "an effort at economic sabotage." He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.

Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals' threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:

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.

The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven's thrill that "...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely."

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN's website: "ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country," It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.

ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

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.

In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.

ACORN's website brags: "Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote." Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote have pulled out all the stops. Given their furious nationwide effort, it is not inconceivable that this presidential race could be decided by fraudulent votes alone.

Barack Obama ran ACORN's Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven's aspirations for ACORN's voter registration efforts:

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.

Illegal Immigration

As I have written elsewhere, the Radical Left's offensive to promote illegal immigration is "Cloward-Piven on steroids." ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros' Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.

The burden of illegal immigration on our already overstressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: "After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote..."

ACORN's dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.

Mortgage Crisis

And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."

ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:

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.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications-but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

As a New York Post article describes it:

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.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.

Investor's Business Daily added:

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.)

Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN's negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an "Affordable Housing Trust Fund," granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.

Even now, unbelievably -- on the brink of national disaster -- Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Senator Lindsay Graham reported last night (9/25/08) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of On the Record that Democrats want 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Enter Barack Obama

In attempting to capture the significance of Barack Obama's Radical Left connections and his relation to the Cloward Piven strategy, I constructed following flow chart. It is by no means complete. There are simply too many radical individuals and organizations to include them all here. But these are perhaps the most significant.

The chart puts Barack Obama at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who's who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.

Saul Alinsky

Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in "community organizing" from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.

Bill Ayers

Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with "guilt by association." But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama's work over five years with SDS bomber Bill Ayers on the board of a non-profit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:

"...the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charity, the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN's Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.

Carl Davidson and the New Party

We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago's New Party, a synthesis of CPUSA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party's endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: "Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate."

George Soros

The chart also suggests the reason for George Soros' fervent support of Obama. The President of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.

ACORN

Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz's excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama's Acorn." also describes Obama's ACORN connection in detail. But I can't improve on Obama's own words:

I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). 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. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)

In another excellent article on Obama's ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:

It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and study the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?

As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing in ceremony for newly-elected Illinois Senator, Barack Obama. Mudd called, the Congressional Black Caucus "our family" and "the conscience of Fannie Mae."

In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Senator John McCain was at the forefront of that effort. But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.

In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349, from Fannie and Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Senator Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?

His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson; Former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton Budget Director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker.

Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama's V.P. search after this gem came out:

An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report[1] from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998.[2] A 2006 OFHEO report[3] found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.

Obama denies ties to Raines but the Washington Post calls him a member of "Obama's political circle." Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.

Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama's presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn't seem to have come out of it too badly.

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

By James Simpson

Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, Washington Times, FrontPage Magazine, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences..

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

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).

FACT: Barack Obama voted for an Illinois State Senate bill to ban and confiscate “assault weapons,” but the bill was so poorly crafted, it would have also banned most semi-auto and single and double barrel shotguns commonly used by sportsmen.18

FACT: Barack Obama voted to allow reckless lawsuits designed to bankrupt the firearms industry.1

FACT: Barack Obama wants to re-impose the failed and discredited Clinton Gun Ban.15

FACT: Barack Obama voted to ban almost all rifle ammunition commonly used for hunting and sport shooting.3

FACT: Barack Obama has endorsed a 500% increase in the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition.9

FACT: Barack Obama has endorsed a complete ban on handgun ownership.2

FACT: Barack Obama supports local gun bans in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities.4

FACT: Barack Obama voted to uphold local gun bans and the criminal prosecution of people who use firearms in self-defense.5

FACT: Barack Obama supports gun owner licensing and gun registration.6

FACT: Barack Obama refused to sign a friend-of-the-court Brief in support of individual Second Amendment rights in the Heller case.

FACT: Barack Obama opposes Right to Carry laws.7

FACT: Barack Obama was a member of the Board of Directors of the Joyce Foundation, the leading source of funds for anti-gun organizations and “research.”8

FACT: Barack Obama supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park, which would eliminate almost every gun store in America.9

FACT: Barack Obama voted not to notify gun owners when the state of Illinois did records searches on them.10

FACT: Barack Obama voted against a measure to lower the Firearms Owners Identification card age minimum from 21 to 18, a measure designed to assist young people in the military.11

FACT: Barack Obama favors a ban on standard capacity magazines.12

FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory micro-stamping.13

FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory waiting periods.2

FACT: Barack Obama supports repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits information on gun traces collected by the BATFE from being used in reckless lawsuits against firearm dealers and manufacturers.14

FACT: Barack Obama supports one-gun-a-month handgun purchase restrictions.16

FACT: Barack Obama supports a ban on inexpensive handguns.9

FACT: Barack Obama supports a ban on the resale of police issued firearms, even if the money is going to police departments for replacement equipment.9

FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory firearm training requirements for all gun owners and a ban on gun ownership for persons under the age of 21.9

1. United States Senate, S. 397, vote number 219, July 29, 2005. (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00219)
2. Independent Voters of Illinois/Independent Precinct Organization general candidate questionnaire, Sept. 9, 1996. The responses on this survey were described in “Obama had greater role on liberal survey,” Politico, March 31, 2008. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9269.html)
3. United States Senate, S. 397, vote number 217, Kennedy amendment July 29, 2005. (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00217)
4. David Wright, Ursula Fahy and Sunlen Miller, "Obama: 'Common Sense Regulation' On Gun Owners' Rights," ABC News' "Political Radar" Blog, http://blogs.abcnews.com, 2/15/08. (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/02/obama-common-se.html)
5. Illinois Senate, SB 2165, March 25, 2004, vote 20 and May 25, 2004, vote 3.
6. “Fact Check: No News In Obama's Consistent Record.” Obama ’08, December 11, 2007. (http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2007/12/11/fact_check_no_news_in_obamas_c.php)
7. “Candidates' gun control positions may figure in Pa. vote,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Wednesday, April 2, 2008, and "Keyes, Obama Are Far Apart On Guns," Chicago Tribune, 9/15/04. (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_560181.html)
8. 1998 Joyce Foundation Annual Report, p. 7.
9. “Obama and Gun Control,” The Volokh Conspiracy, taken from the Chicago Defender, Dec. 13, 1999. (http://www.volokh.com/posts/1203389334.shtml)
10. Illinois Senate, May 5, 2002, SB 1936 Con., vote 26.
11. Illinois Senate, March 25, 2003, SB 2163, vote 18.
12. “Clinton, Edwards, Obama on gun control,” Radio Iowa, Sunday, April 22, 2007. (http://learfield.typepad.com/radioiowa/2007/04/clinton_edwards.html)
13. Chicago Tribune blogs, “Barack Obama: NIU Shootings call for action,” February 15, 2008, (http://blogs.trb.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/barack_obama_comments_on_shoot.html)
14. Barack Obama campaign website: “As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment . . .” (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/urbanpolicy/#crime-and-law-enforcement.)
15. Illinois Senate Debate #3: Barack Obama vs. Alan Keyes (http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm and http://www.ontheissues.org/IL_2004_Senate_3rd.htm) Oct 21, 2004.
16. Illinois Senate, May 16, 2003, HB 2579, vote 34.
17. United States Senate vote 245, September 29, 2005 and vote 2, January 31, 2006 and Saddleback Forum, August 16, 2008.
18. Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, March 13, 2003. To see the vote tally go to: http://www.nrapvf.org/Media/pdf/sb1195_obama.pdf.

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The Community Reinvestment Act was pushed hard by Bill Clinton, although it originated under Jimmy Carter. Asked about it the other day on one of the morning TV talk shows, Clinton said times back then were different. Fannie and Freddie had lots of money and he (in his infinite wisdom) decided that the money should not go to share holders or to executive compensation, but should be used to put the poor into homes.

As you can imagine, wonderful things happen when the government strong arms corporations as to how they should spend their money and, better yet, how they should assess the qualifications of home buyers. So the country's biggest buyers of mortgages were pressured into lowering the qualifications of applicants, in order to increase the percentage of poor that got mortgages. By 2006, 30% of all mortgages went to people who in any other circumstances wouldn't qualify.

Now the political left would like you to know that the CRA-controlled institutions did not lend the largest percentage of sub-prime mortgages. But that's information by deception, because the mortgage business is a competitive business. If the government strong arms one part of the business, the other part will respond. And strong arm was what the Clinton administration did, even using the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to pressure banks to lend more money to the disadvantaged. Caught in the act, a spokesman for the office noted that its abuse of power was "for the best of intentions:" the same inclination used to pave the road to hell.

In the short run, all sorts of money was to be made by lowering standards and processing sub-prime loans for the poor. The Wall Street Journal raised concerns about Fannie's and Freddie's capital requirements. Senator Phil Gramm (R, TX) raised issues about community pressure groups, such as Barack Obama's ACORN, extorting money from banks by holding their feet to the CRA fire, and threatening to militate against mergers and acquisitions unless the banks entered into preferential agreements with community groups.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act cut down on CRA reporting requirements and upped the ante for groups such as ACORN, forcing them to disclose their relationships with local banks.

Fannie and Freddie became big contributors to the Democratic Party. The sub-prime business paid off-at least while the bubble was growing. And the Kerry, Hillary and Obama campaigns have numbered among the leading recipients of the largess of the two mortgage lenders.

Franklin Raines, the Fannie Mae C.E.O. from 1999 to 2004, had been budget director in the Clinton administration. The left would not like you to be reminded that Raines has been a consultant to the Obama campaign, according to theWashington Post, and that Freddie and Fannie number among the top 5 contributors to Obama's run for the presidency. Raines is being sued for the recovery of 50 million in compensation acquired by the alleged manipulation of Fannie's books. Now, that's not change we can believe in. That's Washington as we have come to know and "love" it.

The Bush administration in 2003 tried to change the system, to no avail. Congressman Barney Frank, (D, MA ) was in the forefront of stopping the Bush proposal to take control out of Fannie and Freddie and put it into a third overseeing organization. Frank too has emerged in the current crisis as one of the major critics of the administration.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan continued to raise the alarm over Fannie's and Freddie's weak capitalization. His concerns were ignored.

Former Congressman Michael Oxley (R,OH), then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, introduced a bill in 2005 in response to the growing problem, but Fannie and Freddie put their lobbyists to work and the bill died.

Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, who is now Chairman of the Banking Committee and who appears along side Majority Leader Harry Reid on television to discuss the current bailout negotiations, has had harsh words for the Bush administration for its alleged role in the crisis.

But the rest of us should have some harsh words for Senator Dodd. After all, the Bush administration in 2003 and Senator Phil Gramm even earlier, in 1999, had been working to change the system. Dodd, like Obama, has been a big recipient of campaign funds from Fannie and Freddie, organizations that Dodd oversees. Dodd has apparently been more consumed with campaign contributions from the mortgage giants than the responsibilities of oversight.

When I point out the long trail of Obama's corruption stretching back to his days in the Illinois legislature, my liberal friends invoke moral equivalence, "They're all corrupt."

There is no shame among the left. When they think Bush is responsible for the collapse of the banking system, they scream at you. When you point out that the Community Reinvestment Act created a pattern of abuse that now threatens the entire financial system, without hesitation liberals say, "They're all corrupt."

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation even has a web site so you could see how well your bank is meeting its obligations under the CRA. Those of you who had money in Washington Mutual, which just went belly up, will be happy to know that WaMu, over the five individual reporting periods, had almost exemplary ratings on its commitment to CRA. That should give WaMu depositors great joy, to compensate for the financial mess they may be in. If WaMu had been less responsive to the CRA and more responsive to the market, maybe it wouldn't be insolvent.

I am not suggesting that the CRA by itself led to the current crisis, but the CRA was the first and most important part of the food chain. The CRA caused the expansion in the number of questionable loans that lending institutions made, but Wall Street and insurance underwriters were all to willing to package these loans, enhance their ratings through convenient exercises in fantasy, sell them, and insure them with reserves that were more inadequate than the incomes of the people who got the loans in the first place..

The best thing that can emerge from the current financial crisis is the realization that the government needs to stop directing economic decision making. In a sense, the government is putting out a fire it started when it both created the CRA and assessed lending institutions by how well they were doing in response to the program. When Clinton decided, in his usual arrogance, that he knew better than the market how banks should lend money, the seeds were sown for the current financial disaster.

If you want to blame Bush for the current crisis, it might make you feel good, reinforce your sense of how the world works, enable you to find a meeting of the minds when you next engage your liberal friends over wine and quiche, but like so many things you believe and which make you feel good, it has no correspondence to reality.

By Abraham H. Miller
Abraham H. Miller is emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/the_financial_mess_how_we_got.html

Hat tip: Len Salonsky

"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as it is to administer medication to the dead." ~~ Thomas Jefferson

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).

It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.

"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism. In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).

Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.

It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.

Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.

Among his proposed "investments":

• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't. That's just for starters — first-term stuff.

Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.

You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)? Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.

The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed. A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."

As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment. "They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."

After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago. His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.

The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.

After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale. While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.

(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)

Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa. As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans." His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."

"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development." Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.

(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)

In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits. (Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)

With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer." He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud. Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice." He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.

Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist. Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.

The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word. But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.

Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk. Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
July 28, 2008

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302137342405551&kw=socialism

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).

In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the military by slashing conventional and nuclear weapons. The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting. Here's a transcript:

"I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it.

"Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.

"I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial (Defense) Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.

"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."

Our ICBMs have been off "hair-trigger" alert for decades. But his threat to unilaterally hollow out our nuclear forces is chilling.

You can bet that Obama won't make this sweeping indictment of our security forces again as he tries to lurch to the center before the election. But this is what he thinks and plans to do. His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly irresponsible given the world threats.

And there are no signs his attitude has changed following Russia's invasion of Georgia and flexing of its military muscle off the coast of Venezuela. Or after al-Qaida's bombings this month of the U.S. embassy in Yemen and the Marriott in Islamabad, which killed some 60 people, including U.S. Defense Department and State Department officials.

In contrast, John McCain's mantra that the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is "radical Islamic extremism" is right on target. It's a phrase he's refused to back down from even as Muslim groups have convinced President Bush to stop using it.

Obama seems oblivious to the threat from Islamic extremism. During his 4,350-word acceptance speech in Denver, he couldn't summon enough spit even to utter the phrase a single time.

The gap between the two candidates in understanding the dangerous threats America faces around the world, particularly from Islamic extremism, is yawning.

Ret. Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he's not going to vote for Obama "just because you're black." The critical issue, he recently averred, "is who is going to keep us safe." Who does that leave other than McCain-Palin?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
September 22, 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).

Until now, Congress has been surprisingly passive. As Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid put it, "no one knows what to do" right now. Funny, since it was a Democrat-led Congress that helped cause the problems in the first place.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently barked "no" at reporters for daring to ask if Democrats deserved any blame for the meltdown, you saw denial in action. Pelosi and her followers would have you believe this all happened because of President Bush and his loyal Senate lapdog, John McCain. Or that big, bad predatory Wall Street banks deserve all the blame.

"The American people are not protected from the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions," Pelosi said recently, as she vowed congressional hearings.

Only one problem: It's untrue. Yes, banks did overleverage and take risks they shouldn't have. But the fact is, President Bush in 2003 tried desperately to stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from metastasizing into the problem they have since become.

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003: "The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago."

Bush tried to act. Who stopped him? Congress, especially Democrats with their deep financial and patronage ties to the two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie.

"These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Rep. Barney Frank, then ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

It's pretty clear who was on the right side of that debate. As for presidential contender John McCain, just two years after Bush's plan, McCain also called for badly needed reforms to prevent a crisis like the one we're now in.

"If Congress does not act," McCain said in 2005, "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."

Sounds like McCain was spot on. But his warnings, too, were ignored by Congress. To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race. These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans. Lenders who refused would find themselves castigated publicly as racists. As noted this week in an IBD editorial, no fewer than four federal bank regulators scrutinized financial firms' books to make sure they were in compliance. Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was. It was economic hardball.

"We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible," Clinton's comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, told the Senate Banking Committee in 1993. And they meant it. In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market. That's how the contagion began. With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew to become monsters, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. mortgage loans. At the time of their bailouts this month, they held $5.4 trillion in loans on their books. About $1.4 trillion of those were subprime. As they grew, Fannie and Freddie grew heavily involved in "community development," giving money to local housing rights groups and "empowering" the groups, such as ACORN, for whom Barack Obama once worked in Chicago.

Warning signals were everywhere. Yet at every turn, Democrats in Congress halted attempts to stop the madness. It happened in 1992, again in 2000, in 2003 and in 2005. It may happen this year, too.

Since 1989, Fannie and Freddie have spent an estimated $140 million on lobbying Washington. They contributed millions to politicians, mostly Democrats, including Senator Chris Dodd (No. 1 recipient) and Barack Obama (No. 3 recipient, despite only three years in office).

The Clinton White House used Fannie and Freddie as a patronage job bank. Former executives and board members read like a who's who of the Clinton-era Democratic Party, including Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Jim Johnson and current Rep. Rahm Emanuel. Collectively, they and others made well more than $100 million from Fannie and Freddie, whose books were cooked Enron-style during the late 1990s and early 2000s to ensure executives got their massive bonuses.

They got the bonuses. You get the bill.

By Terry Jones
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
September 18, 2008

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306632135350949

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).

Over at Political Affairs Magazine, a publication of the Communist Party USA, writer John Case is gloating. His article about the crisis is headlined, “A Dose of Socialism to Forestall Disaster.” He thinks that Paulson and Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke have been reading the works of closet Marxists.

But none of this is secret. At a time when many pieces of legislation before Congress take up thousands of pages and do their best to hide pork barrel spending, Paulson’s three-page plan for Wall Street socialism is straightforward and simple. If passed by Congress, Paulson would assume the dictatorial power and authority to designate financial institutions “as financial agents of the Government” and order them to perform “all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them…”

The bill gives Paulson automatic access to $700 billion and raises the limit on the public debt to $11.3 trillion. He gets the power to issue regulations, hire people, establish various financial “vehicles,” and take other “necessary actions.”

Conservative Senator Jim Bunning is brutally honest, saying that “…the free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America.” He said Paulson’s plan “will take away the free market and institute socialism in America. The American taxpayer has been misled throughout this economic crisis. The government on all fronts has failed the American people miserably.”

“After reviewing the Administration’s proposed bailout plan, I believe it is completely unacceptable,” said conservative Senator Jim DeMint. “This plan does nothing to address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy. This plan fails to oversee or regulate the government failures that led to this crisis. Instead it greatly increases the role for Secretary Paulson whose market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year…”

Every newspaper in America should print a copy of his plan. Every news anchor and commentator should read it out loud to the American people. The American people have a right to know that President Bush and Congress are officially creating a socialist America.

Over at the “conservative” Fox News Channel, however, some commentators think this is just great. “I love it,” Fred Barnes of the “conservative” Weekly Standard said of the temporary market rise in response to the anticipated Paulson plan. “Look,” Barnes said, “when I keep hearing this is going to cost a trillion dollars, and so on, it may not cost anything.” The U.S. may “come out ahead” in the long run, he confidently predicted. He praised Paulson and Bernanke for acting “boldly.”

Another “conservative,” Charles Krauthammer, was almost giddy. “It took FDR a decade to put in place all the institutions of the New Deal,” he commented. “Paulson and Bernanke did it in ten hours. I mean, in one night, they created a whole new world.”

However, on the September 21 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pointed out that Paulson has already been caught making reassuring but false statements about the crisis. In March, also on Fox News Sunday, Wallace had asked him, “Are more Wall Street firms in danger, at risk, of going under? Paulson replied, “I’ve got great confidence in our financial market, our financial institutions. Our markets are resilient. They’re flexible. Our institutions, our banks and investment banks, are strong.”

And this is the guy being entrusted with virtual dictatorial power over Wall Street? Rather than praise him for his intellect and ability, why aren’t Barnes and Krauthammer demanding that Bush fire him?

The liberal media are, of course, also trying to keep the American people in the dark about what is happening. The Washington Post deceptively calls it a “rescue plan.”

The “debate” taking place in Washington and the media is being carefully controlled. The Republican Bush Administration supports the plan and Congressional Democrats want to take it further. The Democrats want even more federal involvement in the firms that are being acquired. In other words, it is a question of how much socialism they want. The Democrats want more socialism; the Bush Republicans want slightly less. But it is still socialism.

There is a bipartisan note: both sides agree that there should be a new government board assigned to monitor America’s transition into a socialist economy.

Both major party presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have not objected to the proposed federal takeover, although McCain has raised questions about giving Paulson too much power.
Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin, who has been endorsed by Rep. Ron Paul, is ripping the Democrats and the Republicans. “That deer in the headlights look on the faces of Obama/Biden/McCain/Palin when discussing this crisis should tell Americans everything they need to know about these candidates,” he said. “Not one of them is letting on they know what’s really happening, much less how to fix it!”

He said, “So far, the only solution being talked about is more of the same failed monetary policies that got us into this mess in the first place―more fake money, more debt, more usury. It is time to demand a return to sound money.”

On the House side, 31 members of the House of Representatives have voiced public objections in writing to going further down the socialist road. They are members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the Caucus of House Conservatives. They have sent a letter to Paulson and Bernanke.

Rep. Mike Pence, the former chairman of the RSC, said, “The Administration’s request amounts to the largest corporate bailout in American history. Congress should act, but should act in a way that protects the integrity of our free market and protects the American taxpayer from more debt and higher taxes. To have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail. Any solution to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic freedom.”

“Government bailouts and takeovers are nothing new,” points out financial advisor Ric Edelman.

He cites the following: “In 1971, Richard Nixon rescued Lockheed by providing $250 million in loan guarantees. When the Penn Central Railroad failed in 1971, Nixon created Amtrak. Jimmy Carter gave $1.5 billion in loan guarantees to Chrysler in 1979. Under Ronald Reagan, the FDIC in 1984 spent $4.5 billion to rescue Continental Illinois, which still holds the record as the largest U.S. bank failure. Then, during the S&L crisis of the 1980s, George H. W. Bush approved the bailout of 747 savings and loans at a cost to taxpayers of $124.6 billion. In 1998, under Bill Clinton, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York bailed out Long Term Capital Management at a cost of $3.6 billion. During the Mexican Peso Crisis, Clinton arranged for loans and guarantees to Mexico totaling almost $50 billion. Then, following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, George W. Bush approved $15 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees to aid the faltering airline industry. This year, the Federal Reserve approved a $30 billion credit line to help JP Morgan Chase acquire Bear Stearns and engineered takeovers of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG. The names, dates and amounts are different, but that’s about it.”

In fact, however, the massive scope and price tag make the Paulson plan far different.

Meanwhile, some “progressive” economists and writers are urging the Democrats in Congress to take the plan much further by implementing the first phase of a global tax.

James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute says that Washington needs to establish a “new regulatory regime that covers all financial institutions (including hedge funds), controls risk and introduces a tax on financial transactions to help repay U.S. taxpayers for coming to the industry’s rescue.” A tax on financial transactions, which would affect stocks and mutual funds, could be part of a global “Tobin Tax,” named after the late Yale University economist James Tobin, to bring in billions and even trillions of dollars a year to national governments and international institutions such as the United Nations. Such a plan has usually been marketed as a way to diminish “global financial instability.”

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says that “The government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to the one in the United Kingdom. This can both restrain excessive trading and raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.”

One cannot exclude the possibility of such a proposal being slipped into the final legislation. It is being reported that Senator Christopher Dodd, Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, has been circulating a 44-page version of the bill. But Dodd’s Banking Committee website only has a three-page summary. What is in the rest of the proposal?

The next few days are critical. The American people can stop this rush into socialism, if only the liberal and conservative media start telling the truth about the socialist “new world” into which we are about to enter.

AIM Column
By Cliff Kincaid
September 23, 2008

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/socialism-is-coming-to-america/

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).

---------------------
Response by Suzanne:

I've just finished reading this and I am ready to go puke!

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Response by Len Salonsky:

From my vantage point, the American people have been enabling the turn towards socialism for decades by their complacency and by their almost universal demand for entitlement increases whose implementation lie outside the principles and codification of the US Constitution. Unscrupulous politicians (perhaps the majority) are glad to accommodate any end-run around the Constitution if such an act will bring them a majority of votes.

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of Liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened. ~ Norman Thomas - Socialist Party Presidential candidate (1976)

No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. ~ Alexander Tyler

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other. ~ Voltaire (1764)

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of many by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away mans initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. ~ Abraham Lincoln

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do. ~ Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate

According to OpenSecrets.com, from 1989 to 2008, Dodd received $165,400 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, including contributions from PACs and individuals, followed by Obama, who received $126,349 in such contributions since being elected to the Senate in 2004.

In contrast, McCain warned of the coming mortgage crisis as he pressed in 2005 for regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – known as government-sponsored entities or GSEs – and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market," McCain said on the floor of the Senate in 2005, speaking in favor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.

McCain pointed out Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The bill passed the House but was never brought up for a vote in the Senate, largely because of Democratic opposition to change in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulatory structure that remained in place until the Treasury takeover two weeks ago.

As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants.

Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives, where they have earned millions in compensation, despite a continuing series of financial scandals. Enron-like accounting manipulation, for example, boosted earnings to a level at which massive executive bonuses could be paid.

In the aftermath of the U.S. government takeover, attention has focused on three Democrats with close ties to Obama who served as Fannie Mae executives: Franklin Raines, former Clinton administration budget director; James Johnson, former aide to Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale; and Jamie Gorelick, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general.

All three Obama-related executives earned millions in compensation from Fannie Mae.

Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year serving as Fannie Mae CEO from 1991 to 1998; Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004; and Gorelick earned an estimated $26 million serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003, according to author David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

All three have been involved in mortgage-related financial scandals.

In 1998, according to the Washington Post, Gorelick, as Fannie Mae vice chairman, received a bonus of $779,625, despite a scandal in which employees falsified signatures on accounting transactions to manipulate books to meet 1998 earning targets. The moves, in turn, triggered multi-million-dollar bonuses for top executives.

Gorelick was embroiled in another controversy over an alleged conflict of interest when a 1995 memo she authored as deputy attorney general surfaced while she was a member of the 9/11 commission.

The memo, which became known as the "Gorelick Wall," appeared to establish barriers that barred federal anti-terrorist criminal investigators from accessing various federal records and databases that may have assisted them in their criminal investigations.

According to the Associated Press, Raines and several other Fannie Mae top executives were ordered in a civil lawsuit to pay nearly $31.4 million for manipulating Fannie Mae earnings over a period of six years to trigger their massive bonuses.

Raines was also forced in the settlement to give up Fannie Mae stock options valued at $15.6 million.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Freddie Mac had engaged in accounting fraud from 2000 to 2002, imposing a $50 million fine on the company and on four executives fines for amounts ranging from $65,000 to $250,000.

Raines currently advises Obama on housing policy.

Johnson was appointed to head Obama's vice presidential selection committee, until a controversy concerning an alleged $7 millions in questionable real estate loans he received on favorable terms from failed sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial surfaced and forced him to step down.

WND previously reported a panel chaired by Elena Kagan, dean and professor of law at Harvard Law School, speculated at the June two-day meeting of the American Constitution Society that Gorelick was a possible attorney general cabinet appointment if Obama should be elected president.

The decision by the U.S. Treasury to take over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could end up costing the U.S. taxpayer as much as $100 billion, although the extent of losses at the two giant mortgage companies remains to be determined.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Freddie and Fannie own or guarantee about $5.2 trillion worth of mortgages.

The riskiest loans held by Freddie and Fannie are known as "Alt-A" and sub-prime mortgages, worth about $780 billion, or about 15 percent of the total portfolio.

The federal government takeover of Freddie and Fannie passes to U.S. taxpayers the contingent liability for failures in the entire $5.2 trillion loan portfolio held by the two mortgage giants.

Over the past four quarters, Freddie and Fannie have suffered losses of about $14 billion, as the mortgage market has been hit by a wave of defaults and foreclosures not seen in the U.S. since the 1930s.

By Jerome R. Corsi
September 17, 2008

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=75586

Hat tip: Dick Doubek

If that were not enough, the body count (last six months): 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 deaths in Iraq.

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley ... the leadership in Illinois ... all Democrats. Thank you for a city more dangerous than a combat zone! Of course they're all blaming each other. They can't blame Republicans, because there aren't any!

The Illinois State pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, worst in the country. Cook County (Chicago) sales tax (10.25%) is highest in country. The Chicago school system is one of the worst in country. Look it up if you want to. This is the political culture that Barack Obama comes from in Illinois, and he's the ‘One’ that’s going to 'fix' Washington politics?

Proclaiming that "we will end the Bush Administration's war on science," the Democratic Platform promises to "lift the current Administration's ban on using federal funding for embryonic stem cells." The genuinely pro-life Republican Platform calls for "a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes."

The 2008 Democratic Platform stridently toadies to the feminists on all their issues. The Platform reaffirms support for the Equal Rights Amendment (which was declared dead by the Supreme Court 26 years ago), enforcement of Title IX (which has canceled hundreds of men's college athletic teams, thereby costing us dearly in the recent Olympics), passage of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which would use a UN treaty to keep abortion legal), and the Violence Against Women Act (which puts a billion taxpayer dollars a year into the coffers of the radical feminists).

The Platform reiterates the phony feminist slogan that "women still earn 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns." That figure includes women who have spent many years out of the workforce and, of those who do have jobs, about a third work only part-time.

The Platform promises to "expand" the Family and Medical Leave Act. "Expanding" means forcing employers to pay wages to employees who are on extended leave at times of their own choosing.

The Democratic Platform goes all-out in recognizing the support of their gay rights constituency. "We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections."

The Platform adds, "We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act." Overwhelmingly passed in 1996 to prevent judges from forcing other states to validate Massachusetts' same-sex marriages, DOMA was one of the most popular laws ever passed and it was even signed by Bill Clinton.

Most of the Democratic Platform consists of promising benefits that will cost already burdened taxpayers aplenty. There's no mention of how these extravagant handouts will be paid for.

For example, the Democratic Platform enthusiastically endorses the incredibly extravagant worldwide handouts in the bill sponsored by Barack Obama called "the U.S. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015." The Platform promises to "double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012."

The Democrats' mindset is that "we need stronger international institutions." So, the Platform promises to "create a $2 billion Global Education Fund ... with the goal of supporting a free, quality, basic education for every child in the world."

The Democrats want the government to take care of American kids from birth through college. "We will make quality, affordable early childhood care and education available to every American child from the day he or she is born," and "we will provide all our children a world-class education, from early childhood through college."

The Democratic Platform is full of proposals to raid the pockets of John Q. Taxpayer and reduce the American standard of living. This includes "an economy-wide cap and trade program," a plan to "reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or ten million barrels per day, by 2030," and designing legislation based on the belief that "global climate change is the planet's greatest threat."

These expensive plans will require a giant expansion of government money and government jobs. The Democrats must have had this result in mind when they promised they "will make government a more attractive place to work."

There is much more expensive foolishness in the Democratic Platform, but the plank that takes the cake is: "we oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote." That sounds like the Democrats are planning on winning the 2008 election by stuffing the ballot box.

by Phyllis Schlafly
September 12, 2008

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/sept08/08-09-12.html

This was Ronald Reagan at his best -- the same Ronald Reagan who made the address known now solely as 'The Speech,' which during the Goldwater campaign set the tone and the agenda for the rebirth of the traditional conservative movement that later sent him to the White House for eight years and revived the moribund GOP.

Last night was an extraordinary event. Widely seen beforehand as a make-or-break effort -- either an opportunity for Sarah Palin to show that she was the happy warrior that John McCain assured us she was, or a disaster that would dash McCain's presidential hopes and send her back to Alaska, sadder but wiser.

Obviously un-intimidated by either the savage onslaught to which the left-leaning media had subjected her, or the incredible challenge she faced -- and oozing with confidence -- she strode defiantly to the podium and proved she was everything and even more than John McCain told us.

Much has been made of the fact that she is a woman. What we saw last night, however, was something much more than a just a woman accomplishing something no Republican woman has ever achieved. What we saw was a red-blooded American with that rare, God-given ability to rally her dispirited fellow Republicans and take up the daunting task of leading them -- and all her fellow Americans -- on a pilgrimage to that shining city on the hill my father envisioned as our nation's real destination.

In a few words she managed to rip the mask from the faces of her Democratic rivals and reveal them for what they are -- a pair of old-fashioned liberals making promises that cannot be kept without bankrupting the nation and reducing most Americans to the status of mendicants begging for their daily bread at the feet of an all-powerful government.

Most important, by comparing her own stunning record of achievement with his, she showed Barack Obama for the sham that he is, a man without any solid accomplishments beyond conspicuous self-aggrandizement.

Like Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin is one of us. She knows how most of us live because that's the way she lives. She shares our homespun values and our beliefs, and she glories in her status as a small-town woman who put her shoulder to the wheel and made life better for her neighbors.

Her astonishing rise up from the grass-roots, her total lack of self-importance, and her ordinary American values and modest lifestyle reveal her to be the kind of hard-working, optimistic, ordinary American who made this country the greatest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth.

As hard as you might try, you won't find that kind of plain-spoken, down-to-earth, self-reliant American in the upper ranks of the liberal-infested, elitist Democratic Party, or in the Obama campaign.

Sarah Palin didn't go to Harvard, or fiddle around in urban neighborhood leftist activism while engaging in opportunism within the ranks of one of the nation's most corrupt political machines, never challenging it and going along to get along, like Barack Obama.
Instead she took on the corrupt establishment in Alaska and beat it, rising to the governorship while bringing reforms to every level of government she served in on her way up the ladder.

Welcome back, Dad, even if you're wearing a dress and bearing children this time around.

By Michael Reagan
Thursday, September 04, 2008

Hat tip: Paul Uitti

THE 'CROSS OF GOLD'

The 36-year-old Bryan was a political nobody when he started what would come to be known as the "Cross of Gold" speech. When he concluded with a dramatic warning to the eastern business establishment that it would not be allowed to "crucify" mankind "upon a cross of gold," he had changed the face of American politics.

According to historical accounts, Bryan's oratory sent his listeners into a wild frenzy. A day later, the Democratic delegates, most of whom could not have picked him out of a police lineup before the convention, nominated him for president in a shocking upset.

During the ensuing campaign, Bryan went on to travel the country giving the rest of America a taste of his talent for speechmaking, an unprecedented development in American politics. His opponent, Republican William McKinley, would, by contrast, spend the fall as every other previous presidential hopeful had done, merely receiving visitors on his front porch in Ohio.

But McKinley had what Bryan did not - an army of expert fundraisers and organizers (tactics that were not invented by Karl Rove). As a result, he won the presidency that November.

Although Bryan is chiefly remembered today for an incident at the end of his life - his pathetic turn as the prosecutor in the Scopes "monkey trial," wherein a teacher was criminally charged for instructing his students about evolutionary theory - his charismatic run for the White House ushered in the modern era of political campaigning.

There is no "wayback" machine to return us to 1896 to witness how a single speech could launch a national political career, but last week we may have seen history repeat itself.

When Sarah Palin walked onto the stage of the 2008 Republican National Convention, she was the focus of a firestorm of speculation and condescension centered around the soap opera pregnancy of her daughter.

Even those in Republican standard-bearer John McCain's corner assumed she had been tapped for the vice presidency as an act of affirmative action and was bound to be exposed as a lightweight. The analogies drawn with former vice president Dan Quayle, whose "deer in the headlights" look would burden the first Bush presidency from the get-go, were rampant even though Palin had yet to make her first national appearance.

But by the time she finished speaking last week, Palin had become her party's biggest star, eclipsing the popularity of even the honored war hero on the top of the ticket.

Granted, Palin's acceptance speech was no "Cross of Gold" in terms of eloquence. But her authentic "hockey mom" personality and tart criticisms of her opponent, as well as of the media and the Washington establishment, enthralled not only the delegates but a great many of those television viewers who had tuned in because of the hullabaloo. Republicans embraced Palin with the same sort of unexpected delight that the Democrats experienced with Bryan 112 years ago.

Yet, the din of criticism has not diminished, although her address made it quite clear that she is no "token female." Rather, it is she, not McCain, who has become the principal political attraction on the GOP ticket.

Though one expects Democrats to disagree with the substance of her remarks, the patronizing contempt with which Palin's candidacy has been regarded must go deeper than simple partisanship.

Palin's nomination has reignited the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s, as liberals view her not merely as a representative of the political party they oppose, but as an icon of a culture they regard with snobbish distaste and trepidation.

These sentiments span the liberal spectrum, and quite notably reside within a Jewish demographic. A portion of whom had heretofore been open to the McCain candidacy. Judging by the reaction she has generated, Palin is well on her way to becoming the evangelical bogeywoman for liberal Jews who view her beliefs as the antithesis to all they hold dear. For them, the Palin phenomenon is a nightmare.

Although soundly criticized for his remark, Barack Obama's slip of the tongue about small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion rang true to more than just his inner sanctum. To feminists, Sarah Palin is the embodiment of that "small-town American," and while she may be a woman, she is not "their kind" of woman. Even more to the point, the idea that a conservative woman may be the one to finally break the ultimate political glass ceiling is met by many Democratic women with particular dismay.

ANOTHER THATCHER?

Last week, columnist Barbara Amiel wrote in The Wall Street Journal to compare Palin to Margaret Thatcher, a fellow conservative who bucked feminist sentiment in her rise to power in Britain. While it is way too early for such a discussion, no one should be surprised if Palin vaults to the top of the ticket in four or eight years, leaving more seasoned male GOP bigshots in the dust. If she does - as was the case with the similarly middle-class Thatcher - liberals, and in particular, liberal women, will never forgive her for it.

Just as Palin's working mother persona has surely compelled some religious conservatives to rethink their antediluvian beliefs that a woman's place is still not in the governor's or vice president's office, so, too, should liberals examine some of their overarching generalities.

She is from an overwhelmingly Republican state where independence is paramount. She, like many others from Alaska, hunts. She's an evangelical Christian. Finally, she's a woman whose faith guided her not to abort her Down Syndrome fetus. Liberals may insist upon smearing her as a yahoo coming in to trample the rights of the few remaining freethinkers, but they'd be kidding themselves if they deny that Palin is independent, unequivocating and a political natural whose talents should not be underestimated.

On the strength of one remarkable speech, Sarah Palin has risen from obscurity to become the darling of conservatives and a political star. Her critics may hope that she never catches the brass ring just as Bryan ultimately failed to do. On the other hand, it is possible that we have just been introduced to the woman who may become our first female president.

By Jonathan Tobin
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0908/tobin091008.php3

I'd like to say that I believe every president in United States history, including the stupid one we have now, is smarter than me. My alma mater is Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth Clown College, so I'm damning with faint praise, but I'm stupider than this here stupid president.

Maybe I'm less stupider than Bush than I'm stupider than Jefferson. But I'm stupider than all the stupid in both of them put together.

The idea, especially from the Democrats that I know, is, we just get a smarter guy in the White House, and all the problems will go away. We'll have smart speeches, smart high gas prices, smart bad economy, smart war on terrorism, smart war on drugs, smart hurricanes, smart global warming, smart war in Georgia -- smart, smart, smart.

Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush -- so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me. He did his big speech for about 80,000 people; I'll do my show tonight in Vegas for about 1,000 people. He's more ambitious than I; he's going to be the next president of the United States, and I couldn't even get to week three of "Dancing with the Stars."

Obama is a great leader. He can fire people up and get them to do what he wants. He does smart speeches that promise everyone everything they need and make us feel good about our country and how much greater our government could be.

But I don't think our next president being a great leader is a good thing.

I'm worried about someone smarter than Bush taking over that tremendous power. Charisma and ambition increase my fear exponentially, and a great leader scares me to death.

We need someone stupid enough to understand that the president of the United States can't solve many problems without taking away freedom and therefore shouldn't try. The only reason John McCain scares me a little less is because I think he's a little less likely to win. They both promise a government that will watch over us, and I don't like that.

I don't want anyone as president who promises to take care of me. I may be stupid, but I want a chance to try to be a grown-up and take care of my family. Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want. I don't want anyone to feel my pain or tell me to ask what we can do for our country, or give us all money and take care of us.

Gene Healy at the Cato Institute explains that the Founding Fathers wanted the president "to faithfully execute the laws, defend the country from attack and check Congress with the veto power whenever it exceeded its constitutional bounds."

That sounds like plenty to me. You gotta be smarter than me to do all that, but you don't have to be as smart as Obama, and you sure don't have to be a great leader.

Our first seven presidents averaged a bit more than three public speeches a year, and they didn't promise jobs for everyone, day care, dental exams and free stuff.

It's really hard to find someone who trusts Americans to take care of themselves and each other without government force. It's hard to find someone running for president who would be content to be what George Washington humbly called the "chief magistrate."

I think Ron Paul and Bob Barr mean it when they say they want much smaller government. But the government is already big enough, powerful enough and bipartisan enough (and "bi" means exactly two and no more) that Ron and/or Bob won't even be in the debates. People won't even hear someone suggesting that our president should do less and individual citizens should do more for themselves.

The choice shouldn't be which lesser of two evils should have the enormous power of our modern presidents. The question should be, who would do less as president? Who would leave us alone?

If we could find a lazier, less charismatic, stupider person than me to be president, I'd be all for it. But, it's not going to be easy; stupider than me is rare breed.

So remember, the only way to waste your vote is to vote!

By Penn Jillette --
the larger, louder half of Penn & Teller -- is a magician, comedian, actor, author and producer.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/02/jillette.presidency/index.html

Hat tip: Jared D.

The old ground rule for picking a running mate was to help the ticket carry a particular state. But Bill Clinton changed the rules when he tapped Al Gore in 1992. Clinton likely would’ve carried Tennessee anyway, but the choice of Gore emphasized the most important feature of Clinton’s candidacy: He was from a new generation and represented a new outlook.

And so Sarah Palin reinforces the most important aspect of the McCain candidacy: Despite 30 years in Washington, he’s an outsider and a dedicated foe of corruption and conflict of interest in government. He’s the one who stands up against pork, earmarks, and lobbyists and backs campaign-finance reform.

Palin brings the same kind of credentials to the ticket. When she speaks tonight and emphasizes her record of reform and her commitment to bring ethical standards to Washington, she’ll strike a deeply resonant chord throughout the nation.

None of the “scandal” reflects ill on Sarah herself. They’re the kind of family issues that bedevil many American women. That the media accords such prominence to them shows how fundamentally differently we treat women and men in politics.

Should she not serve as vice president because her daughter is pregnant? Or her husband had a DWI 20 years ago? Or her sister married a state trooper, who shocked his 11-year-old son with a Taser, leading relatives and friends to think he should be fired? Or because she exercised her legal right to fire the head of the state police when he saw no reason to fire the trooper?

Palin has an extensive public record — with more executive experience than Barack Obama or Joe Biden (or McCain, for that matter). She should be judged on her record, same as a man. If she is, she’ll survive these charges in great style.

And then the backlash will set in. Tens of millions of women have had to confront life experiences akin to Palin’s.

After years of electing plasticized creations of political consultants, we have the chance to vote for a real person with real peoples’ problems. In standing by her, McCain speaks volumes about his attitude toward women and his empathy for those who face family troubles. His loyalty illustrates not just his decency, but his sensitivity and good sense.

All of which illustrates the most fundamental point of this convention: That John McCain is no George W. Bush.

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
September 3, 2008

http://www.newsmax.com/morris/sarah_palin_vp/2008/09/03/127274.html

Network heads responded by dashing off an urgent memo: During the main presidential debates this fall, ask NO questions about abortion, ethics or evil! Morality isn't the Democrats' forte.

Obama's defenders spin his abominable performance in the Saddleback forum by saying he's just too smart to give a straight answer. As Rick Warren charitably described Obama's debate performance: "He likes to nuance things ... He's a constitutional attorney." The constitutional lawyer "does nuance," as Bill Maher said on "Larry King Live," "and you saw how well that goes over with the Rick Warren people."

If that's Obama's excuse, he ought to know a few basics about the Constitution.

Did the big constitutional lawyer whose "nuance" is too sophisticated for Rick Warren's audience see the letter his wife sent out on his behalf in 2004? Michelle Obama denounced a federal law banning partial-birth abortion, writing that "this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional." Clearly!

The Supreme Court later found the law not "unconstitutional," but "constitutional" -- which I believe may have been the precise moment when Michelle Obama realized just how ashamed she had always been of her country.

But most stunningly, when Warren asked Obama if he supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Obama said he did not "because historically -- because historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution."

I don't care if you support a marriage amendment or not. That answer is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. If marriage were already defined in the Constitution, we wouldn't need an amendment, no?

Say, you know what else was "historically" not defined in the Constitution? Slavery. The words "slavery" and "slave" do not appear once in the original Constitution. The framers correctly thought it would sully the freedom-enshrining document to acknowledge the repellent practice. (Much like abortion!)

But in 1865, the 13th Amendment banned slavery throughout the land, in the first constitutional phrase ever to mention "slavery": "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

On Obama's "historical" argument, they shouldn't have passed the 13th Amendment because the Constitution "historically" had not mentioned slavery.

Do we know for a fact Barack Obama has read the Constitution? Obama's Facebook profile: "I'm pro-infanticide, I love sunsets, and I don't get the 13th Amendment!"

This is the guy who thinks he can condescend to Clarence Thomas? Asked at the Saddleback forum which Supreme Court justice Obama would not have nominated, Obama said ... the black one!

In Obama's defense, he said he thought Thomas wasn't experienced enough "at the time." So I guess Obama thinks Thomas should have to "wait his turn."

By contrast, Obama has experience pouring out of those big ears of his. Asked last year by Robin Roberts on ABC's "Good Morning America" about his lack of experience in foreign policy, Obama took umbrage.

Swelling up his puny little chest, Obama said: "Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. I majored in international relations."

He actually cited his undergraduate major as a qualification to be president.

But on Saturday night, Obama said he didn't think Clarence Thomas was a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to be put on the Supreme Court.

I bet Thomas has heard of the 13th Amendment!

by Ann Coulter
August 20, 2008

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28127

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).

Mr. Obama didn't bother to define "reasonable," and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.

Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any "windfall" tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we're missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.

Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon's profits don't seem so large. Exxon's profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).

If that's what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery -- both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau's industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.

In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year and wasn't investing enough in "renewable" energy. This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.

If Senator Obama is as exercised about "outrageous" profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett's outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin -- if that's the relevant figure -- was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors.

Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn't Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation?

The fun part about this game is anyone can play. Jim Johnson, formerly of Fannie Mae and formerly a political fixer for Mr. Obama, reaped a windfall before Fannie's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Bill Clinton took down as much as $15 million working as a rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies. This may be the very definition of "windfall."

General Electric profits by investing in the alternative energy technology that Mr. Obama says Congress should subsidize even more heavily than it already does. GE's profit margin in 2007 was 10.3%, about the same as profiteering Exxon's. Private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. We can safely assume their profits are lofty, much like those of George Soros's investment funds.

The point isn't that these folks (other than Mr. Clinton) have something to apologize for, or that these firms are somehow more "deserving" of windfall tax extortion than Big Oil.

The point is that what constitutes an abnormal profit is entirely arbitrary. It is in the eye of the political beholder, who is usually looking to soak some unpopular business. In other words, a windfall is nothing more than a profit earned by a business that some politician dislikes. And a tax on that profit is merely a form of politically motivated expropriation.

It's what politicians do in Venezuela, not in a free country.

DOW JONES REPRINTS
August 4, 2008; Page A12

Hat tip: Suzanne R.

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).

“It doesn’t seem to occur to Obama that the oil companies would pass the ”windfall profits tax“ on to consumers. What a great plan: You get relief from $4-a-gallon gas, and the only downside is $5- or $6-a-gallon gas!” —James Taranto

It took the global elite a long time to recover, but they have reemerged with a vengeance. They are now on the precipice of accomplishing what their great granddaddies failed to do: bring the "Liberty or Death" colonists under their power and control.

Sadly, we no longer have the will to resist servitude. Our pulpits are too busy preaching a prosperity gospel; newsmen are in bed with the forces they once disdained; statesmen have been replaced with opportunistic, self-serving politicians; and merchants know no god but money. Hence, it is left to a small--and I mean very small--remnant to sound the clarion call for freedom and independence. Unfortunately, few seem to be listening to their cries.

2010 seems to be a banner year for these designers of despotism. That is the target year for the implementation of the North American Community, which will commercially unite the United States with Canada and Mexico. The global elite suffered a minor setback when the U.S. Senate failed to pass the Bush/McCain/Kennedy/Graham amnesty-for-illegal-aliens bill. But if you think that John McCain is going to let that bill lie on the floor of defeat, you don't understand these people. Should McCain become President, he will do everything he can to implement some kind of amnesty law. Barack Obama will do the same. The reason? It is essential to the designers of despotism that our borders be eliminated.

Yes, I am saying it: George W. Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama are part of the global elite that seeks America's entrance into an international New World Order. In fact, neither Presidential candidate from the two major parties will offer any resistance to this obstinate and oppressive oligarchy.

Perhaps one day the American people will wake up and realize that they are being led as sheep to the slaughter. I'm just not sure that it will be soon enough, however. 2010 is just around the corner.

There seems to be only one obstacle standing in the way of the globalists: America's citizens are the most heavily armed people in the world. That fact must surely stick in the throats of the globalists like a chicken bone.

Thank God that America's founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution. Without America's deep-rooted commitment to the right of the people to keep and bear arms, we would have been sold into slavery decades ago.

Without the intellectual understanding of the principles of freedom and the moral resolve to maintain those principles, however, guns, by themselves, will only protect us for so long. In the end, our strength and protection come from God, and not too many people these days seem to be interested in His opinion.

Lady Liberty is walking very gingerly these days, and the path she treads is laden with traps and quicksand. The globalists have their handpicked puppets positioned to take up where The Three Amigos (George Bush I, Bill Clinton, and George Bush II) have left off. The pieces of the puzzle are almost all in place. 2010 just might be the year that Lady Liberty lowers her torch, folds her arms, and falls fast asleep.

For what it is worth, however, I pledge no loyalty to this emerging New World Order. Neither will I let Lady Liberty die without a fight. I will say it again: the battle today is not between conservatives and liberals or Republicans and Democrats. It is a battle between Americans and globalists.

And, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am an American!

By Chuck Baldwin
July 18, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

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Obama told Maureen Dowd early in the primaries that he is hypersensitive to any remarks about his ears. Obama is offended if you criticize his tough-as-nails lawyer wife -- although Michelle O' is eager to criticize everybody else, including the United States of America. The Obama campaign felt offended when people laughed at the phony US Presidential Seal they tried for one day and then quickly dropped. Flip-flopping? Suh, I resent that remark!

The Obama campaign just loves those Nuremberg-style rock rallies. They're in control. They love thousands of worshipful Obama groupies. They're in control. But they just hate one-on-one Townhall debates because they're not in control. That's why Obama is now going to Europe, where his rockstar brand still has the suckers screaming for joy. There are no tough questions for Obama in Europe. He'll just soak up all that adulation, like Elvis. He loves that worship, he needs it, he thrives on it. Which makes me wonder about Barack Obama, to tell the truth.

Prophets and messiahs are not to be laughed at. They are deadly serious. Laughter brings a sense of sanity and perspective to their pompous pretensions. That is why radical Muslims murder people who laugh at the Prophet Mohammed. Start laughing at this 7th century desert bandit and the whole thing starts to look like a joke. We can't have that. Kill them.

Today in Canada, if you poke fun at Muslim terrorists, like Mark Steyn constantly does, they will bring you up on Kangaroo Court charges. That'll take that smirk off your face. That novel custom is coming to a theater near you soon, as radical Muslims gain more and more influence in the United States. In Europe it's spreading like some plague of knee-jerk seriousness. You can trash Jesus all right, but you diss da Prophet, baby, and your neck ain't safe.

Don't you impugn my patriotism! Suh, you have offended mah wife! Them's fightin' words! Those are classic political lines satirized by the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn and his Barnyard Dawg, a Southern rooster meant to get people laughing at all those stuffy Kentucky Colonels and their Dixiecrat lookalikes. It's all part of a long and great tradition of political laughter in America.

Black people used that tradition to laugh at their tormentors, long before Political Correctness took over. Today, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will get you fired from your job if you giggle at the wrong thing.

The American cartoon film is one of our great contributions to the cause of human laughter.

All the great cartoons laugh at the powerful on behalf of the weak: Tweety Bird laughs at Sylvester the Cat. Bugs Bunny laughs at Elmer Fudd. Alfred E. Newman laughs at ...

Ooops! I apologize. Didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. I'll go to my sensitivity training now, shall I?

Snicker.

By James Lewis

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).

These Obama skeptics recall a similar time, 1973, when Israel also faced extermination. Prime minister Golda Meir had miscalculated Anwar Sadat's willingness to go to war and decided against a first strike against Egypt. The Arab nations attacked in October 1973, and within days Israel was facing defeat.

The Israelis went to president Richard Nixon with a request for a massive infusion of arms. The Defense and State Departments squabbled. Our European allies, who feared an oil embargo (and would refuse us bases to refuel our planes), inveighed against it, and the Soviets blustered. Many on Nixon's staff wanted to deny the request, or offer only token assistance. Don't antagonize the Arab states, they counseled.

Nixon persisted and, according to some accounts, doubled the amount of aid Israel had requested. Riding herd on the bureaucrats, Nixon repeatedly intervened to push the transports along. Informed about a dispute regarding the type of air transportation, Nixon at one point exclaimed in frustration: "Tell them to send everything that can fly." Over the course of a month US airplanes conducted 815 sorties with over 27,900 tons of materiel.

Israel was saved due to this massive infusion of military aid. Meir referred to Nixon with enormous affection for the rest of her life. Nixon, despised by many in the US, was hailed as a hero in Israel. And Nixon (who had garnered a minority of the Jewish vote in 1972) received little or no political benefit at home for his trouble, leaving office the following year.

So what does this have to do with Obama? The Obama skeptics do not for a moment believe that Obama, in the face of domestic and international pressure similar to what Nixon faced, would rise to the occasion at a critical moment in Israel's history and "tell them to send everything that can fly."

In every significant interaction in Obama's adult life with those who distain and vilify Israel - from Rashid Khalidi to Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Louis Farrakhan - Obama has demonstrated passive resignation and indifference.

He did not stand up to his friend Khalidi, the Palestinian activist, professor and former Palestinian spokesman whom Obama honored at a farewell dinner, and object to Palestinian invectives that Israel was an apartheid state. He did not recoil, until Wright insulted him at the National Press Club, from Wright when he learned that Wright considered Israel a "dirty word" and postulated that Israel had invented an "ethnic bomb."

He did not heed (or was oblivious to) public pleas from Jewish organizations to avoid the Million Man March that Farrakhan organized; nor did he years later leave his church when it honored Farrakhan. It took a hateful rant from another wide-eyed preacher against Hillary Clinton, just when Obama needed to cool intra-party animosities, to do that.

And if any further proof were needed, Obama's actions with regard to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, the measure to classify the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization, should settle the question of Obama's intestinal fortitude when it comes to Israel. An issue presented itself: a choice between, on the one hand, taking a stance against Israel's most vile enemy, Iran, and, on the other, appeasing the far Left of his own party.

Obama chose to satisfy the MoveOn.org crowd and opposed the amendment. The amendment would have been "saber rattling" and unduly provocative, Obama argued at the time. Senators Dick Durbin, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and three quarters of the U.S. Senate voted for the amendment.

Once his nomination was secured, Obama told those assembled at the AIPAC convention that he supported classification of the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization, a move he well understood was important to Israel's security and to AIPAC's members. Yet under just a smidgen of political pressure during the primary race, he had not been able to muster the will to support a modest measure which inured to Israel's benefit.

Is there anything in all this to suggest that in a potential crisis, when much of the world would be pressuring him to let Israel die, Obama would push all the naysayers aside and demand to "send them everything that can fly"? There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that he would be beyond persuasion when it came down to Israel's survival. In fact, all the available evidence indicates that the opposite is true.

That does not mean Obama will not carry the majority of the Jewish vote. Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic, and it is certainly the case that for many American Jews the secular liberal agenda takes precedence over everything else in presidential politics.

For these voters, then, "1973" is not uppermost in their minds. Their devotion to liberalism is controlling, and for their own peace of mind they are willing to accept Obama's generic expressions of warm feelings toward Israel.

Indeed the temptation to believe in Obama's bland promises of support for Israel is a tempting one for liberal Jews. If they can convince themselves that he will be "fine on Israel," no conflict arises between their liberal impulses and their concern for Israel. The urge to believe is a powerful thing, especially when the alternative is an intellectual or moral quandary.

It is also the case that some American Jews simply do not believe Israel is in peril, or that "1973" is remotely relevant. They imagine Iran is merely spouting nonsense, that Hizbullah and Hamas lack the organization or competence to threaten Israel's survival, and that Israel will muddle along indefinitely.

But some Jews are incapable of deluding themselves that Obama would be the most resolute candidate in defending Israel. In quiet moments of contemplation and in noisy debates with family members and friends, they worry about the tenuous nature of Israel's existence and the dangers which lurk from within and outside Israel's borders. These Jews cannot imagine a world without Israel and could not countenance election of a president who, in Israel's moment of peril, could well falter.

And that is why these obstinate Obama skeptics, some even after a lifetime of Democratic voting, will not pull the lever for him. For them some things rank higher than even the top items on the liberal political agenda. The risk is, in their minds, too great that when Israel needs help the most, Obama will buckle and Israel will be crushed.

Many, albeit not all and likely not even most, American Jews will therefore decline to vote for Obama. They know that if the majority of their co-religionists had their way and George McGovern, rather than Richard Nixon, had been in the White House in 1973, Israel might not have survived.

A few barbs from their fellow congregants, amazed they would not vote for a Democrat for president, are a small burden to bear as they cast their vote for the candidate who - they are certain - when the chips are down, will send everything that can fly.

July 1, 2008
Jennifer Rubin
THE JERUSALEM POST

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).

Let us also not forget those politicians in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, past and present, who, with the United Nations, have never missed an opportunity to appease a potent enemy, whether the now defunct Soviet Union, or the latest incarnation of Islam (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas), or North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and soon Mexico.

It is remarkable how quickly politicians and media wannabes publicly criticize their own government, more often than not shifting blame to the current administration for Congress’ flawed decision making. Because of the media’s ignorance or ideology (redundant), Congress gets a “free pass.” Those who criticize the loudest are often the very people who are most unwilling to abide by the decision of the majority in a democracy, or live by existing laws. You can undoubtedly name several politicians who refuse to support the duly elected leadership, or at least acquiesce for a short period of time until the next election. Instead of carping and obstructing, they should be working industriously on various issues for the benefit of United States citizens. Instead these same politicians become obsessed with accumulating personal wealth while displaying self-righteous indignation about corruption in front of a camera at every opportunity – case in point, Senator John McCain.

What would it take for Congress to rededicate their productive efforts toward working for the best interests of the nation rather than self interest? Many have suggested that only a citizen insurrection (figuratively or literally) will restore excellence, initiative and integrity to Congress. The first reform step needed would be to deny elected public servants the opportunity to profit and accumulate personal wealth from campaign contributions at the expense of taxpayers while in office. Only then will we restore the representative republic that was once the United States of America. Only then will people undertake public service not solely motivated by becoming obscenely wealthy.

Until that day in another lifetime, unprincipled political opportunists unwilling to wait for the next opportunity to vote, will continue to undermine the will of the people and subvert their own fragile democracy in the pursuit of self interest. Without any semblance of shame, many Congressmen openly engage in undermining the domestic and foreign policies of those who occupy the highest political offices. This is no less a warfare tactic than that used by proponents of Islam. A close study of both would reveal how similar they are.

Unfortunately, lumpen are most frequently the victims of propaganda and slick political deceit. Lumpen uniformly fail to recognize that the majority of politicians really don’t care about winning any war – a mindset so callous that it winds up costing the lives of young men and women. Nor do liberals care about right or wrong or what is at stake. Theirs is an ideology. The word “team” should be an antonym of the word “liberal.” There is no “I” in the word “team.” Liberals, by their intellectual wiring, want desperately to be in charge, whether in a corporation, a small company, the homeowners association, the city government, the state government or Congress. Ballots are full of liberal candidates seeking control over the lives of others – the name of the political party is irrelevant. As an aside, conservatives typically don’t seek public office.

Liberals are uniformly confident in their belief that we would all be better off if we lived our lives and raised our children according to their standards. They are only too glad to impose rules on the rest of us – standards of egalitarian equality achieved by redistributing all income, education, medicine, transportation, and housing among the bottom 50% of wage earners who pay no taxes, plus lavish corporate benefactors with earmarks in return for campaign contributions. As for liberals, it is their pathological desire to be among the elite in a class-structured society. It is all about power, stupid – their power and our servitude! In fact, if I were to ask what best describes a conservative who works like a liberal; you would have to respond, “A lazy bastard.”

Democracy is so inconvenient to liberals who are sure, in spite of history and lack of fact-based education, that they are correct on all social issues. Just look at the courts and make a note who among our citizens advocates judicial activism. Try to appreciate how many decisions have been taken away from the American people – democracy denied – regarding religion, abortion, school choice, enforcement of immigration, voting rights, marriage, welfare, freedom of speech, private property, gun ownership, pledge of allegiance, competition for jobs or a college education, equal standards of performance by everyone in the same job regardless of race or gender, etc. None of these issues are within the jurisdiction of the courts and most of these issues are not the prerogative of the federal government. Even organizations such as the Education Department and FEMA are outside the scope of federal authority under the U.S. Constitution – as is Foreign Aid and corporate welfare. Now it has come to pass that the media, politicians and federal courts are dictating military strategy, tactics and morality to the Executive Branch – again interfering in matters outside their constitutional scope of authority.

We have watched numb in horror as the media glories in the deaths of American soldiers, displaying the numbers and changing the totals the way a gas station displays changes in prices. The media does it because they know it horrifies every real American. Congressmen engage in the same behavior, trumpeting the numbers from behind a microphone, ignoring the fact that it was Congress (not the President) who sent (authorized and funded) the U.S. Armed Forces intervention first in Viet Nam and now in the Middle East. This duplicity is an intentional liberal tactic of disunion and reveals how little value politicians place on the lives of American servicemen and women – which it turns out, is about the same as the value Hezbollah (Islam) places on the lives of civilians.

All of this carnage is intentionally “in your face.” It is cynically intended to create an alternate reality, to portray to you who should have been in charge of this over-sized homeowner’s association from the outset. It is also meant to show us that we were wrong to elect who we did. While supremely confident that everything would have been much different and much better if it wasn’t for your and my ignorant mistakes voting for the wrong people, liberals in general and the Democratic Party in particular, work diligently to undermine the current administration and democracy itself. If only there was a more eloquent word than “despicable” to convey the disdain all American’s should feel toward such people – the same people who refuse to secure our nation’s borders or protect American jobs.

Add to this inauspicious group of subversives a large number of uneducated and unelected members of the main-stream-media who live in a rabbit hole of reality, each born with various and sundry body parts but few with a brain or a spine. I am speaking specifically of the visual and print news media, and the sports and entertainment industries, whose representatives speak and behave as if they would like nothing more that to engineer an outcome in which America loses this conflict with Islam. Hollywood seems incapable of understanding that if our nation loses, we all lose, and those that have the most will lose the most. And Israel will lose it all – first. Never mind their disproportionate intellectual contributions to humanity. Unless we play to lose this event in history called “The Islamic Wars” by the rules of engagement of the Democratic Party, these wing nuts will defiantly disrupt yours and my fight for liberty, and deny our very survival. If you won’t agree to do it their way, to lose, they will see to it that you cannot win – not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in our economy, schools, and courts.

Do memories of Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Durbin, Pelosi, Rangel, Reid and Murtha come to mind – and on any given day, even John McCain? What about the Dixie Chicks, Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, Danny Glover and George Soros?

In all fairness, there are a number of legitimate questions regarding policies and actions of the CIA, Defense and State Department leading up to the Islamic Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is also current disturbing evidence of their appalling political unwillingness to decisively win at any cost, and in doing so preserve the lives of young American soldiers.

Whether emanating from Congress or the Administration, hardly a day goes by that we don’t think something was a lame-brain decision. However, to disagree with the Islamic Wars or some aspect of United States foreign policy is one thing, but such disagreement should not make any American want to become a New York Times subversive or leak classified information out of the State Department or CIA. Most citizens (those that care) recognize that intentionally revealing vital intelligence, or limiting intelligence collection, will result in the deaths of even more American soldiers and civilians.

Those unfortunate human beings who proudly undermine the elected administration mistakenly claim to be Americans. They see themselves as defenders of democracy, when in fact their actions repudiate their own American birthright and disavow democracy. One thing is certain; these people represent the finest socialist traditions and constitute the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Some have the distinction of being a growing cancer in the Republican Party. Let history record that Congressmen don’t care a hoot about our sons or daughters. In fact, their unwillingness to abide by any democratic process and the will of the people for four short years arguably demonstrates they should not be entitled to call themselves Americans.

We seriously doubt that the concept of being an “American” is understood by the majority of the Democratic Party. We doubt that there is anything in life greater than “self” to a liberal – and we repeatedly hear that nothing associated with American culture or nationalism is worth defending. To their eternal shame, Democrats fail to see any difference between Islam and Christianity. Therein is the divide. We fail to see much difference today between Democrats and radical Muslims, either in ideology or tactics. Maybe there is none and the rest of us should respond accordingly.

Red State Patriot

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This trait of being more in love with consumption than production is one shared by most of my socialist colleagues in academia. They base their lives on the idea of taking "from each according to his ability" and giving "to each according to his need." The problem is that they do a better job of articulating their needs than promoting their abilities. This is, of course, because socialists are generally short on abilities. They seek socialism because they think being guaranteed an average outcome is safer than trying to beat the average in a system based on merit, which is otherwise known as ability.

Anyone watching the 2008 presidential race has doubtless seen a similar dynamic among supporters of Barack H. Obama. Most of his supporters have been talking about rights without any mention of the notion of responsibilities. Like supply and demand, and need and ability, the terms rights and responsibilities are best understood in relation to one another. For example, I have a 2nd Amendment Right to Bear Arms that the government cannot simply take away from me on a whim. But I also have a responsibility for everything that occurs between the time I discharge a bullet and the time the bullet comes to its final stopping point. But consider the following list of "rights" that supporters of Obama have recently told me that we all have: Everyone has the right to a college education. I can't imagine what it will be like as a college professor once Obama implements this one. I've been teaching to the occasional unqualified black and the occasional unqualified athlete for years. But now that everyone, including, presumably, the mentally retarded, has a right to a college degree, I might just retire and become a firearms instructor. Hopefully, Obama will not grant a Right to Firearms Education to both idiots and the insane.

(Author's Note: This one came from Obama himself). Everyone has a right to breathe clean air. This is a really bad idea for the Obama campaign. If everyone starts to enforce his right to breathe clean air in the presence of swarthy young Muslims, Obama might lose an important part of his electoral base. Everyone has a right to free health care. I recently learned this from an incoming Drexel law student appearing on The O'Reilly Factor. Bill did a great job by asking her whether this right is in the constitution or whether it just comes from the fact that she is a really nice person. She was forced to admit that it was not in the constitution. She should do really well in law school because she's a really nice person.

Everyone has a right to demand that the rich pay taxes in proportion to their ability to pay taxes. I recently learned this from an incoming Yale law student on the same segment of The Factor. Everyone agrees that the rich should pay more taxes than the poor. What is controversial is the notion that they should also pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. But that was not the issue in this segment. The issue was whether the existing gap in the proportion of taxes paid by the poor and the rich should be widened and, if so, by how much. When someone says we have a right to tax the rich "in proportion to their ability to pay" they mean "tax them until they can no longer pay" or "tax them until they are bankrupt." Many people who hold this view were not actually alive during the Carter Administration. But they have taken history classes from people who assure us that he was really not such a bad president.

Every gay man has a right to feel comfortable. I heard this one from a first-year law student at Yale. He actually informed me thrice that his right to be comfortable as a gay man trumps the First Amendment. I guess they don't teach constitutional law until the second year of the Yale law program. But the question is: How did this sissy get into Yale Law School?

After spending only a little time listening to followers of the Dali Bama I have concluded that, in Obama's America, everyone gets to declare at least one new fundamental right regardless of whether it is written into the constitution. And so, naturally, I am going to declare first that I have a right to unlimited rights. (This is sort of like making one's only wish a request for unlimited wishes). My second declaration of a new right is a little more complicated. First, I believe that I have a right to demand that you show me a copy of the U.S. Constitution every time you demand a new right. And if you cannot identify the constitutional basis of your proposed right, you forfeit that right as well as your right to vote in 2008. And, of course, I get to cast the vote you forfeited. So, those of you prone to simply announce fundamental rights without any constitutional basis should beware that this could soon deprive you of the right to vote. Until now, it's only deprived of you the right to sound intelligent.

Mike S. Adams
July 07, 2008
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MikeSAdams/2008/07/07/my_right_to_unlimited_rights

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The fact that he says he would talk to the genocidal fanatics of Iran without preconditions (along with the dictators of North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela) needn't bother them at all.

Because for them, there's only one thing that matters about Obama. He's not a Republican!

For the overwhelmingly Democrat-supporting American Jews, voting for a Republican is as unthinkable as eating a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur. Indeed, a number of them would rather eat a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur, because their conviction that religion is bunk and has nothing to do with being Jewish comes second only to their conviction that Republicans are the acme of evil.

That is because they think that to be Jewish is to be liberal in outlook. Therefore to be a Jew is to be a Democrat. End of story. Unlike their British counterparts, American Jews haven't become more conservative as their prosperity has increased over the generations. (This is not true of the growing minority of mainly younger American Jews, who are markedly more Orthodox and thus, since they are rather more in tune with authentic Jewish ethics such as truth, justice and the difference between right and wrong, are indeed voting Republican; but let that pass.)

Being Jewish, think liberal American Jews, means showing that you are not prejudiced against minorities. That means adopting the core presumption of 'victim culture' that minorities are never at fault. That means in turn that if an ethnic or religious minority is prejudiced against you, you can't criticize it because to do so means you are prejudiced.

True, the fact that Obama belongs to a kooky church makes them uneasy. The fact that he associates with various mafia types and nut-jobs makes them twitch a bit. The fact that he would go cap in hand to Iran and Syria makes at least some of them suck their teeth.

But they know that he must be their friend because he is a Democrat and he is black. They know that he cannot be their enemy because they know that President Bush is their enemy.

The fact that Bush is arguably the greatest friend the Jewish people has ever had in the White House cannot possibly be true because Bush is a Republican and therefore can do no right.

Conversely, Obama can do no wrong. So American Jews ignore the fact that all Obama's foreign-policy advisers are veteran Israel-haters. They ignore his long-standing friendship with Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi.

Khalidi has written that Israel has carried out the 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians; that Israel should be replaced by a bi-national, cantonal system for Jews and Arabs; and that suicide bombings are a response to 'Israeli aggression'. Obama has said he merely had 'conversations' with Khalidi. But reports say the Khalidi and Obama families are long-standing friends. In 2000, Khalidi raised funds for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. And according to the Los Angeles Times, Obama said his talks with the Khalidis served as 'consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table', but around 'this entire world'.

No matter. All of this is simply erased from the gaze of America's Jews in their own collective blind spot. As a result, as pro-Palestinian blogger Ali Abunimah let slip at The Electronic Intifada, Obama is playing them for suckers. Abunimah wrote that during his campaign for the US Senate, Obama told him: ''Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more upfront.'

He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, 'Keep up the good work!''

So if, as is expected, Obama wins the Democratic presidential nomination, American Jews will vote for him and maintain their purity of soul.

Cluck cluck!

By Melanie Phillips
5/30/200830

Hat tip: Len Salonsky

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See if you can spot the neoconservative .....

Democrats want to implement windfall profit taxes, which ultimately will be passed on to the consumer at the gas pump and raise prices ever higher – significantly higher. The outcome is a foregone conclusion, i.e., politicians cynically win, having found a way to take even more of your money, and citizens lose. Republicans, i.e., neoconservatives, knowing that raising taxes would be a national economic disaster, want instead to punish the speculators who they choose to scapegoat for the rising prices. The similarity between the Democrats and Republicans (neither of whom are conservatives) is their propensity for shifting the blame for their own congressional malfeasance to anyone but themselves, refusing defiantly to take responsibility for the on-going energy debacle. ‘Shifting the blame’ is the single most common character trait of a liberal – every liberal. They, being the typical congressmen they are, would sacrifice their relatives before accepting accountability, even their grandmother.

The energy crisis we face as a nation due to lack of oil, nuclear, coal, refineries, and absence of exploration will never be their fault, just as the loss of jobs and outsourcing of entire industries is not their fault, just as the drunken overspending with earmarks and entitlements is not their fault, just as the abysmal failure of our nation’s public schools is not their fault, nor the open borders, nor the failing Social Security and Medicare systems.

Here is everything you need to know in two articles. The first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in February, 1989 and the second in Investor’s Business Daily on June 23, 2008

Red State Patriot
----------------

The Speculator as Hero
Wall Street Journal
February 10, 1989

This is not a good time for speculators. Last month the FBI and the Chicago U.S. Attorney's office accused more than 100 traders on the Chicago commodities exchanges of systematically cheating investors and the government out of millions of dollars. Lawyers in Chicago have been besieged by floor traders wishing to plead guilty to the charges.

Coming on the heels of the October 1987 stock market crash, popularly thought to be the fault of program traders and portfolio insurers, and amid the popular furor over insider trading, the speculator's stock may be at an all-time low. Even fictional speculators are in trouble. In Tom Wolfe's best seller "Bonfire of the Vanities," bond trader Sherman McCoy is ridiculed by his wife, and is unable to explain what he does for a living to his young daughter. In real life, noted currency trader Andy Krieger, in a widely reported incident in 1987, quit his job after he found himself unable to supply a satisfactory answer to his eight-year-old son's question about what good his job did.

Like Sherman McCoy and Andy Krieger, I am a speculator. I own seats on the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. But when my daughters ask me if my job is as important as the butcher's, the doctor's or the scientist's, I answer that the speculator is a hero, and has been throughout history.

Some speculators are discoverers like Christopher Columbus, creators like Henry Ford, or inventors like Thomas Edison. Their job is easy to place on a high plane. My role in the grander order is indirect, relatively invisible and unplanned. The only discoveries I make are the routes that prices will travel. Like hundreds of thousands of other traders, I try to predict the prices of common goods a day or two or a few months in the future. If I think the price of an item will go up, I buy today and sell later. If I think the price is going down, I'll sell at today's higher price. The miracle is that in taking care of ourselves, we speculators somehow ensure that producers all over the world will provide the right quantity and quality of goods at the proper time, without undue waste, and that this meshes with what people want and the money they have available.

Politicians eager to "do something" about high prices often make laws to punish the speculator. A representative incident occurred during the reign of Emperor Diocletian in Rome in A.D. 300. Speculators were withholding scarce provisions from the hordes, hoping to unload when the demand was even more intense. To remedy this, Diocletian set the highest price for beef, grains, clothing and several hundred other items. Anyone who sold at a higher price would be put to death.

The result? As reported by Lactantius in A.D. 314: "Much blood was shed upon slight and trifling accounts. The people brought no more provisions to the markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them, and this increased the dearth so much that at last after many had died by it, the law itself was laid aside."

Another representative incident occurred during the siege of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1585. Antwerp was then the leading commercial town of Europe. The Spanish decided to blockade the port to force surrender when supplies gave out. Knowing this, Antwerp farmers and bakers produced large amounts of bread. Privateers ran the blockade at great peril to provide needed supplies. Prices began to rise. Speculators, guessing that bread was going to be scarce, contributed to further price rises through shrewd purchases.

But Antwerp politicians thought it wrong for greedy speculators to profit from war. The politicians fixed a very low maximum price to everything that could be eaten, and prescribed severe penalties for violators. The consequence was inevitable. Privateers stopped running the blockades and the supply of grain dried up. Consumers had no incentive to economize. The citizens ran out of all their provisions after six months of the siege and the Antwerpers starved. They surrendered and were quickly annexed.
Let's consider some of the principles that explain the causes of shortages and surpluses and the role of speculators.

When a harvest is too small to satisfy consumption at its normal rate, speculators come in, hoping to profit from the scarcity by buying. Their purchases raise the price, thereby checking consumption so that the smaller supply will last longer. Producers encouraged by the high price further lessen the shortage by growing or importing to reduce the shortage. On the other side, when the price is higher than the speculators think the facts warrant, they sell. This reduces prices, encouraging consumption and exports and helping to reduce the surplus.

Of course, speculators aren't always correct. When they are wrong, their actions contribute to shortages or gluts. Manias such as the Tulipmania, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Bubble, gold panics, stock market crashes, and violent swings in the value of the dollar are frequently cited as examples of occasions when speculators contributed to instability and imbalance. But who could do the job better?

Bureaucrats have little incentive to improve, invest or innovate. When speculators are wrong, however, they are punished severely for their mistakes by losses of their own money. If left unchecked, the tendencies of our modern kings (read: government – emphasis added) to interfere with the natural working of the marketplace would lead to destruction. But speculators, searching for profit, send signals to producers and consumers as to the forces of destruction and good.

Traders sent such a signal on October 19, 1987, when they dropped the wealth of the non-Japanese-speaking world by 10% in one day when a modern-day king tried to interfere with the natural order by driving the dollar down one last 5% or so.

Perhaps the most positive impact of our current-day speculators is to check at inception governmental activities that would have an inflationary impact. Governments are prone to spend more money on their activities than they take in through taxes. The consequence often has been substantial inflation, followed by war, revolution and destruction of civilization. Nowadays, however, bond traders are so alert to the long-term consequences of such activities that they immediately send debt yields up significantly at the first sign of inflation.

The increased yields have such a negative and immediate impact on government revenue, business activity, and consumer spending that governments have all but given up trying to sneak increased spending past the market. As a result, the rate of inflation slowed markedly throughout the Western world during the 1980s. At the end of last year the long-term yield on a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond was 8.8% vs. 14.4% on the day after President Reagan was first elected. The great era of prosperity that has accompanied this reduced inflation adds a feather to the speculator's cap.

Granted, speculators are not angels; many are motivated by gambling and greed, and when given the chance will take advantage of the public as much as the next person.
What is the net effect of such evilness? Consider the purchase of one Treasury bond futures contract, the most actively traded futures contract. This is where the U.S. Attorney apparently focused his investigation after the undercover agents suffered huge losses for the government's account in stock market futures during the October 1987 crash.

To buy the equivalent of $100,000 in bonds, an average customer might pay $17.50 in commission (half of a typical $35 commission for one contract's purchase and sale) and $31.25 (one "tick"), the usual spread between the bid price and the ask price. This adds up to a $48.75 transaction cost for each $100,000 purchase.

Compare this with the "gentlemanly" New York Stock Exchange, where market-making speculators have a monopoly on trading in individual stocks. To purchase $100,000 of IBM stock (about 800 shares), the most actively traded Big Board issue, an average customer might pay 40 cents a share in commission costs and a 25-cent-a-share bid-ask spread. This $520 transaction cost is more than 10 times the cost to trade the same dollar amount of futures contracts.

Much of the suspected wrongdoing in Chicago apparently involved unscrupulous futures brokers who misreported customer transactions or gave customers unfavorable prices. But even if a bond-futures broker, for example, stole an additional $31.25 tick on every customer order, the liquidity of the market would still be far greater than that of the less-competitive Big Board. The customer would still be paying only one-sixth of the cost of the same trade in IBM stock.

This example serves not to exonerate crooked futures brokers, but to demonstrate the efficiency of a competitive market. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the speculator gets the job done, governments have attempted to bypass speculators in the name of a higher good.

The intellectual raises his eyebrows at the economic and historical analysis and contemptuously says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." To this I respond that without us, there would be no bread.

I am proud to be a speculator. I am proud that my humble attempts to predict Tuesday's prices on Monday are an indispensable component of our society. By buying low and selling high, I create harmony and freedom.

Mr. Niederhoffer is chairman of NCZ Commodities. This article appeared in the February 10, 1989, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones and Co., Inc., 1989.

---------------

Just Speculating
Investor's Business Daily
June 23, 2008

Energy: Democrats, in their never-ending search for scapegoats, have had a go at oil company CEOs, industry profits and now oil "speculators." They've looked everywhere but where they should — in the mirror.

The congressional hearings that kicked off Monday to look into speculative behavior in the markets produced all the usual finger-pointing about the doubling in oil prices over the past year to nearly $137 a barrel.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, seeking to catch a political wave he can ride all the way to the presidency, has announced he'll "crack down" on oil speculation by imposing new limits and regulations on oil traders in the futures markets.

But as emotionally satisfying as going after speculators sounds, this will only make our current oil problem much worse.

Its true there's speculation in the oil market. But then again, there's speculation in virtually every exchange-traded good — from oil and gold to corn and pork bellies. This isn't just acceptable, it's healthy.

Speculators aren't evil. They ensure a liquid market for the commodities we need most. They make money by buying low, when the product is in low demand, and selling high, when demand has grown.

It has been pretty easy for them to make money recently, because speculation in oil has become a one-way bet.

Global oil demand has been growing by about a million barrels a day each year — thanks to surging use in fast-growing China, India, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. Supply hasn't kept pace. In fact, it's falling at key suppliers including Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria and Russia. So the price rises.

The logical answer to any question about speculation in a market is: What are you doing to boost supply? In the case of Congress and the solution offered by Obama, the answer is nothing.

They would punish people who do economically useful work, but wouldn't add a drop to our oil supply. If they really wanted to break the back of speculation, they should signal that they intend to use every means at their disposal to bring energy markets back in line.

High prices already have curbed demand here in the U.S., the latest data show. What's left is to drill for the literally hundreds of billions of barrels of oil we have here in this country locked up offshore, in Alaska and in vast shale-oil reserves.

Instead, the Democrat-led Congress has pursued foolish energy policies that lead inevitably to higher prices, less supply and declining standards of living for all Americans.

As for speculation, one tell-tale sign of market manipulation is a buildup of inventories kept off the market to keep prices high. That is, as the price runs up, the speculators pull supply off the market.

Is that happening? No. Oil inventories, in the most recent data, are down year over year. No one's hoarding oil.

Claims of surging speculation likewise fall apart on closer examination. It's true that speculative positions in oil have jumped from 37% of all oil traded in 2000 to 70% now. But much of that trading involves commercial hedging and risk-management — not speculation by people out to make a killing.

As the Commodity Futures Trading Commission notes: "There are almost as many short speculative positions as there are long positions." In other words, speculators are betting as much that prices will drop as they will rise.

In short, there's no real evidence that speculators are driving energy prices up. But there's plenty of evidence that Congress' refusal to permit drilling is a big factor keeping supplies down.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
June 23, 2008

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The image became increasingly suspect with Israel Insider's revelation that variations of the certificate image were posted on the Photobucket image aggregation website -- including one listing the location of Obama's birth as Antarctica, one with the certificate supposedly issued by the government of North Korea, and another including a purported photo of baby Barack -- one of which has a "photo taken" time-stamp just two minutes before the article and accompanying image was posted on the left-wing Daily Kos blog.

That strongly suggests that Daily Kos obtained the image from Photobucket, not the State of Hawaii, the Obama family, or the Obama campaign. Photobucket is not generally known as a credible supplier of official vital records for any of the fifty states, and the liberties that other Photoshoppers took with the certificates confirms this.

Some of these oddities surfaced in Israel Insider's previous article on the subject, but new comparative documentary evidence presented below, and official verification obtained by Israel Insider from a senior Hawaiian official, provides the strongest confirmation yet.

An authentic Hawaiian birth certificate for another Hawaiian individual has since surfaced which, using the same official form as the presumptive Obama certificate, includes an embossed official seal and an authoritative signature, coming through from the back. Obama's alleged certificate lacks those features, and the certificate number referencing the birth year has been blacked out, making it untraceable.

Janice Okubo, Director of Communications of the State of Hawaii Department of Health, told Israel Insider: "At this time there are no circumstances in which the State of Hawaii Department of Health would issue a birth certification or certification of live birth only electronically." And, she added, "In the State of Hawaii all certified copies of certificates of live birth have the embossed seal and registrar signature on the back of the document."

Compare the top image presented by his campaign as evidence of Obama's 1961 birth and the other certifying the birth of one Patricia Decosta.

So if he were registered as being born in Hawaii, Barack Obama -- because only he or another member of his immediate family could by law request a "Certification of Live Birth" -- must have a certified paper copy, with embossed stamp and seal, or he could request one. But what his campaign has put forward as genuine, according to the senior spokesman in the relevant department of the State of Hawaii, is not in fact a certified copy. It is not valid.

Whereas the uncertified Obama document provides the date "filed by registrar", the certified DeCosta document provides the date "accepted by the registrar." The difference between filing an application for a Certification of Live Birth and having it accepted may be key here.

The Obama campaign, however, continues to flaunt the unstamped, unsealed, uncertified document -- notably in very low resolution -- on its "Fight the Smears" website, with campaign officials vowing that it's authentic, sending the image around as "proof" to reporters, and inviting supporters to refer to it as they battle against supposed distortions and calumnies against their candidate. However, the campaign refuses to produce an authentic original birth certificate from the year of Obama's birth, or even a paper version with seal and signature of the "Certification of Live Birth." Nor has it even published an electronic copy with the requisite embossed seal and signature.

The failure of the Obama campaign to do so, and its willingness instead to put up an invalid, uncertified image -- what now appears to be a crude forgery -- raises the dramatic question of why the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate might have to hide.

Until now, it has been thought that there might be some embarrassing information on the real certificate: was the candidate's name something other than Barack Hussein Obama II, as it is claimed? Was no father listed because of the uncertainty over Obama's paternity? Was his father's race listed as Arab, or Muslim, rather than African? These revelations might be embarrassing, and further undermine his credibility, but he could disavow and downplay their significance. Would revealing such embarrassment outweigh the far greater risks involved in perpetuating a palpable forgery, or passing off an uncertified official document as being certified?

There is one possibility, however, which alone might justify the risk that Obama and his campaign seems to be taking in putting forward the uncertified document image: Obama was not in fact born in Hawaii and may not be an American citizen at all, or at least not a "natural born citizen" as the Constitution defines the requirement for the nation's chief executive. Real original birth certificates, circa 1961, have all kinds of verifiable information that would confirm Obama's origins, or throw them into doubt should they be lacking.

Research has since uncovered the law, in force at the time of Obama's birth, that were he to have been born in another country, his young American mother's youth extended time abroad would not suffice to make him a "natural born citizen." Even if he were naturalized later -- and there is no evidence that he was -- he would not be eligible to run for the office of president and -- if forgery or misrepresentation were involved -- he and his staffers might find themselves facing stiff federal and state charges.

But if, at this late date, Obama has no proof of being a US citizen by law, natural born or otherwise, then he or his advisers may be tempted to try to "tough out" the allegations about his "birth certificate" or the lack thereof. He and his campaign have gotten through other embarrassments: maybe this one will go away, too.

Because the consequences were he to admit, or should it come out, that he was not born in Hawaii would be so grave as to make it tempting to take the gamble and hope that no one dares call his most audacious bluff by demanding proof. Talk about the audacity of hope.

But now the State of Hawaii has dashed those hopes by clarifying that a certified birth certificate must have an embossed seal and signature, features his claimed birth certificate image lack.

The longer Obama waits, the graver grow the consequences of waiting.

There is one simple way for the candidate to clear up the issue once and for all: produce for public inspection and objective analysis the paper copy of his original Hawaiian birth certificate -- if one exists. If he's lost the original, he can request a certified copy. Ordinary citizens are required to produce one to get a passport or a driver's license. Surely it's not too much to ask from a man who aspires to hold the highest office in the land.

The issue is not whether Obama is black or white, Christian or Muslim. It is whether he was born in the USA and thus a citizen eligible according to the Constitution to run for President.

If proof of citizenship does not exist, then surely it would be wiser to admit it now.

Because if Barack Hussein Obama II does not produce definitive proof of his "natural born" American citizenship with original, verifiable documents, he will be setting the stage for a very public battle over his personal credibility, the basic legitimacy of his candidacy, and its possible criminality.

UPDATE 6/26:
Janice Okubo, in response to an Israeli Insider question on Tuesday, would not confirm nor deny whether she had told a St. Petersburg Times reporter whether she had said the birth certificate was "real", citing the statutory stipulation that "Hawaii state law (HRS §338-18) prevents disclosure of information contained in vital statistics records except to those people who have a direct and tangible interest in the record as defined by statute." This would, however, seem to negate the propriety of any disclosure by her of confidential information.

Jim Geraghty of The National Review Online, following up on this Israel Insider report, said he had contacted Okubo:

"I spoke to Ms. Okubo late Wednesday afternoon, and she said she had seen the version of Obama's certificate of live birth posted on the sites. While her office cannot verify the information on a form without the permission of the certificate holder (Obama), she said "the form is exactly the same" and it has 'all the components of a birth certificate' record issued by the state. In other words, she sees no reason to think the version posted on Obama's web site and Daily Kos is not genuine."

"The 'embossed seal' in question is, she said, probably on the back of the document provided to Daily Kos, but not visible (as in another certificate posted on Israel Insider for contrast). She thinks the difference in visibility can be attributed to the pressure used when applying the seal."

Geraghty's interpretation of Okubo's comments is inexact and tendentious. First, her observation that "the form is the same" is not contested, here or elsewhere. No one is doubting that the form that appears on the various websites (including this one) is a replica of that used for valid certificates. Therefore Geraght's interpretation that follows "In other words" is clearly his own conclusion, not hers.

Indeed, Okubo confirms to Geraghty that the image is lacking the "embossed seal" (and the official signature) that are required for the certificate to be valid. While "she thinks" that the difference in visibility might be attributed to varying "pressure," she admits that she does not know and has not seen the original.

Contrasting the purported Obama image with the DeCosta sample, it is hard to imagine the embossed seal and signature being of such light pressure that they would become completely invisible. An inked date of June 6, 2007, in reverse, does come through. But in any event, Okubo's confirmation that the premsumptive birth certificate is lacking the required stamps makes it all the more imperative for Obama to release the original paper certification, the only valid kind, and not an easy-to-photoshop electronic facsimile thereof. It should not be hard to produce, since Hawaii provides for family members to request them.

Even though Geraghy notes that Obama "initially refused to provide his birth certificate," he has suggested that it is "rather unlikely" that Obama was born in Kenya, since it would require that the candidate and his family do a lot of lying. In fact, there were reports of Kenyati relatives claiming he was born there, and there is the mysterious disappearance of his grandmother, who may indeed know something about this subject.

After all, being born in Hawaii is part of the "family legend" and it would be unreasonable to expect this to vary from interview to interview, especially when a non-Hawaiian birth would invalidate Obama's run for the presidency.

It is indeed hard to believe that Obama could have gone through his life without having to prove that he was an American citizen. But the credulity with which the mainstream media has automatically accepted as valid the image that appears on the radical left Daily Kos blog and on the Obama campaign's polemical "Fight the Smears" website makes it clear that many have been unwilling, now and in the past, to demand proof of an authentic document. They prefer to accept on faith that the candidate or his campaign would not lie about such a thing, assuming he has nothing to hide and no motive to lie.

But until the certified paper birth document is produced -- either by media pressure or a legal challenge in any state -- the fact remains that Obama has not proven that he is a "natural born citizen" eligible to be President according to the Constitution.

By Reuven Koret June 24, 2008
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12939.htm

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).

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have stro ng families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope." Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a ra zor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't."

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

A good test case for this theory is Katrina. Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and assorted white apologists continue to express anger and outrage over the federal response to the Katrina disaster. But where were the Vietnamese "leaders" expressing their "anger?" The Vietnamese comprise a substantial part of the New Orleans population, and yet are absent was any report claiming that the Vietnamese were "owed" anything. This is not to say that the federal response was an adequate one, but we need to take this as a sign that maybe the problem has very little to do with racism and a lot to with a mindset.

The mindset that one is "owed" something in life has not only affected black mobility in business but black mobility in education as well. Remember Ward Churchill? About fifteen years ago he was my boss. After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend aff