The Fred Martinez Report

How to Pray

2009-01-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

How to Pray

"Yet everything depends on this ability to stand still and to be present with full inner awareness."

"The basic meaning of the word 'collected' is to be gathered together, united.
A glance at our life will show how much we lack this aptitude. We should have a fixed centre which, like the hub of a wheel, governs our movements and from which all our actions go out and to which they return; a standard, also, or a code by which we distinguish the important from the unimportant, the end from the means and which puts actions and experiences into their proper order; something stable, unaffected by change and yet capable of development, which makes it clear to us who we are and how matters stand with us. We lack this; we, the men of today, lack it more than did those who lived in earlier ages.

"This becomes evident in our attempts to pray. Spiritual teachers speak of 'distraction' as that state in which man lacks poise and unity, that state in which thoughts flit from object to object, in which feelings are vague and unfocused and the will ineffective. Man in this state is not really a person who speaks or who can be spoken to, but merely an unco-ordinated bundle of thoughts, feelings and sensations.

"Collectedness means that he who prays gathers himself together, directs his attention on to what he is doing, draws in all thought—a painstaking task—so as to dedicate himself to prayer as a unified whole. This is the state in which he may, when the call comes to him, answer in the words of Moses, 'Here am I (Exod. 3:4).[page 19]

"In it awakens not only the religious consciousness but a new and higher consciousness, which we might call the spiritual heart of the child of God.

"On this holy ground the reality of God becomes manifest. It may happen that man experiences it suddenly and is overcome by its grandeur and flooded by its proximity. If this happens, he knows that he is receiving the great and intimate mystery of prayer. He must receive it with reverence and guard it well. But such an event is rare indeed and more often than not nothing happens. The God of whom the worshipper had said, 'He is here,' remains silent and hidden. Then the prayer, supported by faith alone, must go out into this silent darkness and maintain itself there.

"In collectedness the worshipper says, 'God is here and here also am I.'" [Page 23]

[Romano Guardini, Prayer in Practice, Page 18, 23]

Stay in Peace in God's Presence

2008-11-05T06:48:00.001-08:00

Stay in Peace in God's Presence
It is now the hour to stay in peace in God's presence.

We must pray and do penance (big or little). The Father, Son and Holy Spirit is in control.

I'll most likely be closing all my blogs except the Catholic Monitor. God is our refuge and we all must be and get closer to Him in this hour.

Fred

O'Brien: Obama "[U]shering in the Time of Great Trial for the Church"

2008-11-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

-I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution, amidst the numerous other tribulations prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and letters of St Paul, St. John, and St. Peter.

StudiObrien newsletter, The U.S. ElectionSaturday, November 1, 2008 1:20 PM
From: "studiObrien" Add sender to Contacts To: undisclosed-recipients

All Saints Day, 1 November 2008

Dear Friends,

From just north of the border, we Canadians, like other people throughout the world, are observing and praying for the coming federal election in the United States of America. I would prefer to keep private my counsel about political choices, because it is not my country. However, I am receiving letters from American subscribers and visitors to my studio website asking me some rather surprising questions about Barack Obama, related to one of my novels.

During the past year I have read a number of his pronouncements, and saw the smoke and mirrors beneath the rhetoric, but couldn't understand why everyone south of the border (the other south of the border, the 49th parallel) was getting so excited about him, both pro and con. Then a few weeks ago a German friend called me immediately after Obama's speech in Berlin, to say that the presidential candidate had mesmerized the crowds, and that a commentator on German television had said: "We have just heard the next President of the United States...and the future President of the World." My friend felt that Obama bore an uncanny resemblance to the fictional character of the President in my novel Father Elijah. I have received several other letters saying the same thing and asking what I thought about it.

From my own reading of Obama's declarations and stated positions, I knew he was an ultra-liberal, a social revolutionary with visionary pretensions. But the Antichrist? No, not possible, I thought. I felt that he was too shallow a man to be the Son of Perdition, the Man of Sin, the Beast of the Book of Revelation. And I still think so. Obama is a crowd-pleaser with just the right ethos of idealistic crusader. That the crusade and the banners under which it marches are evil does not automatically prove that he is the Antichrist.

But now that I have seen the video of the Berlin speech I think there is more here than meets the eye. He is indeed a powerful manipulator of crowds, even as he appears ever so humble and wholesomely charming. I doubt that he is the long-prophesied ruler of the world, but I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution, amidst the numerous other tribulations prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and letters of St Paul, St. John, and St. Peter.

Of course the mystique that has grown up around him is endlessly reinforced by the liberal media, which presents him to us as a high-minded humanist, a kind of secular messiah (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675). Yet when all the rhetoric is boiled down to its substance, the man is advocating unlimited state-sanctioned murder, and compounds it by indulging in habitual falsehood. He is well accustomed to playing loose with the truth whenever it is expedient for him to do so; or else he is the victim of the largest memory lapses in recorded history; or perhaps he is just not careful about how he expresses things—a blurring or selectivity regarding facts for the purpose of aggrandizing his public image. There is a controversy currently raging in the (admittedly unreliable) forum of the internet, prompted by an African-American talk show host in Los Angeles who listed 39 significant details that Barack Obama claimed were facts about himself, but on fu! rther investigation were proved to be simply untrue. There has been some wild-fire debunking of the debunking, and then more counter-debunking, but it remains obvious that forthrightness and clarity are not major concerns in the Obama camp.

What are we to make of a man who has appeared out of semi-obscurity and become, nearly overnight, so very much an idol of the popular imagination? That he intends to become the most effective advocate of murder of the unborn ever seen in America should give us pause. Murder and lies are as old as the lands east of Eden, of course, but when they are charmingly packaged, proposed as reasonable and just policies (with a smile, a resonant voice, and an appealing flash of the eyes), one begins to wonder just what is afoot in the modern age. It brings to mind a passage from the first Act of Shakespeare's Hamlet:

“That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain...”

The line is from a scene where prince Hamlet has just encountered the ghost of his father, who informs his son that he was poisoned by his own brother Claudius (the "smiling, damned villain"), who after murdering him, seized the king's crown and his queen.

Barack Obama is an image-maker, creating his own myth as he goes along. This would be a sad defect in any human being, but it takes on ominous proportions in a person who may become, after November 4th, one of the most powerful figures in the world. How is it possible that such a tragic turn of events may come about, if indeed a majority of Americans choose to believe the smile and the myth? Why is it that so many people have come to believe that a mirage is reality, even destiny? Do pro-Obama voters hanker for a world figure who would heal old divisions between races and religions, thus heralding a new age for mankind? During this time of near intolerable tensions, does he appear to be the one who can reconcile Islam and Christianity, Africa and America, occident and orient, black and white, rich and poor? Do they see his racial origins as a symbolic victory over the history of racial oppression? Do they see in him the good-hearted "under-dog", the gutsy street fi! ghter who agitates for the rights of the "little guy," whose meteoric rise to a position of maximum influence represents themselves enthroned at last in the high seat of power? Is this why they ignore his every grave fault and hungrily consume his vague idealist platitudes as if these were a kind of new gospel for the third millennium? Our hero. Our visionary. Our Great Friend and spokesman in the forum of the world?

Clearly, contemporary man needs heroes. But why not choose a genuine one, why not look a little deeper and work a little harder to find a man of courage and principle, and if it helps in the historical healing process, why not a very different kind of black man, say a person like Alan Keyes, a scholar, former ambassador, experienced in different levels of government, and (it might be added) an African-American married to a woman from India. Moreover, he is a devout Catholic who believes in moral absolutes and has amply proved that he will stand firm to defend them regardless of the cost to his own career. He knows that kings and presidents cannot usurp the natural law, the moral order of the universe, without bringing down judgment upon their nations. But it need not be Keyes. It might be any number of other men and women of clear thought and clear principle. Surely there are "Ten Just Men" still out there somewhere in America. So why Obama? And why does he ! rise and rise as his mouth smiles and smiles, exuding sincerity as he speaks lies and death?

And why, most horribly, most shamefully, are so many Christians of malformed or unformed conscience supporting him? Is it because they have never been clearly instructed in the truth, never understood the foundation upon which the moral cosmos is built? Is morality for them merely another system of abstract "values" in a crowded playing field of such systems, from which one may pick and choose? In the case of Catholics, for example, have they been blinded by a diet of theological nuances and deadly little loopholes offered to them by the committees of national episcopal conferences — committees that have absolutely no authority over Catholics, yet which are widely revered as a kind of alternative Magisterium? Have they been deadened by a habitual dismissing or dissembling of the solid teaching given to them by the universal Church under Peter? Have they grown accustomed to listening to opinion shapers who tell them that certain excellent apostolic Bishops in ! America who teach the truth without compromise are merely hidebound reactionaries, moralistic extremists, contemporary manifestations of those old boogymen who still haunt the American psyche — the Chillingworths and Dimmesdales and the judges in The Scarlet Letter? And so it goes, this over-reaction to Puritanism played out over centuries, an over-reaction that breeds tragedies a thousand times worse than Salem’s. Lies compounding on lies, and it all floats on an ocean of spilled innocent blood. And who can gaze at that ocean (or be splashed by it) without coming to a radical choice: One either turns away into a deeper state of denial, or one turns heart and mind toward the splendor of Truth, and changes one's life accordingly.

Is this why many of our Catholic people have become impulse-driven impressionists? Of course, the blindness is not due to the failure of pastors alone. The Ministry of Disinformation (by which I mean most modern media) has played a major role. There is also the erosion of truth in the education systems, combined with the gradual confusion and weakening of conscience through our addiction to the "soma" drugs supplied by the entertainment industry. Other factors may be the war in Iraq, or Republican economics, or the Bush administration, or the structure of Capitalism itself, or any number of prudential questions in the sociopolitical order, all of which are presently tangled nests of moral dilemma. But why do they not see that these questions are secondary to the fundamental issue of life itself? Why would they replace one reigning oligarchy with another kind of oligarchy — moreover, one that would kill vast numbers of its own citizens?

"I call on heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live...." (Deuteronomy 30:19)

May God bless and guide you,
in Jesus our Saviour,

with prayers and fasting,

Michael O'Brien

PS: For those interested in a concise examination of the moral parameters of voting in the forthcoming election, I urge you to read an excellent article by Dr. Mark Miravalle, professor of Theology at Franciscan University, Steubenville, available at the following link:

http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1531

How McCain Can Pull a Truman Win with Sarah's Help

2008-11-01T00:06:00.001-07:00

Palin Press Conference Exposing Obama’s Corruption

The media is filtering McCain's Obama message. The only media event they will allow to get through the filter is a Palin press conference.

They think she is dumb and they can destroy her.

She showed in the Biden debate that she is more than a match for them if McCain lets her be herself.

McCain's redistrubutionist Obama taxing taxpayers theme is starting to get through, but he needs a jump start to get it through with only four days left.

Sarah Palin’s huge viewer numbers at the convention, debate and the mock press conference on Saturday Night Live proves a live press conference is a chance to turn the election around with an unfiltered message.

Sarah exposes Obama’s corruption especially on taxes. (Below are a few short examples under Dick Morris' How McCain Can Pull a Truman)

Fred

http://www.newsmax.com/morris/mccain_truman_morris/2008/10/26/144298.html

How McCain Can Pull a Truman

Sunday, October 26, 2008 8:11 PM

By: Dick Morris Article Font Size

The most reliable surveys put McCain five to seven points behind Obama as we enter the last week of this interminable campaign. But in a race that will be famous for years afterwards for its volatility, it is not too late for the Republican to pull out a victory.

For Harry Truman in 1948, the presidential race shifted dramatically in the final week, and it's happened three more times in the past 30 years. In 1980, Reagan came from eight points behind to a solid victory by winning his sole debate with Carter in the last week of October. In 1992, Clinton, who had fallen behind in the polls because of the pounding he was taking over his liberalism and propensity to raise taxes, surged ahead of Bush when Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh announced that he was indicting Defense Secretary Casper (Cap) Weinberger, an indication of Bush's possible complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal. And in 2000, Bush's three-to-four point lead in the polls was erased over the final weekend when reports surfaced that he had been cited for DWI 20 years before and had not revealed the fact to the public. Bush still won the election, of course, but Gore won the popular vote by half a point.

What does McCain have to do to pull off a similar shift this time?

1. Use the stock market crash to highlight the tax issue. With the Dow Jones dropping each day by hundreds of points, this election is being held against a backdrop of economic fear unlike any since the Depression. Almost every reputable economist agrees that it would be catastrophic to add to the economy's woes by raising the capital gains tax. But Obama is on record as favoring an increase from 15% to 20% and suggested during the primaries that he would consider hitting 28%.

McCain should jump on the issue and challenge Obama to agree to a two-year moratorium on increases in the capital gains tax. If Obama agrees, McCain will score points for leadership. If Obama refuses, or ignores the challenge, McCain can attribute much of the drop in the market to the fear of increased capital gains taxation once Obama takes over. After all, its pretty obvious that if you keep 85% of your capital profits right now but stand only to keep 80% or 72% once Obama takes over, it's prudent to unload now. This pressure to sell is exactly what the markets do not need, and McCain can hammer the point home.

McCain can say that Obama's refusal to join in supporting a moratorium on capital gains taxation increases shows his commitment to class warfare - and that big government exceeds any concern he might have for stock market stability or the value of 401Ks or retirement pension funds.

McCain has already scored mightily with his invocation of Joe the Plumber and, polls show, he won the third debate by using the issue of taxes and small businesses. By early this coming week, his advertising will have achieved sufficient levels of frequency to have an impact on the polling.

2. Bring back Rev. Jeremiah Wright. For reasons that are beyond me, John McCain has vowed not to make an issue out of Rev. Wright's extreme anti-American statements. But that should not stop independent expenditure and 527 groups from raising the issue.

A good advertisement would alternate footage of Wright saying "God damn America" and 9/11 was just the "chickens coming home to roost" with an announcer explaining the relationship between the two men. The narrator might remind voters that it was Rev. Wright who married Barack and Michelle Obama and that Obama himself sat in the pews at Wright's church for 20 years as sermons like these were being given. It should point out that Obama only distanced himself from Wright a month after his remarks scandalized all Americans and cost him his momentum in the polls.

McCain is likely fearful that the establishment media would condemn him for running the ads. Their very effectiveness would ensure that the liberal media would fall all over themselves to denounce the tactic. But independent groups who want to prevent a leftist takeover of the government should not let liberal organs dictate their campaign tactics or their message.

3. Warn voters of impending socialism in America. The recent bailout legislation puts the United States government inside the ownership, management and direction of many of our major companies and financial institutions. The bureaucrats have entered as firefighters, trying to extinguish the blazes that threaten to consume these companies. But once the flames are put out, will the firefighters go home or will they set up shop and give the United States a socialist economy akin to that of Western European nations? Will the bureaucrats relinquish the power they are being given in a time of crisis?

McCain needs to point out that bureaucrats never let go of power unless they have to. He should say that with an Obama Administration and a highly Democratic Congress, we could face a long and perhaps permanent period during which entrepreneurial, private-sector capitalism disappears and loan applicants must win government approval for their financing.

Many people have become concerned with the growing power of foreign sovereign wealth funds in major American businesses. Will these funds use their influence and power to alter the financial policies and lending practices of America's leading banks and investment houses? But now the danger comes not just from abroad but from government intervention at home. The sovereign wealth fund that might be most influential in distorting our private capitalist system is the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.

Under conservative, pro-capitalist Republican management, we can, presumably, trust these institutions to exercise their power benignly and to turn control over to the private sector as soon as possible. We can count on their taking a hands-off policy toward the investment of the banks and financial firms in which they acquire an equity position. Except to control abuses like subprime mortgages and making marginal loans, we can expect that these federal institutions will act in our interest.

But if Obama's appointments take over the Treasury and the Fed, can we be as sure? McCain needs to point out that it was political meddling by liberals that led Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage subprime mortgage loans in the first place. Were it not for the pressure in the Clinton Administration to expand home ownership to poor people and minorities, Freddie and Fannie would not have relaxed their down payment policies and would not have been willing to guarantee mortgages without proof that the borrowers had sufficient income to repay the debts.

McCain needs to point out that it is precisely this sort of liberal pressure which led to the disaster and to warn that the power the bailout legislation gives the next president is so potent that it could destroy our concept of a private economy.

If the Dow continues to terrify investors and distract voters from the election, it will continue to bolster Obama's candidacy and his lead. But if there is some stability in the final week before the election, there is every chance that voters will take another look at Obama and decide that he is too risky. By stressing the tax issue and the potential of an Obama regime to subvert our free enterprise system, McCain can harness the crisis and warn voters of the impact of a decision to elect the most radical candidate for president in our nation's history.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Obama’s Corruption from ACORN to Taxes

Obama's Lie on Taxes

During the first Debate:
JOHN MCCAIN: "But again, Senator Obama has shifted on a number of occasions. He has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year."

BARACK OBAMA: "That's not true, John. That's not true."

Record

Barack Obama Voted Twice In Favor Of The Democrats' FY 2009 Budget Resolution That Would Raise Taxes On Those Making Just $42,000 A Year. (S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #85: Adopted 51-44: R 2-43; D 47-1; I 2-0, 3/14/08, Obama Voted Yea; S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #142: Adopted 48- 45: R 2- 44; D 44- 1; I 2-0, 6/4/08, Obama Voted Yea)

· In March 2008, Obama Hailed His Vote For The Budget As Making "Significant Progress In Getting Our Nation's Priorities Back On Track." Obama: "The budget passed by the Senate tonight makes significant progress in getting our nation's priorities back on track. ... We need change in this country, and this budget is an important step in helping bring it about." (Sen. Barack Obama, "Obama Statement On The Senate's Passage Of The FY 2009 Budget," Press Release, obama.senate.gov, 3/14/08)

FactCheck.org: Barack Obama Did Vote For Higher Taxes On People Making $42,000 Despite Saying The Opposite. "Obama denied voting for a bill that called for increased taxes on 'people' making as little as $42,000 a year, as McCain accused him of doing. McCain was right, though only for single taxpayers." ("FactChecking Debate No. 1," FactCheck.org, http://www.factcheck.org, 9/27/08)

· "Yes, As We’ve Said Before, Obama Did In Fact Vote For A Budget Resolution That Called For Higher Federal Income Tax Rates On A Single, Non-Homeowner Who Earned As Little As $42,000 Per Year." ("FactChecking Debate No. 1," FactCheck.org, http://www.factcheck.org, 9/27/08)

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:r2GD__EUSckJ:ncgop.blogspot.com/2008/09/obama-fact-check-on-tax-increases.html+obama+voting+record+on+taxes+%2442,000+per+year.&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Obama's Lie on ACORN

In third Debate Obama said:“The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department.”

Obama's Website: Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee. Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive[http://fightthesmears.com/articles/20/acornrumor] Barack ran in 1992.

Record

Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader wrote:

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

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

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNiN2YwMmQ4Njc2MzE4ZDUxYWVlYTA1NzZlMmY3YmM=

Obama's Lie on Same-Sex Marriage

Obama said:

-Obama had previously said he opposes same-sex marriage but that each state should make its own decision.
[http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:jsCGxB36hzEJ:www.sacbee.com/111/story/1051404.html+obama+prop+8&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us&ie=UTF-8]

Record

Obama record:

-Perhaps, it’s because in his first Illinois senate race, Obama is listed by a Chicago gay-lesbian publication as “supports same sex marriage”. Obama’s stand on same sex marriage was one reason he got the endorsement of Outlines, a Chicago-based gay paper that merged with the Windy City Times in 2000.
[http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:_cYvgDcUsqYJ:deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/10/obama-same-sex-marriage-obama-supported-same-sex-marriage-as-ill-state-senator/+obama+I+will+tell+you+that+I+don%27t+believe+in+gay+marriage,+but+I+do+think+that+people&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8]

-"And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts [Proposition 8] to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states," Obama wrote.
[http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:jsCGxB36hzEJ:www.sacbee.com/111/story/1051404.html+obama+prop+8&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us&ie=UTF-8]

Obama's Lie on Abortion

In the third debate Obama said:

-Yes, let me respond to this. If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that's because it's not true.[http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08101601.html]

Record

Obama in the Illinois Senate said:

-"I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions," said Obama, "because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."

-Obama said near the beginning of the discussion, "the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was -- is that there was a method of abortion, an induced abortion, where the -- the fetus or child, as -- as some might describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb."

-For Obama, whether or not a temporarily-alive-outside-the-womb little girl is a "person" entitled to constitutional rights is not determined by her humanity, her age or even her place in space relative to her mother's uterus. It is determined by a whether a doctor has been trying to kill her.

http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/10/the_obama_debat.html

Obama's biggest Lie on hailing himself as the champion of the the middle class

Record

Obama's Church Tenet: "Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness'”
-8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”

- But the tenets of that church during Obama's attendance are well documented. They were on the church website earlier this year and served as the church's tenets for the entirety of the time Obama worshiped there. As they are part of the "Black Value System", they were as follows:

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”

http://thebigfeed.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-obama-really-thinks-of-middle.html

WHAT OBAMA REALLY THINKS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW
This is a repost.

Barack Obama is spending much of time hailing himself as the champion of the the middle class. He has made his promise of help for the middle class the center of his campaign. But how does he really feel about the middle class?

Truth be told, Barack Obama has spent much of his adult life worshiping in a church that had as one of its basic tenets the "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness". What does that mean? Well, If I have to tell you what "middle class" means, please, spend your time at CNN.com. As for the term "disavowal"...It means (and this is solely for your benefit because I have a big brain and already know what it means) "to disclaim knowledge of, responsibility for, or association with". It should be clear to you now what Obama's church meant by "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness".

Here is the point that I would normally direct you to Obama's church's website and let you view its basic tenets for yourself. Just so you can see that I'm not BSing you. Alas, that web page listing those tenets has been removed (The work of Obama's "truth squad"?). But the tenets of that church during Obama's attendance are well documented. They were on the church website earlier this year and served as the church's tenets for the entirety of the time Obama worshiped there. As they are part of the "Black Value System", they were as follows:

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.

Number 8, the one at issue, is no longer one of the stated tenets of the church. It has been removed. But it did exist. Again, it served as one of the points of the church for the entire time Obama worshiped under Jerimiah Right, his spiritual mentor. Here's proof. And here's even better proof.

Now, if you take Obama's worship at a church that has as one of its basic points the "disavowal of the pursuit of 'middleclassness'", and you throw it in a pot with the thoughts of his communist mentor Frank Davis and his and his socialist associate Saul Alinsky, and then you add a dash of resentment and condescension for bitter, bible clinging, gun toting types, you really start to get a better picture of exactly what Obama thinks about the middle class. Which is, that he doesn't believe it should exist.

America! Here is a man who is running around the country telling anyone who will listen that HE is the one who is fighting for the middle class. Which, given the above, comes as quite a surprise. After all, he had 20 years to get point 8 removed from his own church's tenets. He did nothing. He had 20 years to tell his congregation that killing the middle class is not such a good idea. Instead, he showed up to church on Sundays and said nothing. And we're now supposed to believe he is our greatest defender? Wolf...sheep's clothing. Y'all know the story. Don't get eaten.

Obama's Taxes Taxpayers for more Welfare Checks to Nontaxpayers

2008-10-30T22:26:00.001-07:00

-In real numbers, 60.7 million people who have no tax burden at all will receive refunds from Obama, while only 33.8 million people, who pay approximately 40 percent of income taxes, will get any kind of refund. Twenty percent[20%] of taxpayers, who pay 87.5 percent of total income taxes, will actually see after-tax income decline under Obama by nearly two percent[2%], according to the Center.

http://www.macpac08.com/2008/10/obamas-tax-lies.html

Oct 16, 2008
Obama's Tax Lies
Interesting article at the Wall Street Journal, outlining how Obama's tax policy is more about wealth redistribution than it is lowering taxes for, as he says "95% of all families."

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

A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.
A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.
A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).
A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.
An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.
A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.
A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.
Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut."

These refunds are claimed on tax returns and are paid to all taxpayers who qualify for them, regardless of whether they owe taxes or not. These refunds have the ability of reducing a taxpayer’s liability below zero, meaning they can get a refund without actually paying taxes.

In real numbers, 60.7 million people who have no tax burden at all will receive refunds from Obama, while only 33.8 million people, who pay approximately 40 percent of income taxes, will get any kind of refund. Twenty percent of taxpayers, who pay 87.5 percent of total income taxes, will actually see after-tax income decline under Obama by nearly two percent, according to the Center.

Thanks To AFBlue at 7:24 AM

“A Third of all the Obama Voters Live with a McCain Voter"

2008-10-27T19:39:00.001-07:00

-Morris suggests a simple plan that could put McCain over the top in votes: “A third of all the Obama voters live with a McCain voter. It’s the McCain voters’ job to read . . . stock up on ammunition, and win the breakfast table conversation!”

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Morris_close_prez_race/2008/10/27/144599.html

Dick Morris Says Presidential Race In 'Tremendous Flux,' with McCain Gaining

Monday, October 27, 2008 3:56 PM

By: Kenneth D. Williams Article Font Size

Dick Morris says the presidential race is now in a state of “tremendous flux,” with McCain gaining anywhere from 3 to 7 percentage points in just the past few hours.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto, interviewing Morris for his “Your World” program today, told Morris that, to him, Obama’s economic plan wasn’t adding up. “And no one knows it’s not adding up!” Cavuto said.

Morris agreed, saying, “It’s ridiculous to think that you can pay for an elaborate spending plan like Obama’s by taxing 10 people who happen to be rich in the United States. It’s ludicrous.”

Cavuto pointed out that Obama said he would raise capital gains taxes by 5 percent, and wondered why anyone wouldn’t sell now and save 5 percent on taxes.

Morris reminded Cavuto that Obama probably would raise capital gains taxes by 13 percent, from the current 15 to a high of 28 percent. “During the primary they asked Obama, ‘How high would you raise capital gains taxes?’ And he said, ‘I wouldn’t go higher than it was under Clinton,’ which was 28 percent. So if you’re going to sell your stock now, you get to keep 85 percent of your [gains]. If you sell it later, you only get to keep 80, and probably 72 percent. ”

For McCain’s part, Morris said he could use a “tax-induced market sell-off” scenario against Obama.

“I think that what McCain needs to do is to challenge Obama to two years of moratorium on capital gains tax increases,” Morris told Cavuto, “and say, ‘With the market plunging a couple of hundred points every single day, from here until Election Day, if the voters believe you’re going to raise capital gains taxes, and they feel you’re going to win, it’s going to send the market into a tizzy. Why don’t we both agree not to raise capital gains taxes?’ And Obama can’t follow him on that, and that puts the declining market over the next six or seven days on the Obama campaign’s doorstep.”

Morris then detailed how close the presidential race had become in a matter of hours.

“I want to report that this election right now is in a state of enormous flux,” he said. “Forty-eight hours ago, there was no sign of any McCain movement. Then Zogby first reported it narrowing from a 12-point Obama lead to 9, and then yesterday to 5. Today Rasmussen, who had [Obama’s lead] at 8 reported it at 5, and Gallup, that had it at 6, now reports it at 5. So you have the three most reliable tracking polls, Rasmussen, Zogby and Gallup, all saying 5.”

Morris suggests a simple plan that could put McCain over the top in votes: “A third of all the Obama voters live with a McCain voter. It’s the McCain voters’ job to read . . . stock up on ammunition, and win the breakfast table conversation!”

Obama Caught on Tape Calling for Redistributing Wealth

2008-10-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_spread_wealth/2008/10/27/144493.html

Obama Caught on Tape Calling for Redistributing Wealth

Monday, October 27, 2008 12:22 PM

By: David A. Patten Article Font Size

One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement is that it failed to lead to income redistribution in the United States, Barack Obama appears to state in an audio excerpt of a Chicago public radio program recorded in 2001.

Obama, who then was an Illinois state senator, also stated that people continue to “suffer” because there is no government program to take money from the rich and redistribute it to Americans who are less well off.

The excerpt, posted on YouTube.com, has set the blogosphere abuzz.

It also caught the attention of GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who is using it to help drive home the Joe the plumber theme. McCain states that Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” amounts to income redistribution.

Obama: Jekyll-Hyde

2008-10-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

-Jekyll-Hyde case. I imagined the leftist Dr. Barack, having won the nomination, drinking a potion and turning into the centrist Mr. Obama for the final campaign. I had to discard this model because Obama manages to hold conflicting positions simultaneously, like one of those images under ridged plastic that changes back and forth as you tilt it.

-There is something like that in C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, wherein one of the damned spirits, an ugly silent dwarf, leads around a large impressive puppet that speaks for him like a ventriloquist's dummy.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2096438/posts

The Enigma of Obama
American Thinker ^ | October 03, 2008 | Paul Shlichta

Posted on Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:55:03 PM by neverdem

A school of thought is emerging that Barack Obama has an advanced form of narcissistic personality disorder. I heartily agree with Robert Bowie Johnson and Dr. Sam Vaknin in their shared conclusion, but I reached it from a somewhat different route. I had been trying to write an article comparing our political candidates to circus freaks such as chameleons, phoobs, and contortionists. But I was stumped when I came to Obama, who seems to partake of all of these metaphors.

How can one categorize a man who combines:

-a revivalist's grandiose and extravagant oratory,
-a charismatic talent for swaying crowds for no logical reason that they can explain,
bewilderingly contradictory changes in positions on issues,
-a squidlike ability to befog and blur statements into ambiguous or ominous vagaries,
-an inflated image (and self-image) covering a naïve and meager mental ability,
-a penchant for gaffes and misstatements combined with a dismissal of any corrections as irrelevant or malignant,
-a humorless rigidity, elitist aloofness, and perpetual air of condescension, and
-a thin-skinned aggrievement at being misinterpreted or of having his privacy violated.

It's like trying to cram a three-ring circus into a pup tent. Unlike a chameleon, he maintains a constant personal image; it is only his positions that change. He shares the ignorance and self confidence of megaegos, but they doggedly stick to one set of dogmas while he changes them with the ease of a shapeshifter. Moreover, he maintains conflicting positions with more grace than a contortionist and more rigidity than an india-rubber man.

I tried thinking of him as a Jekyll-Hyde case. I imagined the leftist Dr. Barack, having won the nomination, drinking a potion and turning into the centrist Mr. Obama for the final campaign. I had to discard this model because Obama manages to hold conflicting positions simultaneously, like one of those images under ridged plastic that changes back and forth as you tilt it.

I next thought of Obama as an amoeba [no anagram intended], incessantly changing its detailed shape. to engulf its prey while maintaining a constant overall appearance. This suggested the image of an amoeba splitting in two (one to reassure the liberals while the other woos the centrists) or of Siamese twins or a two-headed man-a perfect freak for my political sideshow.

And then I saw the ads for "The Dark Knight". Of course, Barack Obama is Harvey Dent! Imagine Two Face in the White House, with his subservient aides saying: "Mister President, Iran has just detonated an atomic bomb. Should we attack them or negotiate?" Without a word, the coin flips up and spins in mid-air....

But all this imagery iconizes only one facet of Obama. His penchant for pyrotechnic oratory calls to mind a sideshow barker or snake oil salesman. His charisma suggests a hypnotist, or perhaps the daring young man on the flying trapeze. His pompous humorlessness suggests Victorian icons that I have described elsewhere. But his most prominent trait is the incongruous combination of meager mental resources, as evidenced by his frequent gaffes and childishly naïve pronouncements, with a greatly inflated self-image of his expertise and capabilities.

I then thought of one of those huge balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.

There is something like that in C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, wherein one of the damned spirits, an ugly silent dwarf, leads around a large impressive puppet that speaks for him like a ventriloquist's dummy.

Or like the old man in "Men in Black", who turns out to be a robot operated by a tiny alien sitting at the control panel inside its head.

But these extravagant fantasies are needless excesses. As she occasionally does, Maureen Dowd managed to pinpoint Obama precisely:

He seems more like a child prodigy. Those enraptured with his gifts urge him on, like anxious parents, trying to pull that sustained, dazzling performance out of him that they believe he's capable of; they are willing to put up with the prodigy's occasional listlessness and crabbiness, his flights of self-regard and self-righteousness.

But Dowd did not carry her analysis far enough. As Johnson and Vaknin and others have already pointed out, the traits she hints at would alert a psychologist to the likelihood of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), whose symptoms include

An exaggerated sense of self-importance; exaggerates achievements and talents; expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements
Need for excessive admiration
A sense of entitlement
Selfishness; taking advantage of others to achieve own ends
Lack of empathy
Arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behavior or attitudes.
It is important to realize that NPD is much more dangerous than simple vanity. Even closer to Dowd's precocious-child model is Joanna Ashmun's description of NPD:

"Narcissists have normal, even superior, intellectual development while remaining emotionally and morally immature. Dealing with them can give you the sense of trying to have a reasonable discussion with a very clever six-year-old -- this is an age when normal children are grandiose and exhibitionistic, when they are very resistant to taking the blame for their own misbehavior, when they understand what the rules are (e.g., that lying, cheating, and stealing are prohibited) but are still trying to wriggle out of accepting those rules for themselves."

The Dowd-Ashmum model, which seems to account for all of the Obamic traits listed above, moves us to pity and then horror. A child with NPD is bad enough -- but what if that child had the immense power of the President of the United States? As if to answer that question, Ashmun's website refers to Jerome Bixby's famous short story "It's a Good Life", in which a small boy is omnipotent, to the servile terror of everyone else in his village. A plot summary can be found in Wikipedia. The whole story can be found here.

But I warn you that, if you read it, you will be very anxious until the election is over -- and perhaps even more so in the years to come.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: npd; obama

1 posted on Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:55:03 PM by neverdem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: neverdem
He seems like the perfect prez for our modern world of narcissistic nitwits and pudgy-bodied multiculti emotion-based doofuses who think it’s cruel fate that they have to work for a living.

2 posted on Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:58:59 PM by Darkwolf377 (I've got a bracelet, too. From Sergeant..... uuuuuuuhhhhhhh...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: neverdem
Rasputin

3 posted on Friday, October 03, 2008 12:03:47 AM by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds." - Ayn Rand)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

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To: neverdem
Thank you for posting this. After reading it carefully, I realized that others had put perfectly in words what I contained within myself in feelings towards this very dangerous man.

It explains so many of his bizarre actions and reactions to me.

4 posted on Friday, October 03, 2008 12:04:48 AM by border bud
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

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To: neverdem
Hitler had the same sort of ‘personality’.

Catholic Bishop's Radio Ad could Sink Obama

2008-10-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

-To hear and download bishop Gracida’s radio ad at no charge, go to www.randallterry.com. To organize a press conference in your area on Thursday, October 30, go to www.humbleplea.com for instructions.

-Simply contact your local radio station(s), buy 10 or 20 radio ads yourself, and they can download the audio file to play on their radio station. It is truly that simple. Call your radio station(s), tell them you want to buy ads, and tell them to download the mp3 file from our web site: www.randallterry.com. (For those with questions, call us at 904-687-9804.)

-Catholics to Demonstrate against Obama’s Pro-abortion Agenda
Theme: “No Catholic Can in Good Conscience Vote for Obama.”

At 12 Noon, Thursday, October 30, Catholics will hold a one hour demonstration, accompanied by a press conference, echoing Bishop Gracida’s words: No Catholic can in good conscience vote for Obama, because of his radical support of child-killing.

WOW! Bishop Gracida even names names. He stated and says on the radio, for all to hear, that Barack Hussein Obama is a pro-abortion candidate" and a Catholic CANNOT vote for him.

At last a real shepherd who is not afraid to name names. As far as I know, no other bishop has used Obama's name. If only all the bishops had the same "guts," the killing of unborn children would soon be history.

Get involved -- release the radio ad in your area.

Bishop Rene H. Gracida for Pope.

Frank Joseph M.D.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Breaking News: Bishop Rene H. Gracida releases a radio ad that could sink Obama’s campaign. This “political light saber” is in our hands. What will we do with it?

Bishop Rene H. Gracida releases radio ad against voting for Barack Obama; Catholics Plan anti-Obama Demonstrations and Press Conferences Coast to Coast on Thursday, October 30.

By Randall A. Terry

Like millions of the faithful, I have been thrilled by the sudden and forceful rise of various Bishops’ voices against the errors decimating the hearts of the Faithful in this election cycle. I am speaking of the errors stated by Doug Kmiec (and echoed by others) that go like this: “It is time to set the record straight that it violates no aspect of Catholic teaching for a Catholic Voter to endorse, support, or vote for Barack Obama…” (Doug Kmiec, Catholic Attorney and Author, Can a Catholic Support Him?, pg 36, emphasis added.)

Anyone with “an ear to hear” clearly knows that no Catholic can vote for Obama with a clear conscience – no matter what Doug Kmiec, Roman Catholics for Obama, or any other misguided Catholic may declare. As Bishop Martino declared: “This is madness, people.”

But now – perhaps in an eleventh hour answer to prayer – Bishop Rene H. Gracida has released a stunningly clear radio ad concerning Catholics voting for Barack Obama.

He boldly states:

"This is Bishop Rene H. Gracida, reminding all Catholics that they must vote in this election with an informed conscience. A Catholic cannot be said to have voted in this election with a good conscience if they have voted for a pro-abortion candidate. Barack Hussein Obama is a pro-abortion candidate."

Bishop Gracida recorded the radio spot in English and Spanish; it can be heard at www.randallterry.com.

But there is more good news – where you can be a part of defeating this madness – Bishop Gracida has offered this radio spot without charge for all who want to use it. You - an American citizen committed to protecting innocent unborn life in this election – can download the mp3 file, and pay to place this ad on your local radio station(s).

Simply contact your local radio station(s), buy 10 or 20 radio ads yourself, and they can download the audio file to play on their radio station. It is truly that simple. Call your radio station(s), tell them you want to buy ads, and tell them to download the mp3 file from our web site: www.randallterry.com. (For those with questions, call us at 904-687-9804.)

If this ad receives the airplay it deserves – and the unborn so desperately need – it could jolt Catholic voters back to their senses and moorings; Catholic voters who have been seduced into ethical quicksand by partisan supporters of Obama who betray the lives of innocent unborn children.

Catholics to Demonstrate against Obama’s Pro-abortion Agenda
Theme: “No Catholic Can in Good Conscience Vote for Obama.”

At 12 Noon, Thursday, October 30, Catholics will hold a one hour demonstration, accompanied by a press conference, echoing Bishop Gracida’s words: No Catholic can in good conscience vote for Obama, because of his radical support of child-killing.

Right now, cities include:

Cincinnati, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Indianapolis, Indiana
Denver, Colorado
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Jacksonville, FL
St. Augustine, FL
Miami, FL
Charlotte, NC
Arlington, VA
Richmond, VA
St. Louis, MO
Kansas City, MO
Joplin, MO

Our message to the press will be simple: “As Catholic voters – who put innocent life ahead or partisan politics – we reject the Obama/Biden ticket, and urge our fellow Catholics to abandon their plans to betray their faith.”

Our beloved late Holy Father, John Paul II, clearly stated: “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.” 73, Gospel of Life”

With our federal system of government, we do not vote for laws; we vote for lawmakers who make laws in our stead. Given the history and intention of Obama to continue the legalized killing of the unborn, to vote for him is to knowingly to participate in his evil acts and intentions, and in a real way to vote for abortion itself.

We will hold these peaceful vigils, and hopefully have some good “face time” with the media. If we do our job right, we could have millions of Catholics hear the truth through the vehicle of the secular media.

We beg the prayers of our compatriots, and invite others to join us.

We have about 15 cities ready to go; we would love to have 50!

If anyone is interested in leading an event in their city, they can go to www.humbleplea.com and look at the plans we have laid out. We will help anyone with a heart to help the babies in this election cycle.

I know that many are discouraged, many are fearful, and many do not know what to do.

Let us invoke our Blessed Mother for a miracle, and then lift up our voices with all our hearts.

Perhaps – just perhaps – the message of bishop Gracida and the growing chorus of bishops correcting the errors of Kmiec & Co. will reach the hearts of the faithful.

And maybe – if the laity ignites an unquenchable fire of truth through demonstrations, press conferences, and letters to the editor; emails, blogs, and a fervent plea to our pastors – maybe we will see a “Hail Mary” victory for the children in this election. Maybe Our Lady – for the sake of the Innocent – will honor the cries and sighs that have touched her Immaculate Heart.

(To hear and download bishop Gracida’s radio ad at no charge, go to www.randallterry.com. To organize a press conference in your area on Thursday, October 30, go to www.humbleplea.com for instructions.)

_______________________________________________

To respond to this email, subscribe, or unsubscribe, please contact Dr. Frank:

drfrank@abortiontruths.net

Thank you.

Powell and Obama's Gay Army

2008-10-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

-Colin Powell to help army become gay Col.'s pal?

-Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. Both men have spoken out against the military's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

- Michael Guest was the first publicly gay man to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. Ambassador. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly noted the presence of and positively recognized Guest’s same-sex partner, Alex Nevarez, during the swearing-in ceremony. The Human Rights Campaign called Powell’s acknowledgement of Nevarez a “small gesture that spoke volumes.”

http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2008/10/colin-powell-to.html

21 hours ago by G-A-Y

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10/20/2008

Colin Powell to help army become gay Col.'s pal?

Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. Both men have spoken out against the military's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. So what does this melding of the minds mean for the future of this terrible policy? PFLAG's Steve Ralls (who used to toil at the anti-DADT Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) takes a look at that very issue:

What Will Powell's Endorsement Mean for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Military Families? [HuffPo]
We certainly hope this is more indication that we're moving to a more inclusive day. After all, we're pretty damn sick of seeing the hostile views of those who crassly make jokes about gays and their "colon pals" exalted above those that seek a more peaceful day. It's time we graduate from junior high.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:jPoQpCv6D5sJ:thinkprogress.org/2007/12/04/michael-guest/+Colin+Powell+gays+Michael+Guest&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Gay Ambassador Resigns Over State Department’s Discrimination Against Gay And Lesbian Employees»

Appointed by President Bush in 2001 to be Ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest was the first publicly gay man to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. Ambassador. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly noted the presence of and positively recognized Guest’s same-sex partner, Alex Nevarez, during the swearing-in ceremony. The Human Rights Campaign called Powell’s acknowledgement of Nevarez a “small gesture that spoke volumes.”

But serving as an openly-gay ambassador under the Bush administration proved not to be as pleasant as his swearing-in. Guest retired recently, and at his retirement ceremony, “he did what few people do — displayed uncommon courage and threw a rhetorical hand-grenade into his own party.” The New York Times reports, “Guest took Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was not present) to task for failing to treat the partners of gay and lesbian foreign service officers the same as the spouses of heterosexual officers.” Guest said that was the reason for his departure:

“Most departing ambassadors use these events to talk about their successes . . . But I want to talk about my signal failure, the failure that in fact is causing me to leave the career that I love,” said Mr. Guest, 50, whose most recent assignment was dean of the leadership and management school at the Foreign Service Institute, the government’s school for diplomats.

“For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” he said.

“Unlike heterosexual spouses, gay partners are not entitled to State Department-provided security training, free medical care at overseas posts, guaranteed evacuation in case of a medical emergency, transportation to overseas posts, or special living allowances when foreign service officers are assigned to places like Iraq, where diplomatic families are not permitted.”

“This is not about gay rights. … It’s about equal treatment of all employees, all of whom have the same service requirements, the same contractual requirements,” said Guest.

While the Bush administration has previously indicated an unwillingness to outlaw employment discrimination, Guest courageously highlights the fact that the administration is also practicing it.

Obama has repeatedly steered taxpayer money to campaign donors

2008-10-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Case Against Barack Obama
The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate

FREE OFFER! — Get This Book Free, Click Here Now!

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Newsmax Price: $25.95
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You Don’t Know Barack Obama Until You Read This Book.

This new book — "The Case Against Barack Obama" is published by the same group that brought you "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" — the book that defeated John Kerry in 2004.

Already the liberal media has condemned "The Case Against Barack Obama" because it could change the outcome of the election.

Make no doubt about it, Barack Obama is the media's darling, the fresh face of the Democratic ticket. But what does Barack Obama really stand for — and will his extreme liberal agenda and complete inexperience in global affairs endanger the country?

That's what David Freddoso, investigative reporter and National Review Online columnist, examines in "The Case Against Barack Obama."

Has any major candidate for president of the United States ever received less critical examination than Barack Obama? Who is this man, who was only elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004?

How did someone with his meager record of accomplishment become the Democratic nominee for president? How did someone with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate and long-standing relationships with a former terrorist, a racist minister, and the corrupt operators of Chicago Machine politics end up as a supposed beacon of a newer, cleaner, bipartisan politics?

Investigative reporter David Freddoso has the answers. Doing the legwork that the mainstream media has neglected, applying a critical eye while the media swoons before the Obama-messiah, and posing the hard questions that Obama needs to answer, Freddoso reveals a politician as calculating as any other, a far-left Democrat who goes beyond "abortion rights" to supporting de facto infanticide, whose "new politics" amount to Chicago-style hardball overlain with lofty rhetoric, and who, from his positions of power, has helped his patrons.

In "The Case Against Barack Obama", you’ll learn:

How Obama’s friendship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was no accident, but a carefully thought-out personal and political decision
The inside story of Obama's association with terrorist Bill Ayers wouldn’t matter — an exposé of the insular radical chic of Chicago's Hyde Park politics
The real story of Obama as a puppet of Mayor Daley's corrupt Chicago political machine
What Obama really did for convicted developer Tony Rezko
Debunking the myth of Obama’s "new" politics: how Obama won his first election by throwing all of his competitors off the ballot
The new 'Dirty Politics': how underhanded politics sabotaged Obama's opponents in his 2004 Senate race
A story Obama would like to stay buried in Chicago: how he used his clout as a U.S. senator to save the corrupt Cook County Political Machine when reformers of both parties tried to challenge the entrenched political bosses
How Barack Obama opposed a bill banning infanticide-by-neglect — a stance too extreme even for Nancy Pelosi. (Freddoso has an exclusive interview with the nurse central to the case.)
Why the National Abortion Rights Action League says Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate they have ever backed
How Obama has repeatedly steered taxpayer money to campaign donors
And much, much more.
Sober, fair, and thoroughly researched — and all the more powerful and provocative because of it — "The Case Against Barack Obama" removes the halo from a man less qualified, and more radical, than the mainstream media has let you know.

Find out why electing this man as our Commander-in-Chief could be the most dangerous decision in American history.

David Freddoso covers Capitol Hill for National Review Online, and was previously a political reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report and Human Events. A graduate of Notre Dame and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Evidence Mounts:Ayers Co-Wrote Obama’s “Dreams”

2008-10-19T01:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/evidence_mounts.htm

Evidence Mounts:Ayers Co-Wrote Obama’s “Dreams”

© Jack Cashill

AmericanThinker.com
October 17, 2008

Evidence continues to mount that Barack Obama had substantial help from Bill Ayers in the creation of his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, a book that Time Magazine has called “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.” The evidence falls into five general categories, here summarized:

The discovery of new matching nautical metaphors from both Ayers and Obama that almost assuredly came from the same source: Ayers, a former merchant seaman.

The discovery of a Bill Ayers’ essay on memoir writing, whose postmodern themes and phrases are echoed throughout Dreams.

A newly discovered book chapter from 1990 that shows clearly and painfully the limits of Obama’s prose style the year he received a contract to write Dreams.

The revelation by radical Islamicist Rashid Khalidi that Ayers made his “dining room table” available for neighborhood writers who needed help.

A refined timeline that shows Ayers had the means, the motive and the time to help Obama when he needed it most.

The timeline

A 1990 New York Times profile on Obama’s election as the Harvard Law Review’s first black president in 1990 caught the eye of agent Jane Dystel. She persuaded Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, to authorize a roughly $125,000 advance for Obama’s proposed memoir.

Obama repaired to Chicago with advance in hand and dithered. At one point, in order to finish the book without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. Simon & Schuster canceled the contract. His agent hustled him a new, smaller contract.

Ayers published his book To Teach in 1993. Between 1993 and 1996, he had no other formal authorial assignment than to co-edit a collection of essays. This was an unusual hole in his very busy publishing career.

Obama’s memoir was published in June 1995. Earlier that year, Ayers helped Obama, then a junior lawyer at a minor law firm, get appointed chairman of the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant. In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, helped blaze Obama’s path to political power with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.

In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama’s career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama’s belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.

Neighborhood assistance

Allow me to reconstruct how Obama transformed himself into what the New York Times has called “that rare politician who can write . . . and write movingly and genuinely about himself.” There is an element of speculation in this, but new evidence continues to narrow the gap between the speculative and the conclusive. One clue comes from an unexpected source, Rashid Khalidi, the radical Arab-American friend of Obama’s and reputed ally of the PLO.

In the acknowledgment section of his 2004 book, Resurrecting Empire, Khalidi writes of Ayers, “Bill was particularly generous in letting me use his family’s dining room table to do some writing for the project.” Khalidi did not need the table. He had one of his own. He needed the help.

Khalidi had spent several years at Chicago University’s Center for International Studies. At a 2003 farewell dinner on the occasion of his departure from Chicago, Obama toasted him, thanking him and his wife for the many dinners that they had shared as well as for his “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.”

Chicago’s Hyde Park was home to a tight, influential radical community at whose center were Ayers and Dohrn. In this world, the Ayers’ terrorist rap sheet only heightened their reputation. Obama had to know. The couple had given up revolution in 1980 for the long slow march through the institutions. By 1994, if not earlier, Ayers saw a way to quicken that march.

I believe that after failing to finish his book on time, and after forfeiting his advance from Simon & Schuster, Obama brought a sprawling, messy, sophomoric manuscript to the famed dining room table of Bill Ayers and said, “Help.”

Obama’s limited skills

Obama needed all the help he could get. Prior to 1990, he had written very close to nothing. In 1981 Occidental College published two of Obama’s poems—“Pop” and “Underground. Obama calls it some “very bad poetry,” and he does not sell himself short. From “Underground”:

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance . . .

It would be another decade before Obama had anything in print and this an edited, unsigned student case comment in the Harvard Law Review unearthed by Politico. Attorneys who reviewed the piece for Politico described it as “a fairly standard example of the genre.”

Once elected president of the Harvard Law Review—more of a popularity than a literary contest--Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal.

In 1990 Obama also contributed an essay to a book published by the University of Illinois at Springfield, an anthology called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.

Although the essay covers many of the issues raised in Dreams and uses some of the memoir’s techniques, it does so without a hint of style, sophistication, or promise. The following two excerpts capture Obama’s range or lack thereof:

“Moreover, such approaches can and have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda.”

“But organizing the black community faces enormous problems as well . . . and the urban landscape is littered with the skeletons of previous efforts.”

These cliché-choked sentences go beyond the merely unpromising to the fully ungrammatical. “Organizing” does not “face.” “Efforts” do not leave “skeletons.” “Agendas” do not have “anathemas.” Indeed, the essay is clunky, pedestrian, and wonkish, a B- paper in a freshman comp class.

In “Why Organize” Obama makes use of the fully re-created conversation, a technique used to somewhat better effect in Dreams. Here, his ungainly conjuring of black speech makes one cringe:

"I just cannot understand why a bright young man like you would go to college, get that degree and become a community organizer."

"Why's that?"

" 'Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don't nobody appreciate you."

To read “Why Organize” in its entirety is to understand the profound limits of Obama’s literary talent. I am sure he sensed those limits if no one else did.

Postmodern themes

Bill Ayers’ 2001 memoir Fugitive Days and Obama’s Dreams From My Father follow oddly similar rules. Ayers describes his as “a memory book,” one that deliberately blurs facts and changes identities and makes no claims at history. Obama says much the same. In Dreams, some characters are composites. Some appear out of precise chronology. Names have been changed.

Dreams and Fugitive Days are both suffused with repeated reference to lies, lying and what Ayers calls “our constructed reality.” A serious student of literature, Ayers has written thoughtfully on the role of the first person narrator in the construction of a memoir.

In true postmodernist fashion, he rejects the possibility of an objective, universal truth. He argues instead that our lives are journeys, whose “narratives” we “construct” and, if we have the will and the power, impose on others.

Curiously, Obama says much the same in Dreams and in much the same language. “But another part of me knew that what I was telling them was a lie,” writes Obama, “something I’d constructed from the scraps of information I’d picked up from my mother.”

The evidence strongly suggests that Ayers transformed the stumbling literalist of “Why Organize” into the sophisticated postmodernist of Dreams, and he did not so not by tutoring Obama, but by rewriting his text. The Ayers’ quotes that follow come from an essay of his, “Narrative Push/Narrative Pull.” The Obama quotes come from Dreams:

Ayers:

“The hallmark of writing in the first person is intimacy. . . . But in narrative the universal is revealed through the specific, the general through the particular, the essence through the unique, and necessity is revealed through contingency.”

Obama:

“And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged . . . “

Ayers:

“Narrative begins with something to say—content precedes form.”

Obama:

“I understood that I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories, plugging up holes in the narrative . . . “

Ayers:

“Narrative inquiry can be a useful corrective to all this.”

Obama:

“Truth is usually the best corrective.”

Ayers:

“The mind works in contradiction, and honesty requires the writer to reveal disputes with herself on the page.”

Obama:

“Not because that past is particularly painful or perverse but because it speaks to those aspects of myself that resist conscious choice and that--on the surface, at least--contradict the world I now occupy.”

Ayers:

The reader must actually see the struggle. It’s a journey, not by a tourist, but by a pilgrim.

Obama:

“But all in all it was an intellectual journey that I imagined for myself, complete with maps and restpoints and a strict itinerary.”

Ayers:

“Narrative writers strive for a personal signature, but must be aware that the struggle for honesty is constant.”

Obama:

“I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

Ayers:

“But that intimacy can trap a writer into a defensive crouch, into airing grievances or self-justification.”

Obama:

“At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap.”

Although I cite one example for each, Dreams offers many more. There are ten “trap” references alone and nearly as many for “narrative,” “struggle,” and “journey.” To be sure, there are other postmodernists in Chicago, but few who write as stylishly and as intelligibly as Ayers and fewer who make their dining room tables available to would-be authors of a leftist bent.

The sea metaphors

A newly discovered anecdote from Bill Ayers’ 1993 book, To Teach, solidifies the case that he is indeed the muse behind Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father.

In the book, Ayers tells the story of an adventurous teacher who would take her students out to the streets of New York to learn interesting life lessons about the culture and history of the city. As Ayers tells it, the students were fascinated by the Hudson River nearby and asked to see it. When they got to the river’s edge, one student said, ” Look, the river is flowing up.” A second student said, “No, it has to flow south-down.”

Not knowing which was right, the teacher and the students did their research. What they discovered, writes Ayers, was “that the Hudson River is a tidal river, that it flows both north and south, and they had visited the exact spot where the tide stops its northward push.”

In his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama shares a stunningly comparable anecdote about tidal rivers from his own brief New York sojourn. He tells of meeting with “Marty Kauffman” at a Lexington Avenue diner, the man from Chicago who was trying to recruit him as a community organizer.

After the meeting, Obama “took the long way home, along the East River promenade.” This serendipitous journey to the river enables him to tell a story that is transparently fabricated and almost assuredly hatched in the weathered brain of Bill Ayers.

As “a long brown barge rolled through the gray waters toward the sea,” Obama sat down on a bench to consider his options. While sitting, he noticed a black woman and her young son against the railing. Overly fond of the too well remembered detail, Obama observes that “they stood side by side, his arm wrapped around her leg, a single silhouette against the twilight.”

The boy appeared to ask his mother a question that she could not answer and then approached Obama: “Excuse me, mister,” he shouted. “You know why sometimes the river runs that way and then sometimes it goes this way?”

"The woman smiled and shook her head, and I said it probably had to do with the tides." Obama uses the seeming indecisiveness of this tidal river as a metaphor for his own. Immediately afterwards, he shakes the indecision and heads for Chicago.

Even were there no other clues, Obama’s frequent and sophisticated use of nautical metaphors like this one makes a powerful case for Ayers’ involvement in the writing of Dreams. Despite growing up in Hawaii, Obama gives no indication than he has had any real experience with the sea or ships. Ayers, however, knew a great deal about the sea. After dropping out of college, he took up the life of a merchant seaman.

Although Ayers has tried to put his anxious ocean-going days behind him, the language of the sea will not let him go. “I realized that no one else could ever know this singular experience,” Ayers writes of his maritime adventures. Yet curiously, much of this same nautical language flows through Obama’s earth-bound memoir.

“Memory sails out upon a murky sea,” Ayers writes at one point. Indeed, both he and Obama are obsessed with memory and its instability. The latter writes of its breaks, its blurs, its edges, its lapses. Obama also has a fondness for the word “murky” and its aquatic usages.

“The unlucky ones drift into the murky tide of hustles and odd jobs,” he writes, one of four times “murky” appears in Dreams. Ayers and Obama also speak often of waves and wind, Obama at least a dozen times on wind alone. “The wind wipes away my drowsiness, and I feel suddenly exposed,” he writes in a typical passage. Both also make conspicuous use of the word “flutter.”

Not surprisingly, Ayers uses “ship” as a metaphor with some frequency. Early in the book he tells us that his mother is “the captain of her own ship,” not a substantial one either but “a ragged thing with fatal leaks” launched into a “sea of carelessness.” Obama too finds himself “feeling like the first mate on a sinking ship.” He also makes a metaphorical reference to “a tranquil sea.”

More intriguing is Obama’s use of the word “ragged” as an adjective as in the highly poetic “ragged air” or “ragged laughter.” Both books use “storms” and “horizons” both as metaphor and as reality. Ayers writes poetically of an “unbounded horizon,” and Obama writes of “boundless prairie storms” and poetic horizons—“violet horizon,” “eastern horizon,” “western horizon.”

Ayers often speaks of “currents” and “pockets of calm” as does Obama, who uses both as nouns as in “a menacing calm” or “against the current” or “into the current.” The metaphorical use of the word “tangled” might also derive from one’s nautical adventures. Ayers writes of his “tangled love affairs” and Obama of his “tangled arguments.”

In Dreams, we read of the “whole panorama of life out there” and in Fugitive Days, “the whole weird panorama.” Ayers writes of still another panorama, this one “an immense panorama of waste and cruelty.” Obama employs the word “cruel” and its derivatives no fewer than fourteen times in Dreams.

On at least twelve occasions, Obama speaks of “despair,” as in the “ocean of despair.” Ayers speaks of a “deepening despair,” a constant theme for him as well. Obama’s "knotted, howling assertion of self" sounds like something from the pages of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf.

My own semi-memoir, Sucker Punch, offers a useful control here too. The book makes no reference at all, metaphorical or otherwise, to ships, seas, oceans, calms, storms, wind, waves, horizons, panoramas, or to things howling, fluttering, knotted, ragged, tangled, or murky. None. And yet I have spent a good chunk of every summer of my life at the ocean.

If there is any one paragraph in Dreams that has convinced me of Ayers’ involvement it is this one, in which Obama describes the black nationalist message:

“A steady attack on the white race . . . served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair.”

As a writer, especially in the pre-Google era of Dreams, I would never have used a metaphor as specific as “ballast” unless I knew exactly what I was talking about. Seaman Ayers most surely did.

Why this matters

Obama’s handlers have “constructed” his persona around his presumably superior intelligence. Bill Buckley’s son Christopher, smitten by Obama’s literary skills, is among those who have yielded to this imagery and joined the Obama crusade. Even if someone benign had ghostwritten the book it would present a problem for Obama.

The question is often asked why Obama associated with Ayers. The more appropriate question is why the powerful Ayers would associate with the then obscure Obama. Before Obama’s ascendancy, it was Ayers who had the connections, the clout, and the street cred. Ayers could also write and write very well. By the mid-1990s he had had several of his books published. What Ayers could never do, however, was run for office on his own.

My suspicion is that Ayers saw the potential in Obama, and chose to mold it. The calculation in Dreams is palpable. Nothing about the book would deny a black Democrat the White House. If it were revealed that the ghostwriter is Ayers, it would suggest that Ayers has played a major role all along in the shaping of Barack Obama. It is unlikely that the McCain camp would have invested so much energy in establishing the Ayers-Obama link if they did not think this was the case.

At the end of the day, the observer is left with only two conclusions: either Barack Obama experienced a quantum surge in his writing skills almost overnight; or someone made a major contribution to the rewriting of his book.

The dispassionate observer has to choose the latter—the former has no precedent. If he can endure the consequences, he concedes that that contributor had to be Bill Ayers.

Jack Cashill is the author, among other books, of Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Hijacked American Culture. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University.

Obama Bought off by the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

2008-10-19T00:39:00.001-07:00

-But hasn't Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn't taking money from registered lobbyists? Hasn't the press given him a free pass on this statement?

-The Center for Responsive Politics website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists, registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate. These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.

-Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists?

-Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms, he's not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists?

-That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying.

-Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his campaign seems to be brainstorming with them.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=613&Itemid=1

Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street
Presidential Politics 2008 - Obama
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
by Pam Martens

The candidate that claims to be the only presidential contender who doesn't take money from lobbyists is in fact the biggest recipient of lobby-related contributions. Barack Obama rakes in millions from law firms serving the interests of Wall Street, including the financial institutions that gave us the subprime lending crisis. Lawyers that work for firms that earn hundreds of millions of dollars for lobbying may technically not be lobbyists, but they share in their colleagues' earnings as influencers of Congress - a legal loophole that allows Obama to claim his hands are clean of lobby loot. "The top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans."

Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

by Pam Martens

This article is the result of a special investigation undertaken by Counterpunch, orignally printed in 2 parts, here and here..

"The top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans."
Wall Street, known variously as a barren wasteland for diversity or the last plantation in America, has defied courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for decades in its failure to hire blacks as stockbrokers. Now it's marshalling its money machine to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. Why isn't the press curious about this?

Walk into any of the largest Wall Street brokerage firms today and you'll see a self-portrait of upper management racism and sexism: women sitting at secretarial desks outside fancy offices occupied by predominantly white males. According to the EEOC as well as the recent racial discrimination class actions filed against UBS and Merrill Lynch, blacks make up between 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent of stockbrokers - this after 30 years of litigation, settlements and empty promises to do better by the largest Wall Street firms.

The first clue to an entrenched white male bastion seeking a black male occupant in the oval office (having placed only five blacks in the U.S. Senate in the last two centuries) appeared in February on a chart at the Center for Responsive Politics website. It was a list of the 20 top contributors to the Barack Obama campaign, and it looked like one of those comprehension tests where you match up things that go together and eliminate those that don't. Of the 20 top contributors, I eliminated six that didn't compute. I was now looking at a sight only slightly less frightening to democracy than a Diebold voting machine. It was a Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government.

Why is the "yes, we can" candidate in bed with this cartel? How can "we," the people, make change if Obama's money backers block our ability to be heard?

Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.

"How can ‘we,' the people, make change if Obama's money backers block our ability to be heard?"

These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumulative total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we're still in the primary season.

But hasn't Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn't taking money from registered lobbyists? Hasn't the press given him a free pass on this statement?

Barack Obama, speaking in Greenville, South Carolina on January 22, 2008:

"Washington lobbyists haven't funded my campaign, they won't run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president."

Barack Obama, in an email to supporters on June 25, 2007, as reported by the Boston Globe:

"Candidates typically spend a week like this - right before the critical June 30th financial reporting deadline - on the phone, day and night, begging Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to write huge checks. Not me. Our campaign has rejected the money-for-influence game and refused to accept funds from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees."

The Center for Responsive Politics website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists, registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate. These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.

Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists? Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms, he's not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying.

Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his campaign seems to be brainstorming with them.

The political publication, The Hill, reported on December 20, 2007, that three salaried aides on the Obama campaign were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations. (The Obama campaign said they had stopped lobbying since joining the campaign.) Bob Bauer, counsel to the Obama campaign, is an attorney with Perkins Coie. That law firm is also a registered lobbyist.

What might account for this persistent (but non-reality based) theme of distancing the Obama campaign from lobbyists? Odds are it traces back to one of the largest corporate lobbyist spending sprees in the history of Washington whose details would cast an unwholesome pall on the Obama campaign, unless our cognitive abilities are regularly bombarded with abstract vacuities of hope and change and sentimental homages to Dr. King and President Kennedy.

"Many of these individual donors share in the profits generated from lobbying."

On February 10, 2005, Senator Obama voted in favor of the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Senators Biden, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Corzine, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy, Reid and 16 other Democrats voted against it. It passed the Senate 72-26 and was signed into law on February 18, 2005. Here is an excerpt of remarks Senator Obama made on the Senate floor on February 14, 2005, concerning the passage of this legislation:

"Every American deserves their day in court. This bill, while not perfect, gives people that day while still providing the reasonable reforms necessary to safeguard against the most blatant abuses of the system. I also hope that the federal judiciary takes seriously their expanded role in class action litigation, and upholds their responsibility to fairly certify class actions so that they may protect our civil and consumer rights...."

Three days before Senator Obama expressed that fateful yea vote, 14 state attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of Senator Obama's home state of Illinois, filed a letter with the Senate and House, pleading to stop the passage of this corporate giveaway: The AGs wrote: "State attorneys general frequently investigate and bring actions against defendants who have caused harm to our citizens... In some instances, such actions have been brought with the attorney general acting as the class representative for the consumers of the state. We are concerned that certain provisions of S.5 might be misinterpreted to impede the ability of the attorneys general to bring such actions...."

The Senate also received a desperate plea from more than 40 civil rights and labor organizations, including the NAACP, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Human Rights Campaign, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Justice and Democracy, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Alliance for Justice. They wrote as follows:

"Under the [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005], citizens are denied the right to use their own state courts to bring class actions against corporations that violate these state wage and hour and state civil rights laws, even where that corporation has hundreds of employees in that state. Moving these state law cases into federal court will delay and likely deny justice for working men and women and victims of discrimination. The federal courts are already overburdened. Additionally, federal courts are less likely to certify classes or provide relief for violations of state law."

This legislation, which dramatically impaired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pressure from 100 corporations, 475 lobbyists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign. "The Civil Justice Reform Group, a business alliance comprising general counsels from Fortune 100 firms, was instrumental in drafting the class-action bill," says Public Citizen.

One of the hardest working registered lobbyists to push this corporate giveaway was the law firm Mayer-Brown, hired by the leading business lobby group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Chamber of Commerce spent $16 million in just 2003, lobbying the government on various business issues, including class action reform.

According to a 2003 report from Public Citizen, Mayer-Brown's class action lobbyists included "Mark Gitenstein, former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a leading architect of the Senate strategy in support of class-action legislation; John Schmitz, who was deputy counsel to President George H.W. Bush; David McIntosh, former Republican congressman from Indiana; and Jeffrey Lewis, who was on the staffs of both Sen. John Breaux (D-La) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La)".

While not on the Center for Responsive Politics list of the top 20 contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, Mayer-Brown's partners and employees are in rarefied company, giving a total of $92,817 through December 31, 2007, to the Obama campaign. (The firm is also defending Merrill Lynch in court against charges of racial discrimination.)

Senator Obama graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Given those credentials, one assumes that he understood the ramifications to the poor and middle class in this country as he helped gut one of the few weapons left to seek justice against giant corporations and their legions of giant law firms. The class-action vehicle confers upon each citizen one of the most powerful rights in our society: the ability to function as a private attorney general and seek redress for wrongs inflicted on ourselves as well as for those similarly injured that might not otherwise have a voice.

"Obama helped gut one of the few weapons left to seek justice against giant corporations and their legions of giant law firms."

Those rights should have been strengthened, not restricted, at this dangerous time in our nation's history. According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern history:

"According to federal data, people of color are more than three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites."

If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. "This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism."
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.

So, how should we react when we learn that the top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans? How should we react when we learn that on the big donor list is Citigroup, whose former employee at CitiFinancial testified to the Federal Trade Commission that it was standard practice to target people based on race and educational level, with the sales force winning bonuses called "Rocopoly Money" (like a sick board game), after "blitz" nights of soliciting loans by phone? How should we react when we learn that these very same firms, arm in arm with their corporate lawyers and registered lobbyists, have weakened our ability to fight back with the class-action vehicle?

Should there be any doubt left as to who owns our government? The very same cast of characters making the Obama hit parade of campaign loot are the clever creators of the industry solutions to the wave of foreclosures gripping this nation's poor and middle class, effectively putting the solution in the hands of the robbers. The names of these programs (that have failed to make a dent in the problem) have the same vacuous ring: Hope Now; Project Lifeline.

Senator Obama has become the inspiration and role model to millions of children and young people in this country. He has only two paths now: to be a dream maker or a dream killer. But be assured of one thing: this country will not countenance any more grand illusions.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no securities position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

New Rap Song: NO Bama NO!

2008-10-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

My name is Barack, Im heaven sent-
i want to be your president-
Ill take help from anyone I can-
Farrakhan, Oprah or terrorist man

By now everybody knows my name-
Some vote for me out of shame-
and some will vote for what they see-
Ill take any vote, if its for me-

No-bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!

Ive got no birth certificate-
Now what the heck did i do with it-
and if I can avoid any more detection-/if you dont make the right selection
youre gonna wish there was another election

I'll give all rights to cross dressers,
and all those other gender benders-
My friends in Hollywood and TV
wont let you hear/know nothing bad about me

No-bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!

I go to a Church where you can hear,
the name in vain said loud and clear-
I take the kids so they will know,
that they can cuss like so and so

Now I believe what I believe
though I get confused about which creed-
Im a man of prayer-a man of faith-
even if I forget what Im supposed to say-

No-bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!

My name is Barak Im heaven sent
I want to be your president-
Yes, I really want to win this race
So, ACORN, get those voters in place!!

I'm the doctor of death-the sire of slick-
sometimes I even make myself sick.
I've got an agenda that's well hidden-
(I might not even be a citizen)

No-bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!
No-Bama No!

AP/Yahoo shows Obama leading McCain by two points, 44%-42%

2008-10-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, This Race Might Be Winnable
A lot of the state polls look pretty bad for McCain lately, but there's been an interesting shift in the tracking polls.

* Rasmussen’s Presidential Tracking poll now shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by four points, 50 percent to 46 percent. At one point, Obama was up by 8. * Gallup’s national tracking poll of likely voters has Obama leading McCain by two points, 49 percent to 47 percent. * AP/Yahoo shows Obama leading McCain by two points, 44%-42% * The Reuters/C-Span/Zogby national tracking survey shows Obama leading McCain by five points, 49%-44%. * The GW/Battleground tracking poll has Obama leading McCain by four points, 49%-45%.

The other thing is, in most of these, if there's been movement, Obama's been pretty consistent - right around, or just under, 50 percent. McCain's gains have come from undecideds.

It has been argued that this election is a referendum on Obama, and I largely concur. The endless magazine covers, the ubiquitous commercials, the posters, the stadium rally, his own channel on some cable systems, the postponement of the World Series for his half-hour national address... If you see him as a presidential and ready for the job, you're for him; if you don't, you don't and you vote for the other guy.

(Interesting that McCain referred to Obama during one debate as "that one" since to a lot of voters, McCain is "the other one.")

Obviously, I'd rather be up by four or five than down by four or five. But I'm not sure the instant demonization of Joe the Plumber helps Obama with all of those waverers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

(10/17/2008)
- National Review Online Blogs, NY

Obama Bought off by Registered Lobbyists as Press Attacks Citizen Joe the Plumber

2008-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Ayers/Obama Funded FactCheck.org

2008-10-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

-Obama called for an $3.5 million dollar earmark for the Annenburg Foundation that sponsors FactCheck.org.

-Factcheck.org is part of the Annenberg Foundation. Yep, that Annenberg Foundation which also funded the Wm. Ayers/Barack Obama Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

http://redgirlrising.blogdns.net/where-do-you-get-your-facts/

Where Do You Get Your “Facts?”
So add another site to the list of online destinations attached to Obama-nation - factcheck.org

Frequently quoted on mainstream news broadcasts and websites, factcheck.org is part of the Annenberg Foundation. Yep, that Annenberg Foundation which also funded the Wm. Ayers/Barack Obama Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Check out their adddress to learn more:

FactCheck.org
Annenberg Public Policy Center
320 National Press Building
Washington DC 20045
Editor@FactCheck.org
Telephone: (Annenberg Public Policy Center)
(202) 879-6700

I’ve used factcheck.org in the past and guess that’s stopping today. Adding to the list of places I don’t do research anymore.

National Review and Michelle Malkin broke the story.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:dKOuasM6nNEJ:blogs4mccain.com/2008/10/06/obama-ayers-annenburg-factcheckorg/+ayers+FactCheck.org+Annenberg+Public+Policy+Center&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Obama, Ayers, Annenburg & FactCheck.org
There is a disturbing link between Barack Obama, FactCheck.org, and William Ayers. National Review reports that William Ayers and Barack Obama both served as co-chairs of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge.

Obama called for an $3.5 million dollar earmark for the Annenburg Foundation that sponsors FactCheck.org.

Several FactCheck articles have been viewed as promoting the Obama campaign line instead of truly acting as a fact checkers. Controlling the ‘facts’ is a hallmark of a totalitarian regime, and this is truly an unsettling connection.

Mission statement from FactCheck.org:

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.
The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation.

Requested Anneberg Earmark from Barack Obama - Citation from Answers.BarackObama.com

Obama Requested $3.5 Million For The USC Annenberg Research Network. In 2005, Obama requested $3.5 million for the USC Annenberg Research Network on International Communication, in partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to support the deployment of pervasive broadband for education and economic development.Funding was for the construction of a large-scale broadband wireless systems in two communities—one in South Los Angeles and the other in small-town Illinois. In each community, broadband network coverage will be provided over a minimum of about a half-square mile area, utilizing leading edge wireless technologies. In Los Angeles, this will include the five schools in USC’s immediate neighborhood, with about 8,000 K-12 students. USC also will provide wireless equipment and access to every family with a student entering the first grade of a new Science Center School, and in Illinois, a similar group of students will be selected to receive wireless equipment and access within the coverage area. The impact of these technologies on the students and their families will be tracked. [Obama Request Letter to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education, 6/7/05]

Obama’s Challenge from the National Review

Let’s first review CAC’s [Chicago Annenburg Challenge] initial setup. In the first year, 1995, Obama headed the board, which made fiscal decisions, and Ayers co-chaired the Collaborative, which set education policy. During that first year, Obama’s formal responsibilities mandated close cooperation and coordination with the Collaborative. As board chair and president of the CAC corporation, Obama was authorized to “delegate to the Collaborative the development of collaborative projects and programs . . . to obtain assistance of the Collaborative in the development of requests for proposals . . . and to seek advice from the Collaborative regarding the programmatic aspects of grant proposals.” All this clearly involves significant consultation between the board, headed by Obama, and the Collaborative, co-chaired by Ayers.

Hat Tip to Death by 1000 Papercuts for first reporting this in their article Obama, Bill Ayers, and FactCheck.Org: All Have Ties To Annenberg Foundation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarification: The connection between Obama and Ayers is through
the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that received money from the Annenburg
Foundation, but the Chicago Annenburg Challenge Challenge and the
Annenburg Foundation are not directly connected philosophically. The
earmark Senator Obama requested was for the Annenburg Foundation, which
funded the Chicago Annenburg Challenge and also funds FactCheck.org.
Obama is tied to both groups one via earmark, the other via direct
participation, however, Ayers is not directly connected to
FactCheck.org.

FactCheck.org Lying on Obama’s Second Amendment Record

2008-10-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

Unmitigated Garbage from FactCheck.org on Obama’s Second Amendment Record

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:23 am
Xrlq points us to this ridiculous FactCheck.org piece on Obama and gun rights. I am by now completely disenchanted with FactCheck.org and virtually every other “fact checking” site out there, and this piece does nothing to dispel my depression.

The summary version: FactCheck ridicules the NRA in this piece. But the NRA is careful to say: look at Obama’s record and not his rhetoric. And at least two of the NRA claims are backed up by references to Obama’s record. Yet FactCheck.org goes on to minimize or completely ignore Obama’s record on these points, choosing instead to concentrate on citations to Obama’s later campaign rhetoric.

1) FactCheck.org declares “false” the NRA’s claim that Obama plans to ban the possession, manufacture, and sale of handguns. But it emerges that this claim is directly based on Obama’s “yes” answer to a the following question in a questionnaire: “Do you support legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?”

FactCheck.org simply faults the NRA for not noting Obama’s later attempts to explain away this answer. But FactCheck.org doesn’t address the fact that Obama falsely denied even seeing the questionnaire, only to have it later emerge that an amended version had his handwriting on it.

2) FactCheck.org calls “supported” the NRA’s claim that Obama would appoint judges who share his views on the Second Amendment. As part of their evidence, FactCheck.org tells us that Obama didn’t contest the Heller decision, which upheld an individual right to bear arms. But FactCheck.org doesn’t mention that Obama’s campaign had initially said of the D.C.’s total ban on handguns in the home: “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” (Obama later tried to back away from that statement, but it is part of his record, just like his answers to the questionnaire that he had claimed he had never seen, but that turned out to bear his handwriting.)

The piece is garbage. Details in the extended entry.

First, some context. The piece criticizes the NRA, which encourages FactCheck.org to look at Obama’s record and not his rhetoric. FactCheck.org says it contacted the NRA’s director of public affairs:

He declined to speak to us except to say that the claims are based on Obama’s voting record and statements he has made in the media. “We’re comfortable with what we put on there,” Arulanandam said. “We believe our facts.”

Sounds like he agreed to make a statement; FactCheck.org just didn’t like it. And no wonder: they go on to do an entire piece on the issue that elevates Obama’s rhetoric over his record. Here are just two examples.

First, FactCheck.org ridicules the NRA’s claim that Obama plans to ban the possession, manufacture, and sale of handguns. Here is FactCheck.org’s “analysis”:

The NRA bases its claim on a disputed 1996 questionnaire that Obama’s Illinois state Senate campaign filled out for the nonprofit voting group, Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization. On it, somebody filled in the word “yes” in response to the question, “Do you support legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?”

Hmm. That seems pretty solid.

But the Obama campaign said that the survey was actually filled out by his then-campaign manager who “unintentionally mischaracterized his position,” adding that Obama never saw the survey.

Oh. Well, we should probably take his word for it, then.

As we wrote previously, an amended version of the questionnaire was later submitted to the group, with Obama’s handwritten notes on it providing more detail on some of the answers. Obama clearly saw and handled this version personally and did not alter the question about banning the sale and manufacturing of guns.

Hmm. That seems pretty solid.

FactCheck.org does not mention the fact that Obama was directly questioned in a debate about his answer on the gun rights questionnaire, and denied that his handwriting was on that particular document. In fact, it was. You can learn this if you click through to one of the FactCheck.org links. But if we’re talking about taking his rhetoric at face value, doesn’t it matter that he publicly claiming something directly relevant to the issue that turned out to be false? Shouldn’t this be in the body of the FactCheck.org analysis? Apparently they don’t consider it to be important.

Nevertheless, his aides maintain that the gun-ban answer was a mistake and didn’t reflect Obama’s true position.

Oh. Well, we should probably take their word for it, then.

Imagine, those crazy NRA people, basing their claims on a questionnaire that Obama personally saw, that he knew represented his position! Why didn’t they take at face value the claims made later by his campaign, after his earlier answers came back to haunt him?

I mean: how dare they?

Second, we have FactCheck mocking as “unsupported” the NRA’s claim that Obama would “Appoint Judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary Who Share His Views on the Second Amendment.” FactCheck.org says:

The NRA’s fact sheet points out that Obama has voted against the two newest members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama voted against the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005 and Justice Samuel Alito in 2006. They happen to be two of the five justices that voted in favor of the Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s longstanding handgun ban this year. The New York Times has reported that Obama “favored Democratic filibusters to block many Republican nominees deemed too conservative.” But the NRA can point to no statement by Obama calling for a Second-Amendment test for his judicial appointees, and we could find none.

So never mind the justices he has opposed, because he hasn’t explicitly called for a litmus test. But what has he said?

What Obama has actually said about selecting judges is that “[w]e need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

Very sweet. But what has he said about the Second Amendment?

In any case, Obama says he believes the Second Amendment “creates an individual right” to bear arms. That’s at odds with some strong gun-control advocates who had argued that the Second Amendment limited the right to bear arms to a “well-regulated militia.” The Supreme Court rejected that view in its June ruling overturning the D.C. gun ban. But Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Chief Justice John Roberts joined that opinion. To the dismay of gun-control advocates, Obama did not criticize the ruling. Instead, he said it “will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.”

Really? Is that all he has said about the Heller case?

Once again, if you give primacy to what his recent campaign statements have been, then, by golly, he supports the Second Amendment! But if you look at his record — his past statements — then the NRA is right to be concerned.

Here’s what FackCheck.org doesn’t tell you.

The Supreme Court case in Heller says that the D.C. ban “totally bans handgun possession in the home.” That’s about as clear a Second Amendment encroachment as you can imagine.

And what did Obama’s campaign initially say about that total ban on handguns in the home? The campaign once issued a statement to the Chicago Tribune that said:

Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.

This statement proved to be a political loser, of course — and Obama later ended up trying to distance himself from it. That D.C. handgun law is not the D.C. handgun law he thought he knew.

But it’s part of his record. And if the NRA was truly elevating his record over his rhetoric, they had a completely fair point.

FactCheck.org, at this point, is worse than useless. It is positively misleading voters out there.

Factcheck.org Lying for Obama

2008-10-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

Factcheck.org Lying for Obama

http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/09/factcheckorg_fa.html

September 27, 2008
Fact-checking Factcheck.org on Gianna and Obama ads

Only 4 days ago Michelle Malkin called FactCheck.org's output "pure garbage."

I'm here to corroborate.

On September 24, FC posted an article supposedly fact-checking BornAliveTruth.org's Gianna ad as well as Barack Obama's retaliatory attack ad.

There was no excuse for Jessica Henig's hit piece, at times deliberately deceptive and at times woefully ignorant. We know this because we provided every bit of documentation she requested and some she didn't think to request in the days before she posted her liberal spin.

In addition, we emailed protests with the same corroboration on September 25 to FC's editor, Brooks Jackson, and he, too, lacked the objectivity or understanding to do the right thing as requested, disable the post pending further investigation.

The title of Henig's piece gives its bias away: "'Born Alive' baloney."

I wrote Jackson that Henig's article was wrong from the very first word, indicative of shoddy work to follow. Henig should have started with "An," not "A," and 3 days later it's still wrong:

But that was nothing....

Gianna Jessen did not "say" she survived a failed abortion, verbiage indicating a mere claim has been made. Jessen's legal birth records prove she was aborted. Henig reviewed these records, as evidenced by her email to me stating, "Actually, I feel pretty solid on the circumstances of Gianna's birth, as they're detailed on the website."

If Henig were "solid," she would have reported the nature of Gianna's birth as factual, scanned and posted here and here.

Then, in the blink of an eye, after restating Jessen's thesis, "if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here," Henig remarkably changed it: "She's wrong. If she'd been born in Illinois, Illinois law would have protected her with or without the 'born alive' legislation that Obama opposed and that this group supports."

But obviously Jessen did not say "If Illinois law had its way....." Jessen's statement had nothing to do with IL law. It focused squarely on Barack Obama and his strong opposition to giving legal status to abortion survivors and providing them medical care.

Did Henig read Obama's 2001 and 2002 floor speeches from the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act debate? Did she even view Obama's website?

No, Henig ignored irrefutable evidence of Obama's disregard for the postnatal personhood of abortion survivors and instead scampered off on a diversionary rabbit trail.

Had Henig factchecked the right fact, she would have found this immediate example from Obama's own "factcheck" page about an earlier component of IL's Born Alive Act, demonstrating he clearly does not believe abortion survivors like Jessen warrant legal or medical protection:

Given merely the above, how could Henig have determined any other than Obama believes killing abortion survivors like Jessen at birth is nothing more than 4th trimester abortions?

Nevertheless, this turtle will trudge down the rabbit trail after Henig if only to repudiate her misrepresentation of the IL Abortion Act of 1975, with a hat tip to Henig's listed source, Planned Parenthood, which everyone but Henig knows opposed IL's Born Alive.

My information comes from attorney Paul Linton, who represented the American Academy of Medical Ethics when 15 years ago it opposed the US District Court's decision to enjoin much of IL's Abortion Act of 1975.

One section of the IL Abortion Act enjoined in the 1993 Herbst v. O'Malley decision included the definitions of "born alive," "live born," and "live birth."

To restate, there was no enforceable definition of "born alive" in IL law when Obama opposed IL's Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

The IL Born Alive Act would have restored that language. By opposing Born Alive, Obama was agreeing with the Herbst decision that an infant born alive as the result of an abortion should not be protected by the IL Criminal Code.

Further, there are 2 loopholes in the IL Abortion Act.

1. The IL Abortion Act applies only to viable infants, while Born Alive applies to all live-born infants, regardless of viability. In other words, the former dealt with viability, the latter with live birth. Thus, in the case of the live birth of a child who was determined not to be viable at the time the abortion was committed, the 1975 law did not apply.

2. The one determining a baby's viability according to the IL Abortion Act is the abortionist, and s/he is allowed to determine viability pre-birth. Rational people understand the potential for the very person trying to kill the baby pre-birth to subjectively assess the baby's likelihood of survival post-birth.

That said, the IL Abortion Act states that in the event the abortionist determines a baby s/he is trying to kill might survive and might be viable, s/he was to call a 2nd doctor to assess the abortion survivor at birth.

And in this audio clip from Obama's 2002 IL Senate floor debate, he argued against making that very call, stating doing so would be a "burden" to the aborting mother's "original decision." Hear for yourself:

Obama's born alive but let die speech on mp3
Momentarily hopping off her rabbit trail, Henig added:

For the record, Obama says he would have supported "born alive" legislation in Illinois if framed in a way that did not pose a threat to abortion rights granted by the Supreme Court in its Roe v. Wade decision.
Actually, for the real record, Obama opposed identical Born Alive legislation in IL in 2003 that passed 98-0 in the U.S. Senate and for which the pro-abortion group NARAL even went neutral. Furthermore, upon its passage on August 5, 2002, and in the 6 years since, the federal Born Alive law has never been challenged in court.

Finally, after devoting 3/4 of her piece to BornAliveTruth.org's Gianna ad to incorrectly "factcheck" points not even in the ad, Henig finally poked her nose into the Obama attack response ad only to chase off on another rabbit trail to "fact check" an attack Obama made against John McCain in his ad, who had nothing to do with the Gianna ad.

Henig then repeated Obama's deceptive slurs against BornAliveTruth.org's Gianna ad as "sleazy" and "vile" without noting they were actually written by journalists about a completely different ad.

Henig ignored Obama's claim that his Born Alive votes were "taken out of context." The obvious fact check would have been to check their context.

Another fact not checked: Obama threw the word "infanticide" into his ad, never once mentioned by the BornAliveTruth.org ad, in a sentence taken completely out of context by Born Alive's 2003 senate sponsor.

Henig finally did note Obama misrepresented BornAliveTruth.org's ad as being sponsored by McCain only to fittingly close her piece by running off on a 3rd rabbit trail, to say, well, McCain did it, too, and to link to that ad.

Henig must be tired. But she deserves much credit for completely undermining FactCheck.org's stated mission, "to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics."

ACORN Could Cause Obama's Fall

2008-10-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.newsmax.com/morris/acorn_barack_obama/2008/10/15/140760.html

Dick Morris' Political Insider RSS ARCHIVE

Print Page | Forward Page | E-mail Us

ACORN Could Cause Obama's Fall

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:04 PM

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Article Font Size

As Obama lengthens his lead, the Republicans are praying that the election becomes close enough for the Democrats not to steal. But meanwhile, ACORN, the radical community group, is becoming an embarrassment for Obama.

It is not as if its shenanigans are likely to tip the result, with the Democrats so far ahead. But as it is raided by the FBI in state after state (11 so far), it is becoming identified as the electoral equivalent of Greenpeace, extremists who will stop at nothing to get their way.

What makes ACORN particularly embarrassing for Obama is that he used to be one of them. He served as general counsel for ACORN in Illinois, channeled millions to the organization from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (whose funds he distributed) and has lately spent $800,000 of his campaign money to subsidize the group's activities.

For this emolument, ACORN has registered voters 15 times over, canvassed the graveyards for votes, and prepared to commit electoral fraud on a massive scale.

With friends like this, Obama doesn't need enemies. As their radical activities make headlines every day, Obama's intimate involvement with these radicals becomes more and more of a political liability.

The other Obama scandals have no topical relevance. The Rev. Wright no longer spews hatred from the pulpit and has apparently been persuaded to stay away from media interviews. William Ayers is likewise making himself scarce, and the Obama/Ayers relationship, whatever it may have been, is clearly in the past.

Rezko is facing sentencing in his own corruption case, but isn't likely to turn on the one man who may acquire the power to pardon him.

But, as Election Day approaches and early balloting proceeds in many states, ACORN's tactics will get more and more media attention. As election officials discover ACORN frauds, the association will become more injurious to Obama, particularly when it is his own campaign that is funding many of the fraudulent activities.

At the very least, the negative publicity ACORN will attract will paint Obama as a radical with questionable judgment. At the most, it might cause voters to wonder if he is not himself involved in electoral fraud.

The recent book by Wall Street Journal editor John Fund, "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," discusses the prevalence of voter fraud, made newly possible by lax enforcement of laws requiring identification to vote. As Fund indicates, the motor/voter laws have encouraged waves of new voters, many of them ineligible to participate. Let us remember that eight of the Sept. 11 hijackers were registered to vote!

So ACORN is the gift that will keep on giving as its activities attract attention while Election Day nears. But are these McCain attacks on Obama going to work?

Clearly they have not so far. Obama has lower negatives than McCain, and his unfavorable rating has not risen despite the avalanche of attack advertising to which he has been subjected.

Possibly, voters are just inured to the attacks and disregard them. But more likely they are just distracted by the financial meltdown all around them. We have never had a presidential race, since 1944, where the contest was not the most important news in the four weeks before the election. (In 1944, the war overshadowed the election, much to the frustration of the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey.)

The candidates seem unable to get a word in edgewise as the financial news dominates. People follow the Dow Jones more than the Gallup, Rasmussen, or Zogby polls.

If the presidential race remains an afterthought, crowded out by the financial news, Obama will waltz into the White House by a comfortable margin. But if the stock market stops its gyrations for a while and no new household name/corporation or bank goes broke, the negatives against Obama will compel attention at last.

And then the race may close swiftly and dramatically.

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

OCTOBER 18th: WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES

2008-10-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2008
CONTACT: Patrick Benedict

PatrickBenedict@rcin.net

OCTOBER 18th ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES RECEIVES INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (OCTOBER 10th, 2008) -

The October 18th WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event, initiated by the Saint Michael the Archangel Organization, has received attention from a number of people from various places throughout the world. Presently, support has come in from at least one source in each of the following nations: Latvia, Tanzania, Italy, England, Lithuania, Croatia, Czech Republic, Philippines, United States, Canada, India, Peru, Ghana, Kenya, and Poland.

" There is no requirement to contact the Saint Michael the Archangel Organization about the WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event. But, it is very encouraging to see so much interest in this pro-life prayer event," said Patrick Benedict, a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church(Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee) and the President of the Saint Michael the Archangel Organization.

A person who wants to participate in the WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event will need to pray the Rosary on Saturday, October 18th for the following intention: For an end to the surgical and non-surgical killing of unborn babies. It is hoped each participant will pray the Rosary during the 9:00 a.m. hour, but this is not required. There is information about the WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event available in 12 different languages at the website

www.SaintMichaelTheArchangelOrganization.org

"I very much appreciate all the people who have helped with this pro-life effort", continued Benedict. "And, I hope, with the time left before Oct. 18th, that the people who are planning on participating will contact many other people and let them know about the WORLDWIDE ROSARY FOR UNBORN BABIES prayer event."

Charlie Daniels vs. Obama

2008-10-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

From: Hugh Bodey
aanh@frontiernet.net

Charlie Daniels vs. Obama

Guns and Church

Since I identify with the people who fall into Barrack Obama's elitist description about people of faith who keep firearms I'm not very happy with Barrack Obama's recent remarks.

He said something to the effect that us rednecks cling to our guns and our religion when we get frustrated and I would like to take umbrage to these remarks. My faith goes much deeper than his superficial explanation and I love my guns even when I'm not frustrated.

And I am not by myself. I was going to church and shooting guns before Mr. Obama was even born and come from a long line of good people who have been doing it for generations.
To me this latest Obama blunder only helps reveal the depth of condescension the far left wing of the Democrat party has for the folks out here in flyover country.

Mr. Obama's remarks are insulting to a lot of folks. It's kind of like Abraham Lincoln said, 'God must love the common people because He made so many of them'.

His remarks make me think that Obama doesn't know the people of this country very well. I'm sure he knows the jet set and the Hollywood bunch, the limousine liberals and the save the whales, kill the babies crowd, but does he think that the ordinary people don't count? Does he think that they're so stupid that they don't know who he's talking about when he says these things? Does he think their opinions aren't important? Apparently.

How can a man stand in front of America and tell people what he wants to do for them and have so little respect for a whole segment of the population?? In fact, a very large segment. Does that mean that he would only represent the high-minded liberal ideals of the far left and ignore the rest of us?

What kind of Commander and Chief would he make if he doesn't respect the very people who make up the lion's share of the armed forces?

You may say I'm over reacting, but I'm getting sick and tired of him making these elitist statements and saying that he had been taken out of context or some other flimsy excuse.

After his wife's remark about not being proud of this country and his pastor's statements calling America the U.S.K.K.K.A. and his own statement about not wanting his daughter punished with a baby, it makes me wonder what kind of a man Obama really is and what kind of a President he'd make.

Would he be an antigun advocate pushing the effort to take the firearms out of innocent citizen's hands? Would he not respect the religious beliefs of America, not taking them into account in his agenda?

I really don't know much about the man and neither does America. He basically came from out of nowhere and as the facts come out little by by little, they don't make a particularly confident picture. I have a great fear that if our military gets broken by another president, this time we're not going to have time to fix it again and what that spells for America, I don't even want to contemplate. Oh well, I guess I'll grab my gun and go to church.

Charlie Daniels

"Lord, What would You have me do for YOU today?"

(ASK, then LISTEN for HIS answer!!!)

Ex-FBI Agents Outraged at Obama-Ayers Ties

2008-10-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/fbi_obama_ayers_/2008/10/14/140252.html

Ex-FBI Agents Outraged at Obama-Ayers Ties

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:46 AM

By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size

Former FBI agents who worked the Weather Underground case are angry about the longtime relationship between Barack Obama and William Ayers, a leader of the domestic terrorist group who has admitted widespread bombings.

“It outrages me to think that a person would be seeking the presidency of the United States and was close to an individual like Bill Ayers,” former agent Max Noel told Newsmax.

Ayers said in his book that he participated in the bombing of New York City police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. In September 2001, the New York Times quoted him as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs . . . I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was sent to prison for failing to cooperate in solving the robbery of a Brink's armored car in which two police officers were killed.

Charges against Ayers were dropped because the FBI used so-called national security wiretaps that could not be used legally in criminal cases.

Obama launched his political career at Ayers’ home in 1995. From 1999 to 2002, he served with Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago. In response to criticism of their relationship, Obama has said he was 8 when Ayers was bombing buildings.

But the presidential candidate was a grown man when he sought and obtained Ayers’ blessing for his entry into politics.

Former FBI agent Willie Reagan said, “I spent seven years of my life hunting down people who described themselves as revolutionary communists and were involved in bombings.”

Reagan, who infiltrated the Weather Underground in New York, said he witnessed members of the group making bombs.

“At some point, Obama knew of his background and should have repudiated him, not later when he is running for president,” Reagan told Newsmax.

Noel, who worked the Weather Underground case in San Francisco, also questioned Obama’s reaction to questions about the issue, saying, “I have a problem with Obama minimizing the relationship and saying it has nothing to do with anything. Because having done background investigations for security clearances for years, you look into a person’s character, his associates, his loyalty and so forth.”

Noel noted that Ayers was a directing force of the Weather Underground. His wife-to-be, Bernardine, headed that organization.

“They were a violent, violent, anti-government, domestic terrorist organization,” Noel said. “Obama has not only associated with those people, he continued associating with racist people like his minister Jeremiah Wright over a period of 20 years. I don’t think that’s by happenstance. It’s just amazing to me. The American people are being led by the nose by people who say this isn’t important.”

Oliver “Buck” Revell, a former associate deputy director of the FBI, is similarly blunt. “In dealing with Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and the element that they represented, Obama was dealing with individuals who both openly and admittedly have engaged in treasonous activity and violence against the United States,” said Revell, who worked on the Weather Underground case in Philadelphia and Chicago.

The Obama campaign has refused to say when Obama became aware of Ayers’ terrorist background. When Obama began going to Columbia University in 1981, both Ayers and Dohrn were frequently in the news because of their violent past and brushes with the law. Ayers’ past was well known in Chicago, where he was quoted regularly and described as a former radical and former fugitive. Obama continued to serve on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago with Ayers for more than a year after Ayers expressed regret in the New York Times for not bombing more people.

“Obama is a bright man, and he’s certainly well read and intelligent,” Revell said. “He had to know the background and activities which have been openly described by Ayers.

“The relationship says to me that Obama lacks judgment, that he lacks a perspective on what the United States should stand for,” he said. “It’s appalling that he was even elected to the state Senate in Illinois, but to go from there to a United States senator and then to a candidate for president is astounding.”

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
e-mail. Go here now.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved

Obama has 4-point lead on McCain Oct 13

2008-10-13T21:39:00.001-07:00

POLL-Obama has 4-point lead on McCain
Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:03pm EDT Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page | Recommend (1) [-] Text [+] By Andrew Quinn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has a 4-point lead over his Republican rival John McCain in the U.S. presidential race, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby tracking poll released on Monday.

Obama leads McCain by 48 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, down 2 percentage points from the lead he enjoyed on Sunday. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Pollster John Zogby said Monday's results, which saw Obama drop 1 point and McCain gain 1 point from Sunday's figures, was an indication the race remained competitive in the final weeks before the Nov. 4 election.

"One day does not make a trend, but perhaps McCain may have stopped some bleeding -- and there was bleeding," he said.

Obama had seen his lead firm in recent weeks as the financial crisis grabbed the headlines, unnerving many voters and putting the campaign spotlight on economic issues.

Obama's 6-point lead in Sunday's results from the rolling, 4-day tracking poll had been his strongest since the survey began on Oct. 7.

Zogby said that while Obama still had a 17-point lead among independent voters, this was down from 21 points on Sunday and showed that some independents remain to be persuaded.

"If we see that lead going down again tomorrow, maybe we are talking a horserace," he said.

But Obama still claimed a 9-point lead among women, who will also play a crucial role in the election, while McCain's numbers were lagging among some traditionally Republican groups including older and richer voters, Zogby said.

McCain, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam war prisoner, lost an early advantage among the oldest U.S. voters, who now back Obama by 47 percent to 44 percent.

And poll responents identified as members of the "investor class" -- who backed President George W. Bush by double digits in the 2004 elections -- now support McCain by just 49 percent to 44 percent for Obama.

"McCain obviously has to regain his lead with people over 65 and with the investor class," Zogby said. "He is certainly not out of the woods here."

The two candidates will make their pitches directly to the American people again on Wednesday when they meet for their third and final presidential debate.

The rolling tracking poll surveyed 1,207 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day's results are added while the oldest day's results are dropped in an effort to track changing momentum.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

Obama has 4-point lead on McCain Oct 13

2008-10-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Obama/ACORN:Depends on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is”

2008-10-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

-The accuracy of [Obama's] denials depends in part on their lawyerly wording, on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” in former President Bill Clinton’s sophistic phrase.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_acorn_organizer/2008/10/13/139989.html

Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past

Monday, October 13, 2008 2:22 PM

By: Lowell Ponte Article Font Size

“Barack Obama never organized with ACORN,” reads one of the banners on Barack Obama’s Web site, “Fight the Smears,” www.fightthesmears.org.

One apparent aim of the site is to distance Obama from the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose operatives are being investigated for potential voter fraud in at least 13 states.

“Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer,” the Web site continues.

“Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.

“Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.”

The accuracy of these denials depends in part on their lawyerly wording, on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” in former President Bill Clinton’s sophistic phrase.

No one has accused the Illinois senator of having “organized with ACORN” or having been “an ACORN community organizer,” so these denials seem either misplaced or sleight of hand to distract from what his actual ACORN connections have been.

Toni Foulkes, longtime Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN’s National Association Board, says the organization “invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.”

Obama did give training to ACORN leaders every year from 1993 until at least 2003, when Foulkes published an article saying these things about him in the winter 2003 issue of the journal Social Policy.

Obama also reportedly helped train the staff of a high-ranking ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, later arrested for heading up a disruptive confrontation between ACORN protesters and the Chicago City Council described in a recent Newsmax investigation.

[Editor's Note: Read Newsmax's recent investigation of ACORN, "Obama and ACORN: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide" — Go Here Now].

ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg is referenced in the Oct. 11 New York Times as acknowledging that, in Times’ reporter Stephanie Strom’s words, “Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said."

So ACORN now says that Obama did training for the organization. But because Obama did these training sessions without pay, and because to hire means “to employ someone for a wage or fee,” it is technically correct to say he was never “hired” to do so.

ACORN both selected and paid Barack Obama as a lawyer in 1995 to sue the state of Illinois to compel implementation of a law known as Motor-Voter. ACORN, however, now says it was only one of several plaintiffs in the case and hence that it would be wrong to say Obama was the organization’s lawyer. But ACORN was the lead plaintiff, and therefore the case is recorded as ACORN, et al. v. Edgar (then-Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar).

In 1992 Obama became Illinois’ statewide head of Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is required to be nonpartisan to retain its tax-exempt status. The Obama campaign Web site says, “ACORN was not part of Project Vote.” Critics argue that the reverse is true.

In fact, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders in November: When “I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.”

Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty and two of her colleagues described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.

And the co-founder and then head of ACORN itself, former Students for a Democratic Society new leftist Wade Rathke described Project Vote, in 2004 as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”

As Newsmax reported last week, Rathke spun off nearly 100 legal entities from ACORN and moved large amounts of money among them. Rathke left the organization this year after it came to light that his brother had diverted almost a million dollars from ACORN coffers.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the New York Times that a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues today flow to ACORN and various of its affiliates as payment for services. But LaBolt contends that Project Vote and ACORN were not as intertwined in 1992 when Obama ran Project Vote. This month, LaBolt has been telling reporters that Obama had never been “an ACORN trainer.”

It “wasn’t until after Mr. Obama’s tenure had ended that (Project Vote) began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations,” Project Vote founder attorney Sanford A. Newman wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Note that this lawyerly letter never denies Project Vote’s deep involvement with ACORN.

“To say that Obama didn’t work for ACORN is just playing word games,” wrote Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center, co-author of an investigation titled Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community Organizing to Politics.

“It would be like a Sam’s Club employee indignantly insisting he didn’t work for Wal-Mart,” Vadum said. “It boggles the mind why anyone would deny such easily verifiable facts.”

Obama’s critics say he has been remarkably successful at burying his ACORN past until now, in large part with help from liberal allies in the national media who refuse to scrutinize Obama with the same probing investigations they aim at his opponents.

In a story reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” whose hero works in a government office rewriting history to erase Big Brother’s past mistakes, the Oct. 9th Cleveland Leader reported, “Attempts to hide evidence of Obama’s involvement in ACORN have included wiping the Web clean of potentially damaging articles.”

The above-mentioned Foulkes article that discussed Obama’s training of ACORN leaders recently was pulled from the Social Policy Web site, the Leader reported. Although this makes information about Obama’s past harder to find for journalists and voters, the Leader noted, scholarly duplicates of the Web retain copies of such texts despite any Orwellian efforts to rewrite Barack Obama’s past.

Los Angeles Times reporters Letta Tayler and Keith Herbert tried to clarify Obama’s past and found getting a clear fix on him elusive.

“Further blurring the picture,” they wrote on March 2, are Barack Obama’s “descriptions of community organizing in his youthful memoir, ‘Dreams From My Father,’ in which he admits he disguises names, creates composite characters, switches some chronologies, and uses ‘approximation’ of dialogue.”

[Editor's Note: Read Newsmax's recent investigation of ACORN, "Obama and ACORN: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide" — Go Here Now].

Odious Candidacy: Felon Rezko, Unrepentant Terrorist Ayers, Race-baiting Wright

2008-10-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

-Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters.

-Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

-Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/10/10/an_unprecedented_candidacy?page=full&comments=true

An Unprecedented Candidacy
by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate.

McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by The New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.

This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.

Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.

Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers' unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers' views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

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About The Author
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Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985

Gay Agenda: Why Media is Bias and "Hates" McCain/Palin

2008-10-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

-NBC to ‘Gay’ Journalists: ‘Your Victories Are Our Victories’
[http://sunlituplands.blogspot.com/2008/09/nbc-to-gay-journalists-your-victories.html]

-NBC/National Journal reporter Matthew Berger said he ... acknowledged how difficult it is for a journalist to do his job when you “hate” the people you’re covering.
[http://sunlituplands.blogspot.com/2008/09/nbc-to-gay-journalists-your-victories.html]

-At the welcoming reception, a man sported a T-shirt with "NAMBLA" boldly emblazoned on the front. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, advocates pedophilia. [http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brian-fitzpatrick/2008/08/28/big-media-endorses-homosexual-activist-agenda]

-A panel supposedly intended to foster accurate coverage of religion quickly turned into a political strategizing session aimed at “retaking Christianity” from conservatives. The moderator and organizer of the panel, furniture magnate Mitchell Gold, is the founder of Faith in America, a homosexual activist organization targeting the religious community.[http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brian-fitzpatrick/2008/08/28/big-media-endorses-homosexual-activist-agenda]

http://sunlituplands.blogspot.com/2008/09/nbc-to-gay-journalists-your-victories.html

NBC to ‘Gay’ Journalists: ‘Your Victories Are Our Victories’

From The Culture and Media Institute
By Brian Fitzpatrick

It’s spelled NLGJA, but they pronounce it “Negligee."

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) just held its annual convention here in Washington D.C., attracting hundreds of journalists – and ringing endorsements – from virtually every major publication and broadcaster in the news media.

In a full-page ad in the convention program, NBC Universal declared it is “proud to support NLGJA,” under the bold headline: “YOUR VICTORIES ARE OUR VICTORIES"

After listening to speaker after speaker express hatred and contempt for political and religious conservatives while plotting how to advance the homosexual activist agenda through journalism, I’m left wondering whether Americans know the extent of the media’s bias on homosexual issues. Do they know that the news media have thrown themselves fully behind the gay rights movement? Every major news organization sponsored the convention, bought space in the program or had recruiting booths.

Hatred

NBC/National Journal reporter Matthew Berger said he experienced “reverse Stockholm syndrome” while on the campaign trail covering GOP religious conservative Mike Huckabee. “Stockholm syndrome” is what afflicts hostages who come to love their captors. If Berger’s feelings changed after traveling with the Huckabee campaign, they went in the opposite direction. He acknowledged how difficult it is for a journalist to do his job when you “hate” the people you’re covering. Berger said he was happy when he was transferred to the “gay-friendly” Rudolph Giuliani campaign.

Sending an outspoken activist like Berger, the former president of NLGJA’s Washington D.C. chapter, to cover the Huckabee campaign is like sending a hard-right activist to cover the Obama campaign. What was NBC thinking? Maybe they had no choice. Does NBC have anybody on staff who doesn’t hate religious conservatives?

Kerry Eleveld, news editor for a homosexual-themed magazine appropriately named The Advocate, described as “refreshing” Pastor Rick Warren’s questions to the presidential candidates at the Saddleback Church forum on August 16. However, she also got big laughs when she said she understood how others might find the pastor’s participation in the political process “nauseating.”

Discussing attitudes toward homosexuality, Los Angeles Times opinion pages editor Robin Rauzi revealed Big Media contempt for the rubes in Flyover Country: “We feel our readers are ahead of where they are in Kansas City.”

Political Activism

During a sparsely attended (11 out of hundreds of conferees) session promoting objectivity in news coverage, a reporter from a Florida newspaper acknowledged his biases: the “public’s right to know,” and “equality.” By “equality,” he meant the homosexual activist political agenda. He revealed the tension that ought to have bedeviled every journalist at the conference: how to avoid ideological bias while covering the news.

On a partisan level, the conferees clearly leaned toward the Democrats. One speaker frankly admitted that the homosexual activist community generally expects most gays to be Democrats. Two panels touched on a partisan controversy raging in the homosexual community: James Kirchick, Assistant Editor of The New Republic, said gays are “shocked” and “up in arms” because the owner of “Manhunt,” a very popular same-sex “dating” site, contributes money to presumptive GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Even Patrick Sammon, president of the organization for homosexuals in the GOP, the Log Cabin Republicans, stressed that his organization does not support social conservatives. Sammon called former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum a “bigot.” Another journalist observed that “some people” in D.C. make it their business to “out” homosexual staffers of GOP congressmen with an “anti-gay agenda.”

A panel supposedly intended to foster accurate coverage of religion quickly turned into a political strategizing session aimed at “retaking Christianity” from conservatives. The moderator and organizer of the panel, furniture magnate Mitchell Gold, is the founder of Faith in America, a homosexual activist organization targeting the religious community.

Gold said, “The single biggest [obstacle] to gays having equal rights in the country is religion,” so “I set myself to learn about it.” One of the panelists, Ann Craig, director of Religion, Faith & Values for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), said, “We’re not getting anyplace until we begin conquering the debate” in the religious community.

How to do it? Panelist Jimmy Creech, the former United Methodist pastor defrocked in 1999 for conducting same-sex “marriages,” told the journalists to seek out “other voices” rather than quote the 700 Club’s Pat Robertson and Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson. According to Creech, conservative Christian leaders like Robertson and Dobson are “the most radical Christians in America today,” and represent “a very minority point of view.”

The sole journalist on the panel was David Waters, editor of the Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog. Waters urged reporters “not to go” to established leaders like Robertson and Dobson, contrasting them to “real people” in the pews.

Sponsorship

Who paid for this blend of journalism and activism? The NLGJA convention was underwritten by most of the biggest names in the news business. At the $25,000 level: the McClatchy Company. At the $15,000 level: CBS, CNN, Gannett Foundation, ESPN, and Hearst Newspapers. Kicking in $10,000 were NBC, Fox Business, Fox News, News Corporation, and The Washington Post. Good for $5,000 were ABC News and Bloomberg. Publisher and broadcaster Cox Enterprises bought the inside cover of the program, and CBS News “salutes NLGJA” on the back cover. Gannett (USA Today) “salutes” NLGJA in a full-page ad, as does The New York Times in a half-page ad. A.H. Belo Corporation (Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal) declares it is a “proud sponsor” in a full-page ad, while The Washington Post “congratulates” NLGJA in its full-page ad.

Recruiting

NLGJA members generally view themselves as members of an oppressed minority group, which suggests they’re likely to bring a political agenda to their journalism. The NLGJA convention doesn’t seem to be a likely place to find objective reporters. Nevertheless, most of the top organizations in journalism sent recruiters: The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, NPR, Bloomberg, even conservative-leaning Fox. The poor Fox recruiter seemed lonely.

The political and ideological bias so readily apparent at the NLGJA convention reflects a glaring problem in the news industry as a whole. Reporting the news objectively is still a matter of professional pride to most journalists, but many also have bigger fish to fry.

Brian Fitzpatrick is senior editor at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.

http://apcheck.blogspot.com/2008/10/ap-reports-anti-gay-marriage-effort.html

AP Reports Anti-Gay Marriage Effort, Ingores School Indoctrination

The Associated Press reported on the Mormon church's effort to pass a bill that would make gay marriage illegal, again, until the corrupt state court overturns it, again.

But AP won't report on 18 first-graders who were forced to see their teacher in a lesbian wedding. I guess a church handing out pamphlets is shocking news but forcing indoctrination on children at school isn't.

-At the welcoming reception, a man sported a T-shirt with "NAMBLA" boldly emblazoned on the front. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, advocates pedophilia. [http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brian-fitzpatrick/2008/08/28/big-media-endorses-homosexual-activist-agenda]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brian-fitzpatrick/2008/08/28/big-media-endorses-homosexual-activist-agenda

Elite Media Give Big Bucks to Gay Journalist Group
By Brian Fitzpatrick
August 28, 2008 - 12:19 ET

Rarely do the media put their institutional political bias on public display, but this past weekend, America's news industry titans left no doubt that they're fully behind one of the nation's most radical cultural and political movements.

ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the corporate owners of USA Today, the Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Sacramento Bee, The Dallas Morning News and many other newspapers, all spent thousands of dollars sponsoring the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Washington, D.C. Many journalists from these Big Media mainstays attended or spoke at the convention.

In the name of "diversity," all the organizations listed above ran recruiting booths, as did NPR. Thus, the nation's major news providers demonstrated that they have bought into the central proposition of homosexual activists: that people engaging in homosexuality or bisexuality, along with transsexuals, are a historically oppressed minority group deserving the same preferential treatment and legal protections that society provides to ethnic minorities and women.

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

If Big Media views homosexuality primarily as a civil rights issue rather than as a moral and health issue, their coverage of all homosexual-related stories from HIV/AIDS to same-sex "marriage" must be viewed skeptically. How can they cover homosexual-related issues fairly if they define opponents of the activist political agenda as enemies of equal rights - in short, as bigots?

Also, by deliberately recruiting NLGJA members, the news media have demonstrated their willingness to hire journalists who likely share the radical political and social perspectives that dominate the homosexual activist movement.

Many of the journalists at the convention made their left-leaning partisanship and anti-religious prejudice clear. During a discussion on covering sex scandals, a panelist said, "There's a whole lot of hypocrisy on the Republican side, they spout this crap about family values all of the time, you know, gotta love my wife, yada yada yada..." The specific examples of hypocrisy he cited, however, were Democrats.

The session also discussed the ethics of "outing" homosexuals in politics. Two panelists said outing is okay if the politician opposes the homosexual agenda:

"If they are taking actions in their public life to deny gay and lesbian rights...then yes."

and

"If someone is advocating something that is specifically, uh, anti-gay, they're on a crusade, they are a Religious Right person on a crusade ... if they are advocating something that is going to take away our rights and they are presenting themselves false and they're throwing the sexuality issue out there, not their own, then I do think it's fair game."

Closeted politicians who oppose the homosexual political agenda get outed; those who support the agenda do not. Is this fair and balanced journalism, or using journalism as a political weapon?

Radical social perspectives? Several people at the convention bemoaned the failure of the homosexual rights movement to include transsexuals in ENDA (employment nondiscrimination) legislation. At least three men at the convention, including one panel speaker, are attempting to transform themselves into women.

At the welcoming reception, a man sported a T-shirt with "NAMBLA" boldly emblazoned on the front. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, advocates pedophilia.

One panel openly discussed how to use journalism, specifically the coverage of religion, to promote the homosexual agenda. Panel organizer Mitchell Gold, a furniture magnate, said, "The single biggest [obstacle] to gays having equal rights in the country is religion," so "I set myself to learn about it." Panelist Ann Craig of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said, "We're not getting anyplace until we begin conquering the debate" in the religious community.

Here is an overall account of the NLGJA convention: NBC to ‘Gay' Journalists: ‘Your Victories Are Our Victories.'

Here is a detailed story about the panel that discussed how homosexual journalists should cover religion: ‘Gay' Journalism Conference Panel Targets Religious Influence on Public Policy.

McCain Calls Lewis' Charge 'Shocking'
AP

The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator doesn't believe McCain or his policy criticism is at all comparable to Wallace and his segregationist policies.
In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." He noted that Wallace also ran for president.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."
One of the seminal events of the civil rights movement was the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. Four black girls died in the blast, which was linked to a Ku Klux Klan group.
Late Saturday, Lewis released another statement saying it was not his "intention or desire" to directly compare McCain or Palin to Wallace.
McCain Counters Obama 'Arab' QuestionWhile on the campaign trail Friday, Republican presidential nominee John McCain countered views by some in his audience who expressed fear of an Obama presidency, and a notion that the Illinois senator was an Arab. (Oct. 11)
"My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior," he said. "I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation."
Lewis' comments follow widely reported examples of anger at McCain rallies that has been aimed at Obama, the first black man to be a major party's nominee for president. During some rallies featuring McCain and Palin, supporters have shouted "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar" and even "off with his head."
The outbursts came amid a harshly personal line of attack against Obama by the GOP campaign. McCain and Palin have said Obama failed to tell the truth about his ties to 1960s radical William Ayers, had a radical agenda on abortion, and wasn't really known to voters. Last weekend, Palin signaled the uptick in the criticism when she charged that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," a reference to Ayers, and that he didn't see the U.S. as others did.
McCain drew boos at a town-hall meeting Friday in Minnesota when he defended Obama after a supporter said he feared what would happen if Obama were elected president. He also cut short a woman who said Obama was an Arab, and he called his rival "a decent, family man."

On Saturday, McCain called on Obama to repudiate Lewis' remarks. While dismissing the comparison to Wallace, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Lewis was on target in other ways.
"John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists,'" Burton said in a statement.
In his remarks, Lewis also said: "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."
McCain rejected any comparison to Wallace

Obama’s Campaign “Paid More Than $800,000”

2008-10-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Obama’s Rotten ACORN
by Liberally Conservative @ 10:28 am. Filed under Politics, Elections, U.S. Constitution, Law & Justice

You can tie an ACORN around the neck of Barack Hussein Obama because he own’s the organization Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. This story has been on this site since mid-July, it’s not a sudden revelation.

Here is some information that is finally “leaking” out as slow as maple syrup from a tree at 10 below zero.

Obama’s campaign has also shelled out about $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary, Citizens Services Inc., to help with voter registration efforts. Although ACORN says it is nonpartisan, its registration efforts tend to be focused among groups friendly to Democratic candidates. Imagine that!

In just the past few weeks, even before the latest wave of registration-fraud allegations, conservatives cited ACORN as one reason for opposing the initial bailout plan in the House, asserting that one provision of the bailout package would have steered money toward housing-related organizations such as ACORN. The plan called for $150 billion earmarked for ACORN and their clones. One Republican memo called the provision “a left-wing giveaway that would force taxpayers to bankroll a slush fund for a discredited ally of the Democratic Party.”

Let’s dig deeper into Barack Obama’s rotten acorn:

Obama’s Campaign Paid Over $800,000 To ACORN Subsidiary, CSI, For Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts, But “Mistakenly Misrepresented” Their Work To The FEC:

Obama’s Campaign “Paid More Than $800,000” To ACORN For Get-Out-The Vote Efforts; The Campaign Originally “Misrepresented” The Group’s Work To The FEC. “U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat’s campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports. An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in ‘get-out-the-vote’ projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.” (David M. Brown, “Obama To Amend Report On $800,000 In Spending,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 8/22/08)

Obama and ACORN - Legal Work

Obama Was Part Of Team Of Lawyers Who Represented ACORN In A Suit Against The State Of Illinois. “Obama was part of a team of attorneys who represented the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995 for failing to implement a federal law designed to make it easier for the poor and others to register as voters.” (Mike Robinson, “Obama Got Start In Civil Rights Practice,” The Associated Press, 2/20/07)

Obama and ACORN - Community Organizing

Obama Formerly Represented ACORN, Taught Classes For Future Leaders Of ACORN, And They Endorsed His 2008 Presidential Campaign:

Obama Directed Project Vote And Later Taught Classes For “Future Leaders Identified By ACORN And The Centers For New Horizons.” “He [Obama] says he is drawn to politics, despite its superficialities, as a means to advance his real passion and calling: community organization. … In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls–even more than were registered during Harold Washington’s mayoral campaigns. ‘It’s a power thing,’ said the brochures and radio commercials. … Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.” (Hank De Zutter, Op-Ed, “What Makes Obama Run?” Chicago Reader, 12/8/95)

Obama and ACORN - Grants

The Chicago ACORN Received Grants Of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), And $40,000 (2002) From The Woods Fund. (Donors Forum Website, ifs.donorsforum.org, Accessed 6/10/08)

NOTE: From 1993 To 2002, Barack Obama Served On The Board Of Directors For The Woods Fund. (Tim Novak and Fran Spielman, “Obama Helped Ex-Boss Get $1 Mil. From Charity,” Chicago

AP's Gay Agenda Drove Gay Marriage Policy

2008-10-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/6/9/9/5/p169953_index.html

The Gay Marriage Debate: Did the Media Agenda Drive the Policy Agenda or Vice Versa?

Justice Antonin Scalia insisted in a strongly worded dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision in 2003 that the ruling to decriminalize homosexuality would open the way for gay marriage.

Within months, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered its Legislature to permit same-sex unions. A continent away, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered his city to begin performing gay marriages.

This case study examines nearly 13 months of Associated Press coverage of the nationwide gay-marriage debate, culminating with the U.S. Senate’s defeat in 2004 of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex unions.

Using critical analysis, it explores how the media agenda influenced the policy agenda and vice versa. It finds that media-driven policy stories overwhelmed those driven by the policy agenda, since reporters have many more choices than do policymakers for keeping an issue alive.

Further, the U.S. presidential election campaigns of 2004 magnified the ways in which reporters could press for putting gay marriage on the policy agenda.

While the policy agenda on gay marriage certainly influenced the media agenda, the media agenda likely also propelled the policy agenda on both coasts, and in a dozen states in between, faster and further than it would have gone otherwise. This likely resulted because, in accord with the theorizing of Walgrave and Van Aelst (March 2006), gay marriage was an unobtrusive and new issue, political actors had clear responsibility over it, and the reporting was dramatic, unambiguous and pointed toward self-evident solutions.

AP Hides Gay Agenda behind Report Written by 'Pro-gay Advocate'

2008-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=355

Homosexual adoption report written by 'pro-gay advocate'
Associated Press Hides Homosexual Agenda behind report

Homosexual adoption report written by 'pro-gay advocate'
Associated Press doesn't disclose bias of controversial policy's author

March 25, 2006 © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

"Adoption Institute Supports Gay Parents," trumpets the headline of the Associated Press report – followed by "Major Adoption Institute Issues Report That Says Blocking Gay Adoption Keeps Kids in Foster Care."

Quoting the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute as advising adoption agencies to energetically recruit homosexuals and lesbians, the report gives the impression America's adoption industry has turned clearly in the direction of not only accepting, but strongly promoting, homosexual adoption.

"Laws and policies that preclude adoption by gay or lesbian parents disadvantage the tens of thousands of children mired in the foster care system who need permanent, loving homes," the adoption organization said.

However, as J. Richard Pearcey reveals in his Pearcey Report, the pro-homosexual adoption report was written by a well-known pro-"gay" advocate.

The author of the study, notes Pearcey, is identified in the story only as "Illinois State University adoption expert Jeanne Howard." And although AP does report that the study was "funded by the Gill Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign," both actively involved in promoting the "gay rights" agenda, the report, writes Pearcey, "does not inform readers that Jeanne Howard is passionately involved in promoting acceptance of homosexuals in her work with P-FLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)."

"Homosexual activists' handprints are all over this one," adds Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute, part of Concerned Women for America. "Take it with a grain of salt. They funded it and will no doubt promote it, hoping the public will be too distracted to check its pedigree."

Associated Press's failure to disclose the bias of its "expert" is reminiscent of Time magazine's Oct. 10 cover story on "gay teens." In "The battle over gay teens," a positive portrayal of American youth "coming out" and proclaiming that they are "gay," Time fails to disclose that its reporter, John Cloud, is himself homosexual. And Cloud, in turn, doesn't mention until near the end of his lengthy report that the key researcher on which the entire story is based is also homosexual.

In fact, as WND revealed, Cloud – identified only as a Time staffer – in fact has a long history of advancing "gay" causes, including the promotion of anonymous homosexual orgies.

In the May 9, 1997, edition of the Washington City Paper, a homosexual publication, Cloud authored a piece called "The Naked City" in which he described his first-hand experiences at a Washington, D.C., group-sex party for homosexuals.

In his Time article, Cloud positively portrays the phenomenon of ever-younger American children self-identifying as "gay," praises the massive proliferation of Gay Straight Alliance clubs in public schools nationwide, showcases the Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to youngsters who believe they are "gay," and categorically dismisses professional therapeutic and religious attempts to help homosexuals change their orientation.

Cloud's key expert throughout the Time cover story is Ritch Savin-Williams, chairman of Cornell University's human development department and author of a new book called "The New Gay Teenager." Not until near the close of the article does Cloud slip in the fact that Savin-Williams is "a 56-year-old gay man with a slightly elfish mien."

While such blatant advocacy on Time's part has provoked outrage, it also plays a central role in advancing the radical "gay rights" agenda, says David Kupelian, who dramatically exposes the sophisticated homosexual propaganda machine in his new book, "The Marketing of Evil."

"When it comes to homosexuality and gay rights, most Americans simply have no idea what hit them," said Kupelian. In the book's opening chapter, "I unveil all of the amazing techniques and strategies radical 'gay rights' marketers have used over the last 15 years to utterly transform Americans' views toward homosexuality.

"An absolutely vital part of that marketing campaign," Kupelian adds, "is played by the not-so- 'mainstream media,' including Time."

Homosexual 'expertise'

In another even more high-profile instance of the non-disclosure of pro-homosexual "experts," in late 2004 the American Psychological Association – the world's largest psychologists' organization with a reported 150,000 members – announced its controversial endorsement of same-sex "marriage".

What the APA didn't announce, however, was that the seven-member panel that spearheaded the evaluation and endorsement effort reportedly consisted entirely of "gay activists." In fact, one of the panel members was the deaf lesbian who incited a national firestorm of protest when she and her lesbian partner, also deaf, used artificial insemination to intentionally produce deaf children.

The "working group" of psychologists, appointed by the APA Council of Representatives in February 2004 included: Armand Cerbone, Ph.D., Chicago; Beverly Greene, Ph.D., St. John's University; Kristin Hancock, Ph.D., Graduate School of Professional Psychology at John F. Kennedy University; Lawrence A. Kurdek, Ph.D., Wright State University; Candace A. McCullough, Ph.D., Bethesda, Md.; and Letitia Anne Peplau, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles.

The APA's published qualifications for the working group members were "a combination of both scientific expertise in family and couple relations and professional expertise with lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations."

What sort of "expertise"? According to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, the psychologist association's "Working Group on Same-Sex Families and Relationships" is made up of "gay activists."

For instance, reported NARTH:

"Dr. Armand Cerbone, who was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2003 and was awarded an award for distinguished service to the gay movement by the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues, which is Division 44 of the APA.
"Dr. Beverly Green, who served as editor of Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Issues, published by Sage Publications in 2000.
"Dr. Kristin Hancock, who developed the APA's 'Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients,' and is a founding member of APA's Division 44, a group focusing on gay issues.
"Dr. Lawrence A. Kurdek, who serves on the editorial board of Contemporary Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Psychology."
Possibly most controversial of all is the presence on the APA's working group of Dr. Candace A. McCullough, a lesbian who attempted in 2002 to produce, for the second time, a deaf child by artificial insemination, using sperm from a deaf donor. Both McCullough and her lesbian partner, Sharon Duchesneau, are deaf. Their attempt to create a second deaf baby was profiled by the Washington Post on March 31, 2002.

"It would be nice to have a deaf child who is the same as us," Duchesneau, who carried the baby to term, told the Post two months before the baby boy, named Gauvin, was born. "I think that would be a wonderful experience. You know, if we can have that chance, why not take it?"

They succeeded, according to the Advocate ("The National Gay & Lesbian Newsmagazine"), which disclosed in 2002 that Duchesneau and McCullough had earlier sought a deaf sperm donor to father their daughter, Jehanne, as well as later for their son, Gauvin, focus of the Post article.

"As a result," says the Advocate report, "Jehanne is deaf, and Gauvin is deaf in one ear and has severe hearing loss in the other. And that's what both mothers – who consider their deafness an identity, not a disability – intended."

Ken Connor, former president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, echoed the sentiments of many: "To intentionally give a child a disability, in addition to all the disadvantages that come as a result of being raised in a homosexual household, is incredibly selfish," he told Agence France Presse.

Explaining the APA's resolution blessing same-sex marriage, NARTH president Dr. Joseph Nicolosi said the psychologist organization has "let political activists take over the APA in this particular area, and these activists are giving us their own, values-laden 'take' on the issues."

NARTH, an organization of psychiatrists, psychologists, certified social workers and others focused on therapeutically helping homosexuals become heterosexual, was founded in 1992.

Because the APA starts out "with the foundational belief that there's no real difference between the genders, then mothers and fathers start to look interchangeable," said Nicolosi. "With such a worldview, gay and straight relationships look the same; then gay marriage starts to look as if it were no different from the natural,

biological family. And, when the research comes in – as indeed it has – showing gays and lesbians to be less psychologically healthy than straights, then the APA simply dismisses it, saying that the psychological problems are due solely to society's homophobia."

Racism & Liberalism: The Cause of U.S. Sub-Prime Loan Crisis

2008-10-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

http://journals.aol.com/davidhalko/politics/entries/2008/02/25/racism--liberalism-the-cause-of-u.s.-sub-prime-loan-crisis/482

Monday, February 25, 2008
2:06:00 PM EST
Feeling Frustrated Racism & Liberalism: The Cause of U.S. Sub-Prime Loan Crisis

The world has been hearing about the "Sub-Prime Loan Crisis" in the United States, and it's effect on the national and now world economy.

The root cause of this crisis is abuse offered by "The Community Reinvestment Act".

What does the Federal Reserve of the United States say about the CRA?

United States Federal Reserve web site describing the Community Reinvestment Act
The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. It was enacted by the Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and is implemented by Regulation BB (12 CFR 228).
...
Nor does the law require institutions to make high-risk loans that jeopardize their safety. To the contrary, the law makes it clear that an institution's CRA activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner.

The problem is that the details of the law are very different from this feel-good summary given to the public.

The United States in 1977, former President Democrat Jimmy Carter, a law was passed by the former Democrat controlled United States Congressional Legislature.

Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 - 1977-10-12
SECTION 803-Definitions
...(3) the term "application for a deposit facility" means an application to the appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency otherwise required under Federal law or regulations thereunder for
(A) a charter for a national bank or Federal savings and loan association;
(B) deposit insurance in connection with a newly chartered State bank, savings bank, savings and loan association or similar institution;
(C) the establishment of a domestic branch or other facility with the ability to accept deposits of a regulated financial institution;
(D) the relocation of the home office or a branch office of a regulated financial institution;
(E) the merger or consolidation with, or the acquisition of the assets, or the assumption of the liabilities of a regulated financial institution requiring approval under section 18(c) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act or under regulations issued under the authority oftitle IV of the National Housing Act; or
(F) the acquisition of shares in, or the assets of, a regulated financial institution requiring approval under section 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 or section 408(e) of the National Housing Act.
It basically means that this legislation and regulation applies to the bank trying to grow their business in order to make up for attrition or expand a successful business.

Imagine trying to run a business where you have a competitor moving into a new area and your bank is not allowed to expand into that area. As people start to see that their bank is not in the places where they normally go, people realize that they can not get access to their money easily - and they leave your bank.

If the bank does not follow the regulation, it is basically the "death knell" for the bank - the Federal Government is threatening to suffocate the bank out of business by denying the bank customers.

Back to the regulation...
SECTION 804-Financial Institutions; Evaluation
(a) In general. In connection with its examination of a financial institution, the appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency shall-
(1) assess the institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institution; and
(2) take such record into account in its evaluation of an application for a deposit facility by such institution.
For the banking institution to survive as a financial entity in the Free Market - a subjective analysis must be done by the Federal Government, in order to see whether a bank is meeting a "credit needs of its entire community".

What happens if they do not?

The bank will be suffocated by the Federal Government.

What is at the root of this legislation?

Back to section 804...

(b) Majority-owned institutions. In assessing and taking into account, under subsection (a), the record of a nonminority-owned and nonwomen-owned financial institution, the appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency may consider as a factor capital investment, loan participation, and other ventures undertaken by the institution in cooperation with minority- and women-owned financial institutions and low-income credit unions provided that these activities help meet the credit needs rating of local communities in which such institutions and credit unions are chartered.
Race and Gender is called into question of the employees of the bank?

If you are part of a bank wanting to expand your business and you are the wrong race or gender - you can fix your gender or race problem by writing risky loans to "help meet the credit needs rating" in your community.

The name of this type of loan, which people are getting accustomed to, in the 2008 is "Sub-Prime Loans".

If you are the wrong race or gender, you have to write bad loans in order to keep your bank from being suffocated by the Federal Government.

Let' continue with Section 808 of the law...
SECTION 808-Operation of Branch Facilities by Minorities and Women
(a) In the case of any depository institution which donates, sells on favorable terms (as determined by the appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency), or makes available on a rent-free basis any branch of such institution which is located in any predominantly minority neighborhood to any minority depository institution or women's depository institution, the amount of the contribution or the amount of the loss incurred in connection with such activity may be a factor in determining whether the depository institution is meeting the credit needs of the institution's community for purposes of this title.
You have to love this one: if a bank loses money, your bank will not be starved to death.

This is a good one, too: if you turn over ownership or management of a branch to someone based upon the "correct race" for that community or turn over ownership of a branch to a "better gender" - then the Federal Government will not starve the bank to death.

What exactly is a "minority"?
...The term "minority" means any Black, Native American, Hispanic American, or Asian American.
The racists are at it again.

Penalizing people for their ethnic background is a poor way to run any business, never mind a nation.

Who actually benefited from this law?

Not the lower-income citizens, who were supposedly to benefit, because they have been defaulting on their loans and losing their homes.

Not the banks, which were coerced to provide bad loans, because they have been under tremendous pressure to keep from going out of business due to the citizens who were defaulting on their loans.

Only theliberal racists, who used the power of the federal gun, were the ones who benefited from this system.

Remember the Liberal activist group, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), perpetrators of voter fraud across the United States?
Rotten Acorn: Democratic Voter Fraud Map and History

What does the continual illegal voter fraud activities of ACORN have to do with the CRA?

Follow the money... how is ACORN funded for their voter fraud? Where do they get their money from? Who receives the benefits for the voter fraud on a multi-state level?

Apparently, ACORN abuses this Carter/Democratic legislation by organizing followers of their special interest group to complain to the regulatory agency, to starve banks which did not donate money to their politically affiliated community groups or perform enough bad loans to their politically affiliated community group followers.

Founded in 1970, ACORN successfully lobbied the the Democratic Party in 1977, to create an indirect funding mechanism, in which political activities would be donated in return, which apparently included voter fraud.
Lew Rockwell: The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown - 2007-09-06

So-called "community groups" like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA "protest" is issued by a "community group." This can cost banks great sums of money, and the "community groups" understand this perfectly well. It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.

A man named Bruce Marks became quite notorious during the last decade for pressuring banks to earmark literally billions of dollars to his organization, the "Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America." He once boasted to the New York Times that he had "won" loan commitments totaling $3.8 billion from Bank of America, First Union Corporation, and the Fleet Financial Group. And that is just one "community group" operating in one city – Boston.
Now, all of America will pay for the liberal extortion from private banks in their tax dollars - and the world economy will suffer from this failed Racist Experiment.

People should not be considered a superior job candidate based upon gender - this is bigotry.

People should not be considered a superior job candidate based upon the color of their skin - this is racism.

The government should not be allowed to pass legislation to pay for Political Special Interest Groups to keep any political party in power - this is corruption.

Money should be loaned with a percentage rate based upon their income and history demonstrating the discipline to pay the loan back - this is fiscal responsibility.

This goes to show you how votes cast (or uncast) 35 years ago adversely affected Americans and The World now, as well as the children of those original voters.

Tags: Liberal, Democrat, Voter, Fraud, Sub, Prime, Loan, Crisis, Racism, Racist, ACORN

Evangelicals: McCain only 39% to Obama's 37%

2008-10-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

If McCain gives Obama a free pass on abortion and "gay marriage" he won't get the Reagan Democrats (Catholic and evangelical) who brought Reagan and Bush victories.

Fred

-Obama hopes to siphon off sufficient evangelical votes to put him over the top in November.

-Rather than criticizing his Republican opponent for pandering to the Religious Right, Obama hopes to siphon off sufficient evangelical votes to put him over the top in November. It helps that he speaks the language of faith comfortably. Speaking to CT recently, Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, said Obama "understands evangelicals better than any Democrat since Carter."

http://www.blackchristiannews.com/news/2008/10/despite-liberal-record-obama-makes-many.html

Despite Liberal Record, Obama Makes many Christians Think Twice
Tags:barack obama, christians, conservatives, evangelicals, george bush, harry s truman memorial building, joe biden, liberal, missouri, obama campaign, patriotism
By Black Christian News on October 7, 2008 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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Winning Missouri worked twice for President Bush's White House ambitions. Barack Obama seems to have taken notice. For the past three months, the Democratic presidential nominee has been spending significant time in Missouri. In all but one election during the past century, Show-Me State voters have sided with the winner in presidential elections.
Just before Independence Day in Independence, Missouri, Obama delivered a speech on patriotism to counter perceptions that he is less loyal than Republican nominee John McCain, who has 17 military awards and decorations and was a Vietnam-era prisoner of war for five years.

"I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign," said Obama, who had an Iraq war veteran introduce him. "And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine." Obama stressed that no party has a monopoly on devotion to the nation. "Patriotism can never be defined as loyalty to any particular leader or government or policy," he said inside the cramped gym at the Harry S. Truman Memorial Building, where four American flags served as a backdrop.

Obama's general election campaign with running mate Joe Biden, Delaware's senior senator, is built on the rhetoric of "change you can believe in," mixed with passionate words about God and country. As the junior U.S. senator from Chicago, Obama has for years been beholden to working-class voters, African Americans, feminists, gay-rights groups, and pro-choice advocates. But for the first time since Jimmy Carter ran in 1976, a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party is enthusiastically courting evangelicals and Catholics.

This effort is showing results: An August poll by the Barna Group shows McCain with greater support among self-identified evangelicals, but by only two percentage points (39 to 37 percent) over Obama. (Among Christians who meet Barna's stringent nine-point classification as evangelicals, McCain holds a commanding lead of 61 percent to 17 percent over Obama.)

To gain a clearer perspective on these developments, this summer Christianity Today conducted in-depth interviews with a broad range of evangelicals, including Ron Sider, Richard Cizik, Kirbyjon Caldwell, Jim Wallis, Tom Minnery, and Tony Campolo, to see how they assess the Obama for President campaign.

Getting Evangelicals' Attention

Rather than criticizing his Republican opponent for pandering to the Religious Right, Obama hopes to siphon off sufficient evangelical votes to put him over the top in November. It helps that he speaks the language of faith comfortably. Speaking to CT recently, Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, said Obama "understands evangelicals better than any Democrat since Carter."

In June, Sider was among the 40 Christians invited to a private, off-the-record Chicago meeting hosted by Obama. Other attendees included Cizik, Franklin Graham, T. D. Jakes, Eugene Rivers, Max Lucado, and CT editor in chief David Neff. Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, says that Obama's invitation was the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had requested a meeting with an nae official in the 28 years Cizik has worked there.

He says he found Obama reflective and willing to bridge divisions. Cizik told CT, "He's willing to tackle problems that the Bush administration hasn't, like health care and climate change." The nae has been receiving weekly communication from the Obama camp, but nothing from McCain.

"The very fact that Obama is holding such meetings is positive," says John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. "If the campaign doesn't make the effort, then there can be no success. But it doesn't guarantee they will get the exact results they want." Green notes that no Democrat has garnered more than one-third of the white evangelical vote since Carter. (In 2004, Bush received 78 percent of white evangelical votes.)

The Chicago meeting focused primarily on abortion and gay marriage. "You can't help but listen to the man and come away believing he's given a fair amount of thought to these issues," Cizik says. "I was both impressed by him and inclined to disagree with him."

Obama has succeeded in gaining the attention of conservative evangelicals in a way that Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore failed to during their respective presidential bids. He has done this in part by doing the unexpected. For instance, in July Obama proposed expanding President Bush's faith-based initiative, which many liberals opposed from the get-go over church-state separation concerns. Obama has also succeeded in winning over at least one very high profile Bush supporter: Kirbyjon Caldwell, the Houston megachurch pastor. Caldwell offered the benediction at both of George W. Bush's presidential inaugurations, and he performed the wedding ceremony of Bush's daughter Jenna in May.

Last year, the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the nation attended an Obama fundraiser and said he was deeply impressed. As Caldwell handed him a campaign donation check, Obama told Caldwell that he remembered a speech Caldwell had given 20 years earlier at Harvard, and that he had been following the pastor's career ever since.

Another prominent African American leader, Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C., isn't in the Obama camp. But Jackson says McCain's relative silence on conservative social issues has motivated evangelicals to take a second look at Obama.

The short supply of evangelical enthusiasm for any single Republican candidate has also worked to Obama's advantage. "There is tremendous apathy on the Religious Right," says Jackson. "Folks are feeling betrayed and left out. That can work in Obama's favor."

Wilfredo De Jesús, 44-year-old senior pastor of New Life Covenant, an Assemblies of God church in Chicago with an attendance of 4,000, says Obama is the first Democratic candidate he has ever supported. Until now, De Jesús says, opposing abortion and homosexuality have been the paramount moral issues for him. But De Jesús says Obama's comments about the mistreatment of illegal immigrants have led him to put more emphasis on immigration in terms of advocacy and ministry.

Stumbling Blocks

Still, an August Gallup poll indicated that McCain would trounce Obama 53 to 37 percent among those who attend worship services weekly. "The Christian Right's core voters are still primarily concerned with abortion and gay rights," says Wheaton College associate professor Amy Black, author of Beyond Left and Right. "They will stay in the Republican Party."

"It's hard to be more pro-abortion than Hillary Clinton, but Obama seems to have done it," says David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee (NRTLC). Here is a snapshot of Obama's voting record:

He voted three times in the Illinois Legislature to stymie legislation designed to keep alive newborn survivors of abortions.

He voted in the U.S. Senate to block a bill to require that at least one parent be notified if a minor had an abortion in another state.
He declared his first act as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would again legalize "partial-birth" abortion and would use tax funds to pay for abortions.
Even so, a poll (commissioned by the NRTLC) found that only 44 percent of Americans identify Obama as pro-choice. Obama has indicated that he opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because it could have been used as a means to overturn Roe v. Wade by extending the status of personhood to a human fetus (though in committee he voted against an amendment that would have clarified this and would not have undermined Roe). He also has said that he would not be against banning third-trimester abortions if a bill provides a mother's health exemption.

To reach out to evangelicals, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean appointed Tony Campolo as a member of the party's platform committee. In August, the platform committee reaffirmed its abortion plank but dropped the "safe, legal, and rare" language. New language says: "The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs."

Campolo told CT that pro-lifers are "pleased that some language has been put in that we support. It's less than we want, but it's a great deal more than [what] many people expected." There is no "conscience clause" addressing health workers' right to abstain from providing services they believe unconscionable, or a clear call for abortion reduction--just a reduction in the "need for abortion."

Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright says she has encountered many pro-lifers who naïvely assume they can win the candidate over to their viewpoint. "He listens to people, but what does he do with the information?" Wright asks. "He doesn't change his mind. Evangelicals need to look beyond his appealing persona. When a politician speaks against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, there seems to be a disconnect between his rhetoric and his record."

Along with the abortion issue, Obama has drawn ire from evangelicals for opposing the November ballot referendum to ban gay marriage in California. Obama believes such referendums to amend federal and state constitutions could be used in the future to undermine other legal protections. Although Obama believes marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman, he favors civil unions for gays. And, in a June letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, Obama wrote, "I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks."

"He gives lip service to the institution of marriage," says Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family senior vice president for government and public policy, "but he will not do a single thing to ensure that traditional marriage survives."

Too Inclusive?

In August, the Obama campaign launched an outreach designed to harness the energy of supportive evangelicals via low-profile house meetings and community-service projects. Among the political action committees stoking young pro-Obama advocates is the Matthew 25 Network, founded by 33-year-old Mara Vanderslice. The organization debuted on the Web in July, calling voters to back Obama because he, like Jesus, "cares for the least of these."

Vanderslice says she is elated with Obama because he cares about the environment, wants to bring troops home from Iraq, and will bring tax relief for average Americans. The Matthew 25 Network is running $500,000 worth of commercials on Christian radio stations in battleground states. "A president can have such an impact on lives, not only here but [also] around the world," Vanderslice says.

The man behind the push to reach out to evangelicals is Joshua DuBois. The 26-year-old black Pentecostal associate pastor from Boston is Obama's point person for faith policy. DuBois has organized 200 American Values Forums--town hall meetings where evangelicals, Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Jews sit down and try to see each other's political viewpoints.

In addition, DuBois has been busy coordinating house parties where Obama supporters invite neighbors, friends, coworkers, and relatives to discuss faith and politics. The goal is to find common ground on tough issues like abortion.

Cizik, Campolo, and Sider favor extending Bush's faith-based initiative, but they are disappointed that Obama's proposal to do so would sacrifice the right of faith groups to hire employees who share the same faith. "The Bush guarantees on hiring are important," Cizik says. "A good number of evangelicals who would join the program won't. I'm not sure Obama understands how seriously we view the protection of the integrity of our institutions."

And more questions are cropping up about Obama's basic religious convictions. "There's no question Obama is a Christian, but he is definitely of a postmodern, liberal, and, to some small extent, black liberation theology perspective," says Stephen Mansfield, author of The Faith of Barack Obama.

"One can imagine, in an Obama presidency," writes Mansfield, "White House conferences on 'Faith and Poverty' or 'Religion's Responses to Racism' that are more than theater, more than time-wasting mockeries of national ills."

Obama, Dobson, and Warren

No single evangelical leader has been more negative about Obama's candidacy than Focus on the Family's James Dobson. This summer, Dobson--who earlier declared that he couldn't vote for McCain--took to the airwaves to denounce Obama, based on his keynote address at a Call to Renewal conference two years earlier.

In that speech, Obama noted the pluralistic reality of society. "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama said. "And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?"

Being mentioned in the same breath as Sharpton offended Dobson. Dobson also declared on the air that Obama "is deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology." He labeled Obama's abortion stance "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution." Yet much of Obama's Call to Renewal address took Democrats to task for failing to address political issues in moral terms.

Dobson's protest spurred Houston's Caldwell to start a website, JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakforMe.com. Some 12,000 have signed the site's online statement critical of Dobson's views on Obama. Caldwell told CT, "Someone needs to address the comments he made. I want Americans to know the truth and vote accordingly."

Others have criticized Rick Warren's association with Obama. In 2006 Obama spoke at a global AIDS summit at Saddleback Church and was tested for HIV. Afterwards, 18 ministry leaders published an open letter of "indignation and opposition." (Obama's second visit to Saddleback was for the civil forum alongside McCain.)

In July, with Obama on tour in Afghanistan and Iraq, Dobson went back on air to further castigate the Democrat. He revealed that he stayed awake at nights fretting over the prospect of an Obama presidency. Dobson warned listeners, "He is so extreme that he does threaten traditional family, life, and pro-moral values."

But after securing enough delegates to ensure the Democratic nomination, Obama moved toward the political center. This has exposed him to charges of pandering to conservatives. "A good candidate listens to arguments pro and con and sometimes changes his mind," Campolo argues. Lately Obama has sounded a lot more like Ronald Reagan than Bill Clinton. The senator criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that child rapists couldn't be executed, and he backed the justices' affirmation of the Second Amendment rights of gun owners.

Spreading Deception, Racism

Just as Obama's tech-savvy supporters are finding a voice on the Internet, his foes--including many Christians--are using the Internet to spread new deceptions. The facts are that Obama had an agnostic mother and a nominally Muslim father, and that as a child Obama had two hours of weekly Islamic instruction for the two years he attended school in Indonesia.

But widely distributed rumors contend that Obama

doesn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance;
took the oath of office with his hand on a Qur'an;
is a Muslim, not a Christian.
Obama supporters launched FighttheSmears.com to set the record straight about his religion and patriotism. Yet polls show that more than one in 10 Americans still believe these falsehoods. Campolo says, "I have heard repeatedly on Christian radio that Obama is a Muslim." LivePrayer.com founder Bill Keller declared, "Pastors and churches who support Barack Hussein Obama are a stench in the nostrils of God!"

Another factor in play is that Obama is the first major-party African American nominee in history. Obama's supposed support of black liberation theology has been a concern because of his 20-year membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ pastored by the now-retired Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In May, Obama withdrew membership from the church and decried Wright for "giving comfort to those who prey on hate."

"A lot of people--both blacks and whites--will vote based on race," Bishop Jackson says. "Jeremiah Wright gives an excuse to not vote for Obama. Claims that [Wright] is a closet racist or Marxist will haunt Obama."

"Evangelicals, if they are not careful, may be pulled into a race-baiting strategy that will reflect extremely poorly on us," Cizik warns. "It would be wrong to pull the party lever without serious reflection."

"There is no doubt that if Obama is elected the first African American president, it will be a huge step toward racial reconciliation in this country," Sider says. "It will show that the majority of white people have moved beyond racism." It would also provide Obama a platform for addressing issues that no white politician dares touch, such as black absentee fatherhood.Others have criticized Rick Warren's association with Obama. In 2006 Obama spoke at a global AIDS summit at Saddleback Church and was tested for HIV. Afterwards, 18 ministry leaders published an open letter of "indignation and opposition." (Obama's second visit to Saddleback was for the civil forum alongside McCain.)

In July, with Obama on tour in Afghanistan and Iraq, Dobson went back on air to further castigate the Democrat. He revealed that he stayed awake at nights fretting over the prospect of an Obama presidency. Dobson warned listeners, "He is so extreme that he does threaten traditional family, life, and pro-moral values."

But after securing enough delegates to ensure the Democratic nomination, Obama moved toward the political center. This has exposed him to charges of pandering to conservatives. "A good candidate listens to arguments pro and con and sometimes changes his mind," Campolo argues. Lately Obama has sounded a lot more like Ronald Reagan than Bill Clinton. The senator criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that child rapists couldn't be executed, and he backed the justices' affirmation of the Second Amendment rights of gun owners.

Spreading Deception, Racism

Just as Obama's tech-savvy supporters are finding a voice on the Internet, his foes--including many Christians--are using the Internet to spread new deceptions. The facts are that Obama had an agnostic mother and a nominally Muslim father, and that as a child Obama had two hours of weekly Islamic instruction for the two years he attended school in Indonesia.

But widely distributed rumors contend that Obama

doesn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance;
took the oath of office with his hand on a Qur'an;
is a Muslim, not a Christian.
Obama supporters launched FighttheSmears.com to set the record straight about his religion and patriotism. Yet polls show that more than one in 10 Americans still believe these falsehoods. Campolo says, "I have heard repeatedly on Christian radio that Obama is a Muslim." LivePrayer.com founder Bill Keller declared, "Pastors and churches who support Barack Hussein Obama are a stench in the nostrils of God!"

Another factor in play is that Obama is the first major-party African American nominee in history. Obama's supposed support of black liberation theology has been a concern because of his 20-year membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ pastored by the now-retired Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In May, Obama withdrew membership from the church and decried Wright for "giving comfort to those who prey on hate."

"A lot of people--both blacks and whites--will vote based on race," Bishop Jackson says. "Jeremiah Wright gives an excuse to not vote for Obama. Claims that [Wright] is a closet racist or Marxist will haunt Obama."

"Evangelicals, if they are not careful, may be pulled into a race-baiting strategy that will reflect extremely poorly on us," Cizik warns. "It would be wrong to pull the party lever without serious reflection."

"There is no doubt that if Obama is elected the first African American president, it will be a huge step toward racial reconciliation in this country," Sider says. "It will show that the majority of white people have moved beyond racism." It would also provide Obama a platform for addressing issues that no white politician dares touch, such as black absentee fatherhood.

In Saint Louis during a July address to the African Methodist Episcopal convention, Obama exhorted parents to teach their sons "to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception, that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one." The AME is the oldest predominantly black denomination in the nation.

Obama repeatedly mentioned his faith during the talk, which at times resembled a revival meeting more than a political speech. "Our faith cannot be an idle faith," Obama declared. "It requires more of us than Sundays at church. It must be an active faith, rooted in that most fundamental of all truths: that I am my brother's keeper, that I am my sister's keeper.

"The challenges we face today--war and poverty, joblessness and homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools--are not simply technical problems in search of a 10-point plan," Obama said. "They are moral problems, rooted in both society indifference and individual callousness, in the imperfections of man." Obama reiterated the need for government to partner with faith-based initiatives to feed the hungry, reform the prisoner, rehabilitate the drug addict, and keep the veteran employed.

For those who had doubts, Obama recited his salvation testimony from his days as a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s. "I let Jesus Christ into my life," Obama declared. "I learned that my sins could be redeemed and if I placed my trust in Jesus, that he could set me on a path to eternal life."

Such a personally fervent witness may cause many moderate evangelicals to vote for a Democrat for president for the first time in their lives. Bishop Jackson observes, "A lot of people don't like either candidate. That works in Obama's favor. Many may give Obama a try. At least he's talking about faith." Whether evangelical voters can reconcile Obama's talk with his walk remains an open question.

John W. Kennedy is a CT contributing editor and news editor of Today's Pentecostal Evangel in Springfield, Missouri.

Source: Christianity Today

From: PeterLaBarbera@comcast.net

Spread the word: very few Americans are aware of Barack Obama’s radical plan to fully repeal the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996). Even Hillary Clinton wants only a partial DOMA repeal … So why isn’t Obama’s “DOMA destruction plan” a major issue in this campaign? – Peter LaBarbera, www.RepublicansForFamilyValues.com
Sarah Palin Should Have Exposed Obama’s Radical Pledge to Repeal DOMA in Debate Response on ‘Same-Sex Marriage
http://republicansforfamilyvalues.com/2008/10/06/sarah-palin-should-have-exposed-obama%E2%80%99s-radical-pledge-to-repeal-doma-in-debate-response-on-%E2%80%98same-sex-marriage%E2%80%99/
Here’s how she should have responded to homosexual ‘marriage’ question
Republicans For Family Values News Release, www.rffv.org

Barack Obama says he supports traditional marriage even as he actively supports the homosexual lobby’s campaign to spread “gay marriage” nationwide. Obama supports the full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — which running-mate Joe Biden supported and which was signed into law by fellow Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996. “Both Sides Barack” also opposes ALL statewide ballot measures to constitutionally preserve marriage as one-man, one-woman, and he wants to use the White House “bully pulpit” to promote homosexual adoption.

Contact: Peter LaBarbera, Republicans For Family Values: 630-457-0178; rffv@comcast.net

NAPERVILLE, Illinois, Oct. 7, 2008 — GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin missed a golden opportunity Thursday in her debate with Joe Biden to expose Barack Obama’s double-speak on “gay marriage,” Republicans For Family Values founder Peter LaBarbera said today.

Obama claims to support traditional marriage even as he promises to fully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – signed into law by Bill Clinton – which protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state homosexual “marriages.” Obama also opposes state Marriage Protection Amendments, and even promised gay activists that he would use the “bully pulpit” to promote same-sex adoptions.

After vice-presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden, “Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?” the Delaware senator answered that “in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.”

Seemingly contradicting that sweeping statement, Biden then said that he (like Obama) does not “support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.”

Responding to the same debate question, Palin strongly defended traditional marriage but failed to mention Obama’s extreme plan to overturn DOMA. Palin – who as Governor vetoed a bill denying benefits to homosexual state employees on the advice that it was unconstitutional — said granting same-sex benefits undermines marriage.

LaBarbera said Palin could have responded as follows:

“Gwen, I oppose all efforts to redefine traditional marriage, and to give marital benefits to unmarried and same-sex partners. I strongly support the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. Back then, Joe Biden – like John McCain — voted YES on DOMA, but now Biden’s running-mate, Barack Obama, wants to repeal this vital law.

“It’s time for some straight talk on defending marriage. ‘Both-Sides Barack’ claims to support traditional marriage – while simultaneously opposing DOMA and helping to defeat ballot measures in California, Florida and Arizona that would constitutionally protect marriage. If Obama gets his way and DOMA is overturned, it would open a Pandora’s box for judicial activists to spread same-sex ‘marriage’ across the nation. By the way, Obama is even more liberal than Hillary Clinton, who pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

“Sen. McCain and I want to preserve traditional marriage – and not just in name only like the Democrats. Obama and Biden want to give all the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples – while still pretending that they are standing up for marriage as one-man, one-woman. What a sham.

“Obama even wants to use the ‘bully pulpit’ to promote homosexual adoption of children. That may appeal to liberal elitists but surely not to Main Street Americans, who – perhaps ‘clinging to their religion’ – know instinctively that every child deserves a mom AND a dad.”

For identification purposes only, LaBarbera is president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality.

Is Obama/Ayers/Venezuela President Chavez's "School Reform" Indoctrination?

2008-10-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

-With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez.

-As Stern points out, "Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive."

-In a recent interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Obama upgraded Ayers' status from "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

Actually, Obama knew him quite well, having worked together on a school "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.

Obama was given the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office. He ran the fiscal arm that distributed grants to schools and raised matching funds.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308271974461547

-According to Barack Obama’s website, “Ayers is a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a ‘respected advisor’ to Mayor Daley on School Reform“.[http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/23/bill-ayers-and-the-subversion-of-education/]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308271974461547

Obama's Real Problem With Ayers

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

October 07, 2008

Election '08: At an education forum in Venezuela, Bill Ayers showed the real issue is not his terrorist past. It's the socialist revolutionary agenda that he and Barack Obama want to impose on the nation's schools.

Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw's description of Ayers on Sunday's "Meet The Press."

"School reformer" is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.

Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal's Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.

An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America's schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.

With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."

Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion." It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.

Ayers, now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

As Stern points out, "Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive."

If Ayers was just another nutty professor, we'd be lucky. But he wields great influence in academic circles and has had Obama's ear. He's the author or editor of 15 books. Chicago's current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for Chicago's public schools and consulted him on the city's education-reform plans.

Just last month, Ayers was elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association. AERA is the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers.

In a recent interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Obama upgraded Ayers' status from "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

Actually, Obama knew him quite well, having worked together on a school "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.

Obama was given the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office. He ran the fiscal arm that distributed grants to schools and raised matching funds.

Ayers participated in a second entity known as the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, the operational arm that worked with grant recipients.

During Obama's tenure as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers' own education projects received substantial funding.

One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."

John McCain needs to repeatedly point out the stealth socialism of Ayers' education agenda and Obama's complicity in it. Otherwise, we may one day see Ayers as Obama's secretary of education.
[http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308271974461547]

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/23/bill-ayers-and-the-subversion-of-education/

Bill Ayers and The Subversion Of Education

By Uppity WomancloseAuthor: Uppity Woman Name: Uppity Woman
Email: susanunpc@gmail.com
Site: http://uppitywoman08.wordpress.com
About: See Authors Posts (148) on May 23, 2008 at 11:31 AM in Barack Obama, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Chicago, Current Affairs, Terrorism, Weather Underground, William Ayers

As we all know by now, Bill Ayers, unrepentant Weather Undergound leader and terrorist, is a Professor of Education. Funny, how Barack Obama called him a Professor of English. Obama certainly knows what Bill Ayers teaches, since he has been in his company during campus presentations. I guess Barack thought a Professor of English isn’t quite as dangerous to young minds as a Professor of Education can be. I mean, Mr. Ayers educates future educators–who in turn shape young peoples’ minds.

It has already been shown that the Ayers-Obama relationship is far closer than Barack Obama’s lie casual rendition of a friendship that goes back further than a decade.

SusanUnPc has already shown us a recent photo of Ayers stomping on an American flag. NQ’s story was also covered by Hannity on Fox. At this point, I think it’s pretty safe to say that we all have a better chance of seeing God than we have of seeing this photo displayed on CNN or MSNBC.

The interesting thing is that the flag isn’t the only thing Ayers and Dohrn are stomping on. They are also stomping on American Education and influencing the thought processes of future teachers.

In most educational quarters, a person with Ayers’ and Dohrn’s background would never be allowed to teach in a public school. Recently a public school teacher was fired for wearing a bikini at a second job. So, as you can see, most public school districts are pretty serious about the character of teachers.

Apparently this is not a theme that is important to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Professors of Education get the privilege of influencing the thought of future teachers. The university is referred to as “a hotbed for the radical education professoriate”. But then again, it is Chicago.

According to Barack Obama’s website, “Ayers is a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a ‘respected advisor’ to Mayor Daley on School Reform“. I know all of us can rest easily knowing that a fine upstanding unrepentant former terrorist has a hand in “school reform”. Well, you might rest easily, but I won’t.

Let’s examine what Bill Ayers’ office door looks like.

Yes, this is Bill Ayer’s office door.

No kidding.

I didn’t make this up.

Fortunately, I am not charged with the task of analyzing and summing up his office door up in one sentence. Jim Geraghty did it for me. He called it a “Where’s Waldo of lefty radicalism“. And I think he’s right.

I would describe the image as a Where’s Waldo of lefty radicalism. There’s at least three pictures of Malcolm X, a cartoon of a smiling police officer saying, “I’m going to kick your [tushie] and get away with it.” A Red Star, an Amnesty International sticker, a Mumia Abu-Jamal picture, a picture of a bomb dropping on the Gaza Strip.
Geraghty wasn’t sure what “ABU-ZAYD” was referring to, so he did the wise thing and asked readers if they knew what this means. He got answers:

A lot of readers are sending me information on Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, an Islamic theologan. But the more likely answer
is found on another photo in that Tribune collection, where
the caption depicts a young couple with a child between them: “Bill Ayers walks with wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and their son, Zayd Dohrn, 4, outside a federal courtroom in New York circa 1982.” Abu is Arabic for “father of.”
It does appear as though Bill Ayers’ politics hasn’t changed much since his Weather Underground days.

He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Ayers’ texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of
all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K-12teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . .be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.”

Apparently, Barack Obama has no problem with Ayers agenda for the children of America, just like he has no problem with Bill Ayers as a terrorist who still thinks he hasn’t “done enough”. In fact, Bill Ayers’ agenda has become quite influential in the American educational system.

Ayers’s influence on what is taught in the nation’s public
schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

Remember, we are talking about the influence upon the teachers of America’s children. It is one thing to be liberal or “progressive,” whatever that even means anymore, now that the term has been sullied by radical nutcases. It is quite another thing to have an agenda that undermines everything that America stands for–including democracy– and replace it with crash and burn hatred.

Considering the display on Bill Ayers’ office door, I would say he has a great start at turning America’s children into well-trained Anti-American radicals just like himself, wouldn’t you? Yet Barack Obama has given further credibility to this man through his ongoing relationship with him.

It’s just plain amazing what terrible things a man with lofty personal political ambitions will dismiss for the sake of garnering favor with people who have strong influence in Chicago, isn’t it? No wonder Obama didn’t denounce Ayers and Dohrn. He can’t. Ayers is too great a part of his sudden political rise. So Obama not only has no problem hanging out with a terrorist who helped him rise, he doesn’t mind if the same guy is proudly poisoning America’s children with his own violent brand of “social justice and liberation” either. That’s Chicago politics for you. And nobody exemplifies Chicago politics better than Barack Obama.
[http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/23/bill-ayers-and-the-subversion-of-education/]

LA Times Refuses to Release Video of Obama Praising PLO Operative

2008-10-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

http://exposingliberallies.blogspot.com/2008/10/la-times-refuses-to-release-video-of.html

LA Times Refuses to Release Video of Obama Praising PLO Operative

Sean Hannity had his finest moment on Sunday’s “Hannity’s America” when he focused on all the radical associations from Barack Obama’s past, including Palestinians supporting terrorism. Very informative show that will most assuredly be broadcast again before the election.
Now, Gateway Pundit reports that the Los Angeles Times has a video of Barack Obama praising a former PLO operative, but will not release it until after the election. Sadly, it may be too late then.
It’s mind-boggling that such a dangerous person as Obama could be our next commander-in-chief. Look out Israel! Under an Obama Administration, you may no longer have a friend in America.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/la-times-wont-release-video-of-obama.html#links

“Not only does Barack Obama's church of 20 years support Hamas and Hezbollah but Barack Obama also has a long close friendship and financial association with suspected former PLO operative and Israel hater Rashid Khalidi.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/05/obamas-church-of-20-years-supported.html

Last night Sean Hannity dared to report Barack and Michelle Obama's radical associate and friend:
http://www.foxnews.com/hannitysamerica/index.html

Barack Obama funnelled thousands of dollars of cash to Rashidi's anti-Israel Foundation through his work on the Woods Fund.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-funneled-cash-to-former-plo.html

In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to ‘political enlightenment,’ threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972901/posts

Although he is described as a former PLO operative, via Free Republic, this is what Rashid Khalidi has to say about Palestinian terrorism against Jews:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972901/posts

‘On Palestinian violence. Khalidi glorifies anti-Israel violence as contributing to “political enlightenment” and unsurprisingly admires those who carry it out. His loyalty to Palestinian terrorist groups run so deep that he actually dedicated his 1986 valentine to the PLO, Under Siege, to “those who gave their lives . . . in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon.” The book whitewashes PLO violence against Israelis and Lebanese, as well as the Syrian occupation.’

The LA Times wrote an article about Obama's association with Rashid Khalidi in April:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story

‘It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."‘

The LA Times acknowledged it has a video of this tribute Barack Obama gave to the Khalidis at their going away party.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story

But, the LA Times won't release this video before the election.
It's hard to imagine that they would hold onto a video of Sarah Palin praising an anti-Israeli radical and former PLO operative...
But, that is today's mainstream media.

Tom Maguire has more on this radical friend of Barack and Michelle Obama.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/04/more-friends-of.html

UPDATE: The LA Times may not release the video of Obama praising a good friend and former PLO operative but they did publish an attack on John McCain's military service today.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-aviator6-2008oct06,0,7633315.story

THE PRO-BARACK VOTE-FRAUD DRIVE

2008-10-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

THE PRO-BARACK VOTE-FRAUD DRIVE

Obama: Gains from allies' fishy tactics

By MICHELLE MALKIN

October 8, 2008

SYSTEMIC corruption of our election process continues. Barack Obama and his old friends at ACORN and Project Vote are leading the way. This radical revolution is taking place in your backyard. And as I've reported before, this voter-fraud racket is on your dime.

On Monday, the two groups announced the wrap-up of a 21-state voter-registration drive targeting low-income people and minorities in such battleground states as Ohio, Pennyslvania, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

What's wrong with that? For starters, these two groups are militantly partisan outfits purporting to engage in nonpartisan activity. And their campaign comes amid an avalanche of fresh voter-fraud allegations involving ACORN in many of those same states.

ACORN has helped register over 1.27 million people nationwide. It gets 40 percent of its revenues from the taxpayers, with the rest coming from left-wing heavyweights like billionaire George Soros and the Democracy Alliance.

Lefty lawyer Sandy Newman founded Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization, to register voters in welfare offices and unemployment lines with the explicit goal of turning back the Reagan revolution.

The two groups are inextricably linked - and at their nexus is Barack Obama. Despite his denials of any association with the group, Obama's political DNA is encoded with the ACORN agenda.

As I've noted previously ("ACORN: O's Ugly Ally," June 26), Obama trained ACORN members in Chicago. In turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his Illinois campaigns and ACORN's PAC endorsed him in this year's Democratic primaries back in February.

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

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

Quantity over quality. That's the ACORN way - and the fraud allegations keep piling up:
* Yesterday, Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas office after election authorities accused the group of submitting multiple voter registrations with fake and duplicate names. Among the bogus monikers: names of former Dallas Cowboys players.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

malkinblog@gmail.com

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Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules

2008-10-08T21:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_Campaign_/2008/10/08/138707.html

Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 8:25 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

A Newsmax investigation of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign finance reports has turned up more than 2,000 cases in which individuals have made donations far above the legal limit of $2,300 per election.

Such donations, if not returned within 60 days, violate federal campaign finance laws.

Some can be chalked up to common names, such as Michael Brown, William Taylor, or James Smith.

But many others cannot.

On Aug. 31, for example, the Obama campaign filed a report listing a single donation from a Debra Myers in “Rancho Palos Verde, Calif.,” for $28,500 – more than 10 times the amount the law allows per election. Although Debra Myers is identified as a physician, only two individuals with that last name have a listed phone number in Rancho Palos Verdes (the city’s name actually does have an “s” at the end). Neither is a Debra or a “D” Myers, or a physician.

The Obama campaign also identified Woodrow Myers Jr. of Indianapolis, Ind., on Aug. 31 as having given $28,500 to the campaign. Woodrow “Woody” Myers is a former Indiana state health commissioner who spent $2.1 million of his own money in a failed special election to challenge Andre Carson, the grandson of U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, who died in December. The younger Carson won the race this year, with heavy backing from lobbyists, the Democratic Party and related PACs. (Interestingly, Woodrow Myers' wife is identified as Debra, although Newsmax could not confirm whether this is the same Debra Myers the campaign report lists as being from Palos Verdes.)

In an initial reply to Newsmax questions, the Obama campaign said it had refunded both contributions on Sept. 30, a day after a Newsmax investigation was published that revealed extensive federal election campaign violations by the campaign.

The Republican National Committee cited that earlier Newsmax investigation in a formal complaint against the Obama campaign with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

Several hours later, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt e-mailed Newsmax to say that the contributions had been “reattributed” to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee, and that the excess had been refunded.

That still put both Debra Myers and Woodrow Myers over the federal limits – unless the Obama campaign refunded their entire checks, since Debra gave another $28,500 earlier in the year to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Woodrow was way over the $108,2000 overall election cycle limit for individuals.

Individuals can give $2,300 to a federal candidate in both the primary and the general election, for a total of $4,600 in a single election cycle. They also can give $28,500 to a national party committee, $10,000 to a state or local committee, and $5,000 to other political committees.

If a candidate loses the primary, any money counted toward the general election must be refunded, a wrinkle in the federal election laws that can sink losing candidates deep in debt.

In exchange for receiving federal funding, the McCain campaign agreed not to take any money from individual donors for the general election, so its donors are limited to $2,300.

In addition to Debra Myers and Woodrow Meyers, hundreds of other individual donors have given to the Obama campaign far in excess of the legal limit, a Newsmax analysis of campaign finance records shows.

Among them:

James Sievers of Big Sky, Mont., gave a total of $20,700 to the campaign, in five donations between March and June of this year. The campaign has returned close to $7,000 of the money but has kept the rest.

Martin Dies of Austin, Texas, also gave $20,700 to the campaign, in four separate checks, each dated June 30, 2007. The campaign returned $2,300 of it immediately, and another $4,600 in September, but kept $13,800 – three times the legal limit.

Robert Watt of Brooklyn, N.Y., gave close to $17,000 to the campaign starting in February of this year, including a whopping $10,000 check logged by the campaign on Aug. 31. Despite the obvious violation of the campaign limits, FEC records show that the campaign returned just $2,300.

Ryan Finley of Portland, Ore., has given $15,400 to Obama for America, starting with two checks on March 6, 2007, totaling $6,900. The campaign immediately returned $2,300, bringing him within the legal limit. He gave another $8,500 in a lump sum on Aug. 26, 2008.

Ms. Merry T. O’Donnell of Juno Beach, Fla., has given $13,150 to the Obama campaign, starting with three donations in March 2007 that totaled $2,000. In January 2008, she gave two more donations of $1,000 each, as well as donations for $600 and for $2,000. In February, she gave another $4,600. As of the latest filing, the campaign has refunded just $2,300 of the total, leaving her net donations at over two times the legal limit for the two elections.

Jerry Rubin of Whitefish Bay, Wis., has given $12,700 to the Obama campaign in varying amounts since February 2007. Despite the obvious violation, the campaign has refunded just $3,400 of that total, still putting him at double the legal limit.

These are just a sampling of the 2,087 individuals who have given Obama more than the $4,600 combined total for the primaries and the general election.

Donors with common names but who live in different parts of the country are among these 2,087 names. For example, the top individual contributor is Michael Brown, listed as giving $36,706 to the campaign.

But a closer look turns up what appear to be 46 different people sharing the same name, each giving addresses in different cities around the United States.

Newsmax has screened donors appearing in the FEC database to weed out those with similar names and different addresses.

For example, in the examples listed in this article, we have eliminated any donations from individuals with the same name who are listed as having a different address.

The FEC regularly sends letters to the Obama campaign, questioning contributions that appear to go over the legal limits. In many cases, the Obama campaign has amended its reports as a result.

But the examples cited here have not been amended.

“It is illegal to make contributions in excess of the limits, and it is illegal to receive contributions in excess of the limits,” FEC spokesman Bob Biersack told Newsmax.

So both the donors and the campaign may have broken the law. “But there are lots of circumstances, and until the four commissioners have agreed to rule, it’s hard to judge,” he said.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that the McCain campaign also has caught excess donations and has “refunded $1.2 million in contributions.”

Sean Cairncross, the general counsel for the Republican National Committee who filed the complaint with the FEC on Monday, told Newsmax that the McCain campaign has been “completely transparent with respect to its contributions” by making the names of all donors available to the public in a searchable database. The McCain campaign has even disclosed donors of $200 or less, though it is not required to do so. The Obama camp has not disclosed those donors.

“The Obama campaign has steadfastly refused to make that information public,” he said.

Referring specifically to the huge amount of money that the Obama campaign claims it has raised from small donors, Cairncross said the identity and nationality of those donors could very well remain secret until well after the election unless the Obama campaign makes their names public.

“The American people deserve to know where $250 million in contributions — money that could potentially elect a president — is coming from,” he said. “And at this point, we have no way of knowing.”

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Obama/Ayers Fund Voter Fraud Acorn

2008-10-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.gettingpaidtowatch.com/2008/08/06/politics-obamas-troubling-connections-to-acorn/

POLITICS: Obama’s Troubling Connections to ACORN
Posted by bobsikes under Uncategorized

Community activist organization, ACORN, has a long history with voter fraud. So does Barack Obama. This Investors Business Daily editorial details his history with the notorius group.

In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.

A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.

When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.

Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.

With voter fraud being investigated in Alabama now and with ACORN being connected with voter fraud in Pennsylvania republicans are understandably concerned.

ACORN is a organization that works largely in urban, lower income areas and call themselves and advocate on housing and earners issues. But in actuality they serve leftist causes such as being against big box stores such as Wal Mart. But they also have been linked with illegal union activity. Their fraudulant voting activities serve Democrats as they did in the run-up to the 2004 election.

This research done by the Employment Policy Institute details some ACORN voter fraud activities:

• In August 2004, election officials in Albuquerque, NM, discovered that an ACORN employee, Christina Gonzales, registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. This registration was only discovered by the boy’s mother when a voter card showed up in the mail. The card contained an incorrect social security number, a fabricated birthday, and only a partially correct address. ACORN’s actions led New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson to state that they were “manufacturing voters” throughout New Mexico. Interestingly, while Gonzales was fired by ACORN, it was not for manufacturing voters, but rather for claiming credit for registration cards submitted by other employees.

• During a traffic stop in Minnesota, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the car trunk of 19-year-old Joshua Reed, a former ACORN employee.6 The cards were weeks and even months old, despite the fact that the law requires they be submitted to the secretary of state within 10 days of being filled out and signed.

The EPI study indicates that ACORN umbrellas other names such as political action committees such as Floridians for All or Project Voting. The later was the organization involved with the fall of Teamster President Ron Carey who arranged $175,000 in union money in return for reciprocal contributions.

With Senator Obama’s role in training ACORN staff and in his previous work as a community organizer, its understandable some would make the leap to Obama’s having knowledge of voter fraud. His record on voter registration issues parallels that of ACORN. The groups advocacy for a “living wage” is also Obama’s.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/voter_fraud_probe/2008/10/07/138145.html?s=al&promo_code=6C90-1

ACORN Office Raided in Voter-Fraud Probe

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 2:00 PM

Article Font Size

LAS VEGAS — Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote.

A Nevada secretary of state's office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.

Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.

The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.

© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

McCain Warned Bailout "just a Bandage and not a Cure" While Obama Lauded Bailout

2008-10-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:cDjmHOFcZXgJ:www.wtopnews.com/%3Fnid%3D213%26sid%3D1490088+why+is+bailout+bandage+and+not+a+cure.&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

McCain struggles to explain support for bailout
October 3, 2008 - 3:03am

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., participates in a women's town hall style campaign event in Denver, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) By SARA KUGLER
Associated Press Writer

DENVER (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who insists he would veto any pork barrel bills to come across his desk as president, is struggling to explain his vote for the revised financial bailout plan that contained a number of those pet projects.

In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program Thursday, McCain said the extra sweeteners added to the financial bailout bill that passed Wednesday night in the Senate are "just the way the system is working in Washington, and the reason why it's got to be fixed and it's got to be changed."

McCain has made a career of railing against the concept of pork barrel projects, which are special funding requests that lawmakers tuck into larger bills, to benefit their own districts or states. He even agreed with his interviewer that those types of projects are contributing to the nation's financial crisis, and said "this bill is putting us on the brink of disaster."

Later in the day, he predicted the resurrected financial bailout bill will pass the House on its second try, but said the $700 billion rescue plan is still just a bandage and not a cure.

On the eve of the make-or-break second vote for the bailout package, McCain spoke to several hundred women voters at a town hall meeting in Denver. The night before, he voted for the revised bailout in the Senate.

"It's like a tourniquet _ it will stop the bleeding, then we have to set about fixing the way we do business in Washington, D.C.," he said.

As President Bush and congressional leaders lobbied hard for the bill's passage on Thursday, McCain was also making calls to try and win over skeptics, his campaign said.

But he surprised some by not speaking about it on the floor of the Senate as the vote went down Wednesday; just a week earlier he announced he was suspending his campaign to rush to Washington to deal with the financial crisis.

The economy was a top concern for many in the audience at his town hall meeting Thursday evening. Questioners, all of them women, asked him about affording college, health care, jobs and keeping small businesses afloat.

McCain seized the opportunity to attack Democrat Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, seeking to portray them as taxers and spenders whose policies will cause the country to hemorrhage jobs.

"This is about the Obama-Biden team that will kill jobs with higher taxes and the McCain-Palin team that's going to cut the second highest business tax in the world and create more jobs," McCain said.

While campaigning in Michigan earlier in the day, Obama hammered McCain on the same point, saying he's out of touch and doesn't understand the concerns of struggling Americans. Both candidates were focused on jobs ahead of the government's unemployment report due out Friday.

"Nine straight months of job loss," Obama said. "Yet, just the other week, John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Well, I don't know what yardstick Sen. McCain uses, but where I come from, there's nothing more fundamental than a job."

Despite the focus on mostly economic issues at McCain's town hall meeting, the Republican candidate remarked that the gathering was "one of the more impactful and emotional town hall meetings I've ever had _ maybe it's because it's a women's town hall meeting."

An Associated Press-GfK poll this week found that Obama has a big advantage among female likely voters, who support him 52 percent to McCain's 34 percent.

And in fact it was the women on Thursday who were urging McCain to toughen up. One audience member asked when he plans to "take the gloves off" against Obama.

The question drew a standing ovation and raucous cheers from the crowd.

Looking ahead to his next debate with Obama, a town hall style format, McCain said: "How about Tuesday night?"

(Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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By SARA KUGLER
Associated Press Writer

DENVER (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who insists he would veto any pork barrel bills to come across his desk as president, is struggling to explain his vote for the revised financial bailout plan that contained a number of those pet projects.

In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program Thursday, McCain said the extra sweeteners added to the financial bailout bill that passed Wednesday night in the Senate are "just the way the system is working in Washington, and the reason why it's got to be fixed and it's got to be changed."

McCain has made a career of railing against the concept of pork barrel projects, which are special funding requests that lawmakers tuck into larger bills, to benefit their own districts or states. He even agreed with his interviewer that those types of projects are contributing to the nation's financial crisis, and said "this bill is putting us on the brink of disaster."

Later in the day, he predicted the resurrected financial bailout bill will pass the House on its second try, but said the $700 billion rescue plan is still just a bandage and not a cure.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:sMgb9aR8nWEJ:beltwayblips.com/article/obama_lauds_bailout_compromise/+obama+lauds+bailout&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Obama lauds bailout compromise
Published 76 minutes ago by Carrie Dann at First Read

From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones and Mike Memoli DETROIT -- While celebrating the apparent deal reached on Capitol Hill on a bailout bill to stem the crisis on Wall Street, Obama compared his rival’s initial response to the crisis to the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. Obama told the crowd gathered outside a Detroit public library that it was an “outrage” that the government was being forced to clean up the mess on Wall Street, but said a bailout was necessary to avert a deeper crisis. “Today, thanks to the hard work of Democrats and Republicans, it looks like we have a rescue plan that includes these taxpayer protections. It looks like we will pass that plan very soon,” he said, adding that he and Biden would continue to fight for passage of an economic stimulus plan to help struggling families. “I will fight every day of this campaign and every day of my presidency to make sure a crisis like this never, ever happens again,” he continued, part of his ... [link]
Tags:
White House '08Barack ObamaJoe Biden

How McCain can Win: Run Against the Bailout

2008-10-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Run against the bailout. Yes, that sounds counterintuitive because McCain voted for it, but it's not. The bailout may have been the only economic package that Congress could come up with and pass while operating in a crisis atmosphere, but most Americans deep down know that a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, even if necessary and the only option given the circumstances is still a symptom of a deeper more insidious set of problems that haven't been addressed. A bailout bill to "rescue the economy" can simultaneously be the only option and a symbol of just how badly Washington has been doing - or, should I say not doing - its job.

Washington bears the blame for creating the crisis that Washington is now attempting to solve with the bailout. But the bailout doesn't address the main problems that Washington caused - it doesn't reign in the Community Reinvestment Act, for example, which encouraged a flood of sub-prime lending that it at the core of the mess. (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then securitized those risky mortgages.)

http://ivablogger.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-mccain-can-win.html

How McCain can Win
As most of you know, I am a big fan of the uber-blogger Bill Hobbs. Here is his 10 point strategy that McCain advisors should take heed (I really wish he would have done #2):

1. Return to Michigan. Actually, send Sarah Palin and her United Steelworkers Union/commercial fisherman/oil fields worker husband Todd to campaign in Michigan, and have them compare the Obama-Biden economic plan - higher taxes, more regulations, bigger government, huge spending increases - to the virtually identical economic policies of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which have been disastrous for Michigan. Under Granholm, Michigan's economic decline has accelerated. Obama-Biden would step on the gas. Sarah and Todd Palin can make the case effectively - and they'll resonate with Michigan's blue-collar voters.

2. Run against the bailout. Yes, that sounds counterintuitive because McCain voted for it, but it's not. The bailout may have been the only economic package that Congress could come up with and pass while operating in a crisis atmosphere, but most Americans deep down know that a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, even if necessary and the only option given the circumstances is still a symptom of a deeper more insidious set of problems that haven't been addressed. A bailout bill to "rescue the economy" can simultaneously be the only option and a symbol of just how badly Washington has been doing - or, should I say not doing - its job.

Washington bears the blame for creating the crisis that Washington is now attempting to solve with the bailout. But the bailout doesn't address the main problems that Washington caused - it doesn't reign in the Community Reinvestment Act, for example, which encouraged a flood of sub-prime lending that it at the core of the mess. (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then securitized those risky mortgages.)

The bailout bill is like giving a transfusion to a gunshot victim while neither removing the bullet or closing the wound. McCain needs to point out who pulled the trigger.

3. Don't run against Congress. Run against Washington.

4. Hammer Obama on the Wall Street mess. It's Obama's party's fault more so than the Democrats. Obama and Biden are blaming George Bush's economic policies for the Wall Street mess, but the truth is that the seeds of the crisis were planted in the 1990s, during the Clinton administration, while the five years of rapid economic growth during the Bush administration (2002-2007) actually forestalled the crisis by helping housing prices continue to rise. Once the economy hit an inevitable downturn, falling housing prices exposed the problem with the sub-prime loans.

Democrats want to blame "deregulation" by Bush, but they can't make the case stick as most of the deregulation legislation they (wrongly) blame pre-dated the Bush administration. Bush and McCain, meanwhile, proposed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - reforms that might have prevented the current crisis. Who killed their proposals? Democrats like Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank.

Obama was basically AWOL on the issue - he made no meaningful legislative attempt to address the problems.

5. Hammer Washington for the pork, earmarks and giveaways stuffed into the "economic rescue" bailout bill. "You will know their names and I will make them famous," McCain has promised. He should keep that promise.

6. Hammer Obama on his tax proposals and his spending proposals. Obama has promised a trillion dollars in spending increases. Asked at the debates what spending promises an Obama-Biden administration would have to cut because of the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, Obama named nothing, but talked about things he would spend more on, while Biden said they might have to delay a plan to double the amount of money Uncle Sam spends on foreign aid. He named nothing else.

The federal government spends around $25 billion a year on foreign aid. Biden just said they would offset a $700 billion emergency spending increase by delaying a $25 billion increase in one program. The math doesn't add up.

Obama and Biden promise to shrink the deficit, but you flat can not increase spending by a trillion dollars, on top of a one-time $700 billion emergency expenditure, offset it by delaying a $25 billion spending increase, and shrink the deficit without raising taxes.

So, Obama-Biden will either have to balloon the deficit and national debt by unprecedented amounts - with all that borrowing likely causing a huge new "credit crunch," by the way - or will have to massively increase taxes in the middle of a recession.

Obama promises to cut taxes. Bill Clinton promised that too when he was first running for president. A few weeks after he was sworn in, Clinton raised taxes on the middle class.

7. Promise to submit only balanced budget proposals. The Washington elites will scoff and say it can't be done, but there's no reason other than a lack of political will that it can't be done. It will force the other side to stamp their feet and demand deficit spending. Let 'em. Main Street Americans in their gut know that a federal government that spends trillions of dollars probably could get by with a little less, and that allowing it to spend more makes tax increases more inevitable in the years ahead.

8. Point out, endlessly, that Joe Biden's tenure in Congress has been so effective that America doesn't have any problems that $700 billion in taxpayers' money can't fix. Yeah, McCain has been in the Senate almost as long, but Biden's party was in the majority for more of those years.

9. Let Palin take the lead on economic issues. She has the right instincts (she's a Reaganite supply-sider) and she's got the street cred as a middle class working hockey mom from Main Street America to make the case. For all his virtues, McCain does not have a deep policy background on economic issues and his family wealth makes it easy for Obama-Biden to attack whatever he says.

Palin isn't an economic policy wonk, but she has something better when it comes to economic issues: real Main Street America experience in small business. Most businesses in America are small businesses. She understands them. They speak the same language.

10. ENERGY is the key to the campaign. ENERGY policy is at the intersection of national security, foreign policy and the economy. So... hammer the link between higher energy costs and the struggling economy, and the link between foreign energy dependence and national security, and point out that Obama and the Democrat's opposition to significant increased domestic production of oil, natural gas and oil from shale means we'll continue sending $700 billion a year to foreign countries that don't like us very much. ($700 billion? We've heard that number before...)

Point out with a megaphone that when it comes to increasing domestic supplies of reliable energy, Obama and Biden stand in the way, and while dependence on foreign energy impacts our foreign policy in negative ways it also enriches terrorist-coddling countries like Iran and destabilizing regimes like the one in Russia.

And it damages the domestic economy.

When gas jumped from $2 a gallon to $4 gallon, it cost my wife and myself an extra $400 a month in gasoline costs. Every month that is $400 we don't have to save, or spend on other things, or donate to charity. Imagine that kind of impact to family budgets across the country and you can see why more and more people can't pay their mortgages on time, and why consumer spending is sluggish, resulting in a general economic slowdown and job losses.

Americans overwhelmingly want increased domestic oil drilling. Obama and Biden don't - nor do they support increased use of clean coal or nuclear. They want to risk America's economy on renewables that aren't yet able to produce sufficient quantities of energy, and exotic alternatives that are expensive and won't be technologically ready any time soon. McCain-Palin should also point out that Washington solutions like ethanol subsidies drive the cost of food up, and will contribute very little to energy independence.

McCain's strength is national security and defense issues, not economics. So split campaign message duties - let Palin take the lead on economic issues and on energy issues as they relate to the economy.

She is knowledgeable on more than just oil and natural gas, and has a positive track record on energy issues. Palin - not McCain - should be the face of the McCain-Palin campaign's ads on the economy and energy. She has communication skills approaching those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Use them.

There. Ten things the McCain-Palin campaign should do, starting right now, to win this race. It is still very winnable.
Posted by ivarussell

Obama "Publicly Endorsed, Without Qualification, Ayers’ [Radical] Book"

2008-10-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2008/10/more-on-obamas.html

More on Obama's and his terrorist pal

Stanley Kurtz takes apart the New York Time's puff piece article which downplays the long relationship between Obama and the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers.

The article, written by New York Times reporter Scott Shane, was the catalyst for Governor Sarah Palin's remark that Obama pals around with terrorists:

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
Kurtz also talked about the Shane article on Fox News:

Back to Kurtz's written take-down of Shane's whitewash. Kurtz notes that when Shane's article first appeared on the web Saturday night, it was titled, "Obama Had Met Ayers, but the Two Are Not Close." That title was changed to, "Obama and the ‘60's Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths." Kurtz suggests the first headline made the paper’s agenda a bit too obvious, in any event the new title parrots Obama's position:

Even so, the new title simply parrots the line of Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt that the two [Obama and Ayers] first met through an early "education project" and since have simply "encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood."
It's not just the title. Shane's "irresponsible journalism" is an obvious effort to protect Obama and makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the Obama/Ayers relationship.

Let's look at the details:

1) Sporadic Relationship:

There is nothing "sporadic" about Barack Obama delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of many years to fund Bill Ayers’ radical education projects, not to mention many millions more to benefit Ayers’ radical education allies. We are talking about a substantial and lengthy working relationship here, one that does not depend on the quality of personal friendship or number of hours spent in the same room together (although the article greatly underestimates that as well).
2) Ayers Redeemed:

Shane’s article buys the spin on Ayers’ supposed rehabilitation offered by the Obama campaign and Ayers’ supporters in Chicago. In this view, whatever Ayers did in the 1960's has somehow been redeemed by Ayers’ later turn to education work.
[. . .]

The trouble with this is that Ayers doesn’t view his terrorism as a mistake. How can he be forgiven when he’s not repentant? Nor does Ayers see his education work as a repudiation of his early radicalism. On the contrary, Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.

3) Obama Endorsed Ayers' Radical Views:

Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publicly endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship.

4) Ignoring Contra Views:

The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve [Kurtz] published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See "Obama’s Challenge.") Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.

5) Hiding The Facts:

Shane’s story also omits any mention of the fact that access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records was blocked. What’s more, thanks to a University of Chicago law student’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that access to the documents was blocked by an old Obama associate, Ken Rolling, on the day I first tried to see them. And as a result of my own FOIA, we also have evidence that Rolling may have been less than fully forthcoming on the question of Ayers’ possible role in elevating Obama to board chair at Anneberg. In fact, Rolling seems to have been withholding information from a New York Times reporter. I’ve made this material public in a piece called, "Founding Brothers."

Obama and his elite media allies, such as Scott Shane, continue to downplay the Obama/Ayers association. I remain thankful that Governor Palin and Stanley Kurtz will not let them get away with it.

Obama/Ayers And McCain/Keating: The Difference

2008-10-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

-"Not only did Obama not personally find anything especially obnoxious about Wright’s radicalism, anti-Americanism, ties to Farrakahn, and so on, or Ayers’ lack of regret for his terrorist past, he apparently didn’t expect that much of anyone else would care, either. How else do you explain why he didn’t jettison these individuals from his life before they could damage his presidential ambitions?"

-"The case for Keating being less relevant is that McCain hardly hides the affair. He called it, in his 2002 autobiography, “the worst mistake of my life.” He remade himself as a reformer in reaction to the scandal. McCain’s case isn’t that you should ignore his sin, or that it isn’t a sin; it’s that he’s expiated it."

http://bitsblog.florack.us/?p=12504

Obama/Ayers And McCain/Keating: The Difference
Bithead on October 6th, 2008

----

Much has been said about Obama Ayers, but not nearly enough, in my view.

Hand over the heart, Barry, remember?
This morning, David Bernstein looks at the subject, and says it well:

Obama is an extremely ambitious man. He’s been interested in a national political career for many years. It’s not that surprising that he wouldn’t find Ayers and Wright objectionable company–in the very liberal, Hyde Park/Ivy League circles that he’s traveled in since attending Columbia, people with such views are more mainstream than, say, the average conservative evangelical Christian. That itself makes Obama far more liberal than the image his campaign attempts to portray.

But what is interesting to me is that not only did Obama not personally find anything especially obnoxious about Wright’s radicalism, anti-Americanism, ties to Farrakahn, and so on, or Ayers’ lack of regret for his terrorist past, he apparently didn’t expect that much of anyone else would care, either. How else do you explain why he didn’t jettison these individuals from his life before they could damage his presidential ambitions? How else do you explain how his campaign seemed to be caught flatfooted when Obama’s ties to Wright and then Ayers became campaign issues? And, perhaps most tellingly, how else do you explain that when Obama was asked in a debate with Clinton about his ties to Ayers, he analogized his friendship with Ayers to his friendship with Senator Tom Coburn, as if being friends with a very conservative senatorial colleague is somehow analogous with being friends with an unrepentant extreme leftist domestic terrorist?

Quite.

Of course, it should be pointed out that Obama also associated with Jerry Wright, he of ‘”Not God Bless America, but God Damn America” infamy.The ani-Americanism is out there for all to see in the cases of both Wright and Ayers.

And, yes, Obama’s wife… who didn’t find thing one to be proud of about America until her husband was nominated.

Now, we hear from Mike Allen that Obama and his people are planning to respond to these increasingly asked questions, by bringing up the Keating Five episode.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday is launching a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five” savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.

Pushing back against what it calls McCain’s “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign overnight began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.

Lame, certainly. But, one can understand why Obama is responding this way. He has little to defend himself from such charges, so he frantically drags up stuff upon which McCain’s involvement has already been judged. McCain, even at the time, was quite open about the Keating affair, even putting it in his book, unlike Obama, who is still doing anything and everything he can do to bury reports of his relationship with Ayers.

Ben Smith looks at all this and says, in part:

The case for Keating being less relevant is that McCain hardly hides the affair. He called it, in his 2002 autobiography, “the worst mistake of my life.” He remade himself as a reformer in reaction to the scandal. McCain’s case isn’t that you should ignore his sin, or that it isn’t a sin; it’s that he’s expiated it.

Or, as an old friend of mine who passed on years ago, once said to me, it’s not where you’ve been, but where you’re going. Given that rather obvious difference, you know Obama wouldn’t be bringing this up, absent a certain level of desperation. And he is desperate, because he knows this stuff could cost him if he doesn’t keep a lid on it.

Hillary: Obama "Relationship with Mr. Ayers on this Board Continued After 9/11"

2008-10-06T06:03:00.000-07:00

-Ayres to The New York Times - on 9/11, said "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

-Three years before McCain's release from captivity, Ayers exclaimed, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

-Ayers wife, Bernardine Dohrn famously praised the Manson family for murdering Sharon Tate and others, shouting: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"

-The kicker is that Barack Obama served on a board and accepted fund raising money from Ayers.

http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=566751&articleId=939755&func=5&channel=News+AOL+Managed

AYERS AND OBAMA:TRUTH

Obama ties with a Domestic Bomber, Ayres "Days of Rage" to Chicago.

Three years before McCain's release from captivity, future education professor Ayers exclaimed, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

One year before McCain achieved freedom, Ayers participated in a bombing of the Pentagon. Of that day, Ayers wrote: Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.

Barack Obama fumbled his responses to the newest scandale du jour, his Chicago associations with William Ayres, an English professor and neighbor who had been a bomber for the Weather Underground during the late '60s, and who remains unrepentant, telling The New York Times - on 9/11, no less - that "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

Ayers, along with his fellow former Weather Underground terrorist wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are among the two most despicable people in living in America. At one rally, Dohrn famously praised the Manson family for murdering Sharon Tate and others, shouting: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!" The kicker is that Barack Obama served on a board and accepted fund raising money from Ayers.

While McCain was being tortured by his North Vietnamese captors, Ayers was openly cheering for a Communist victory over our troops.

In 1969, four years before McCain was set free by the NVA, Ayers and the Weather Underground brought the terroristic

When Obama was questioned about his relationship with Ayers during the Pennsylvania debate, his initial impulse was to try to finesse the subject, then change it: When asked why he would be friends with the likes of Weatherman Bill Ayers, Obama said: "The notion that ... me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

That's a slick answer, but the problem is, Ayers and his Weatherman wife, Bernadine Dohrn, won't stop boasting about their days as Weathermen.

Barack also stated "(Ayers) is not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis....The fact is, is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those either." Did he say ALSO FRIENDLY. So Obama is "quoted" admitting a friendship with this enemy of America!

Also, was Obama well served by equating a U.S. senator with a guy who may have been connected to as many as 25 domestic bombings (the number claimed by the Weather Underground)? Obama's vague answer - that Ayres "is not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis" gave Clinton an opening, and she drove a Hummer through it.

Hillary Clinton's response: "Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more."

If Timothy McVeigh had only said he bombed the building in Oklahoma City to protest American "imperialism," McVeigh, too, could be teaching at Northwestern University, sitting on a board with and holding fundraisers for presidential candidate B. Hussein Obama.

Is it just me or is Obama lacking good judgment skills. It amazes me that every time Senator Obama is questioned about an issue he does not want to answer, he says "that's the type of politics we are trying to get away from". Yeah, right! Good "No Answer"! Don't we always teach our children to be careful who they hang out with because of guilt by association. Also, don't we choose our friends as people that we share mutual points of view and interests. Of all the people in the world, Obamas' circle of friends consists of Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko and William Ayres. Is this just coincidental bad judgment, or are we seeing the true side of Barack Obama that he is attempting to keep concealed.

I bet he is off hiding somewhere right now, smoking a cigarette. Another personal side that Barack does not want publicized. Do you think the tobacco companies are backing his election? He consistently has the most campaign dollars. Where is it all coming from? If he is truly the savior of "the needy", where are the funds coming from? Things that make you go hmmm?!

Mark Message Unread | Notify AOL

(Msg Id: 566751:939755)

Ask Obama and the Media the Type of Questions they Asked Palin

2008-10-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

McCain Attack Obama and the Media as they Attacked Palin

-Ask the media and Obama why the "media never for a moment, let alone a week, scrutinized Barack Obama's origins in Chicago at all, let alone to the extent it already has Sarah Palin's in Alaska."

-Ask Obama and the media about Barack's "long, close and deep connection to unreformed Marxist revolutionary and proud domestic terrorist Bill Ayers"

When the LA Times parrots The New York Times article saying "the men were never close" and Obama "has played down his contacts with Ayers.'

-Ask Obama and the media if they were never close why was "Barack's first prominent job in 1995 as Chair of Ayers' $100 Million plus Annenberg Challenge grant?"

-Ask after Obama and the media igore that question "what was it about Obama's views that made Obama attractive Ayers, so attractive that Ayers not only picked Obama to chair his grant, but gave Obama's kick-off party for the Illinois state senate in 1996?"

-Ask next when the "two men worked together for at least four years (1995-2005) ... who received the grant money, what they did with it and to what effect?"

-Ask Obama and the media about the leading role that Bill Ayers played in the Annenberg Challenge

-Ask Obama and the media about the equally important role played by Barack Obama in the Annenberg Challenge

-Ask Obama and the media about the intensely political nature of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Ask about "Obama's political origins in the corrupt Chicago machine and the far left fever swamps of Hyde Park"

Ask Obama and the media "about describing 'community organizers', what they do, who they revere, etc? The nation has never had a President whose principal job before entering politics was "community organizer."

Ask "one would think at least some people would be interested to learn a bit about that profession before voting a 'community organizer' into the Oval Office."

-Ask if Sarah palin had been a "community organizer" would we see such articles from the media?

-Ask Obama and the media why is Obama and the media hiding "commonplace stuff" papers about Barack such as:

- Occidental College records...
-no Columbia College records...
-his Columbia thesis paper...
-his Harvard records...
-his Selective Service registration...
-his medical records...
-his Illinois State Senate schedule...
-his law practice client list...
-not to forget the certified copy of his original birth certificate...
-nor the embossed, signed paper certification of his birth.
-Of course there is no record of his Harvard Law Review articles (well, there obviously are none),
-his University of Chicago scholarly articles (again: none, evidently),
-his record of baptism.

There is much more...

Fred

TomRoeser.com ::
By Tom Roeser

I'm indebted to Jim Bowman, the former "Daily News" religion editor, inveterate blogger and sometime "Chicago Daily Observer" contributor for this one. News about Barack Obama is drowning the senses but Obama staff stonewalling prevents us from knowing what should be commonplace stuff. Jim reproduces a photo of the detective Colombo asking, "oh, wait-just one more thing" and wanting material any presidential candidate should be willing to produce.

For example, we don't have his Occidental College records... no Columbia College records... his Columbia thesis paper... his Harvard records... his Selective Service registration... his medical records... his Illinois State Senate schedule... his law practice client list... not to forget the certified copy of his original birth certificate... nor the embossed, signed paper certification of his birth. Of course there is no record of his Harvard Law Review articles (well, there obviously are none), his University of Chicago scholarly articles (again: none, evidently), his record of baptism.

What are they hiding? Of course the... ahem... mainstream press here in Chicago and elsewhere wouldn't dream of embarrassing the candidate by requesting this stuff-or writing it up when they are turned away. That would be racist.

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Obama Hiding Annenberg Challenge Records and Ties to Terrorist Ayers
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/20/update-on-the-obamaayers-paper-caper/

-the leading role that Bill Ayers played in the Annenberg Challenge;
-the equally important role played by Barack Obama; and
-the intensely political nature of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2008/08/whats-obama-hid.html

What's Obama Hiding In Annenberg Challenge Records?
Update: See more info and developments on this via NRO and also Michelle Malkin.

This is troubling - link via a post at Powerline - short audio from WLS's Jerry Agar available here.

A spokesperson for the U of Illinois at Chicago Library doesn't rule out that the now missing Chicago Annenberg Challenge records will be turned back to the donor without ever being released. He also refuses to disclose the donor.

What's up with that?

Barack Obama was quite likely closely involved with an unrepentant domestic terrorist for years. He's on record as playing that relationship down to an unbelievable degree. And now records that would speak to it might just be disappeared?

Does that sound like change, ... like hope to you? This guy wants to walk into the White House by taking a short cut, perhaps walking across the water to get there, but Americans aren't entitled to know the reality of his not that distant past?

I don't think so. Not a bit. this issue has to be pushed and the mainstream media had better get on board. According to the searching I've done, the library had these records as far back as 2006. Now they may disappear? Outrageous.

See Michelle's post here for contact information. Let's keep the pressure on.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/20/update-on-the-obamaayers-paper-caper/

Update on the Obama/Ayers paper caper
By Michelle Malkin • August 20, 2008 02:48 PM

Thanks to all of you who responded to my post on Stanley Kurtz’s call for help pressing the University of Illinois at Chicago to free the Obama/Ayers papers.

Kurtz has an update and is still quite worried about the endangered documents, so don’t let this one go:

I remain unsatisfied with mainstream media reporting on this issue, and continue to be extremely concerned for the safety and fate of the documents. We need more public pressure, and better reporting. I plan to say more down the road about Obama’s role at Annenberg, even without access to the records at UIC. I also plan to say more about the detailed finding aid now in my possession, and about the contents of the single file folder I was permitted to examine.
Here are those contact links again:

Email here.

Phone/Fax here.

Meantime Steve Diamond has compiled a must-read post, “Behind the Annenberg Gate” on his efforts to obtain key information about Obama/Ayers:

As Global Labor readers are now aware, the University of Illinois is blocking access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an Illinois non profit corporation, established in 1995.

However, several months ago I was able to obtain key records of the Challenge - including board minutes, annual and semi-annual reports and financial records - from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute, which housed the national Annenberg Challenge program that was set up in 1993 by a gift of $500 million from Walter Annenberg.

Below is an analysis of what I found in those documents. They evidence

-the leading role that Bill Ayers played in the Annenberg Challenge;
-the equally important role played by Barack Obama; and
-the intensely political nature of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

OBAMA HIDING SECRET MEDICAL RECORDS
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/07/whats-obama-hiding-medical-records.html

WHAT'S OBAMA HIDING? MEDICAL RECORDS
SWEET: Obama releases medical information: "excellent health."
Likely Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is in "excellent health," according to a summary of Obama medical records released on Thursday.

The 276-word summary was written by Dr. David L. Scheiner, the Chicago doctor who has been Obama's personal physician since March, 1987. Obama has not had a check-up in more than a year. Scheiner described Obama as "lean and muscular with no excess body fat." Obama is still using Nicorette gum to stay off cigarettes--he has quit smoking several times, his doctor notes.

Highlights:

*Triglycerides of 44(normal under 150), cholesterol 173 (normal under 200), HDL 68 (normal over 40), and LDL 96 (normal under 130). Chem 24, urinalysis and CBC were normal, PSA was 0.6, very good. An EKG was normal.

The Obama campaign decided to release this summary of Obama's health status at this time to contrast with the long medical history of GOP presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Az.).

The McCain campaign last week allowed a select group of reporters to study McCain's more complex medical history, complicated because of his skin cancer and injuries suffered while serving in the military and as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam.MCCAIN HAS RELEASED EVERYTHING.
OBAMA HASN'T.
WHAT'S HE HIDING, S.T.D. TREATMENTS?
UNTIL OBAMA RELEASES IT ALL, ANY SPECULATION IS FAIR.

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

September 09, 2008
Media's Treatment of Palin and Obama
By James Edmund Pennington
If Barack Obama's past had been subjected to one tenth the media scrutiny during the full year of his candidacy, to which Sarah Palin has been subjected during the last 11 days, Obama very probably still would be junior senator from Illinois, and Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

Deny it though she will, this galling reality cannot have escaped Hillary's awareness. As she watches the media devote its considerable resources to a smear and destroy attack on Governor Palin, Hillary must be seriously annoyed. And rightly so.

For during the last week-and-a-half we have been treated to an astonishing affirmation of how thoroughly our nation's impartial media can bird dog the tiniest, least relevant fact about a candidate, how quickly it can penetrate through the fog of time back to the beginnings of a politician's career, all with the laudable goal of testing whether the image the candidate projects accords with the record.

Where was this frenzy of journalistic zeal and competence when Barack Obama was building up an insurmountable delegate lead over Hillary?

Where were the media articles, digging into the earliest days of Barack Obama's political origins in the corrupt Chicago machine and the far left fever swamps of Hyde Park? Where were the articles explaining Obama's long, close and deep connection to unreformed Marxist revolutionary and proud domestic terrorist Bill Ayers?

Where was the in-depth series on how Obama came to his first prominent job in 1995 as Chair of Ayers' $100 Million plus Annenberg Challenge grant? Just what was it about Obama's views that made Obama attractive Ayers, so attractive that Ayers not only picked Obama to chair his grant, but gave Obama's kick-off party for the Illinois state senate in 1996?

Where were (are?) the articles on just how closely these two men worked together for at least four years (1995-2005)? On who received the grant money, what they did with it and to what effect?

And, even more crucially, where are the deep and nuanced media analyses of Ayres' views -- about education and other matters -- and how congruent Obama's are with his?

Where were the probing analyses of Obama's improbable claimed shock at his minister's racist and hate-filled ravings? Where were the mainstream media's interviews of parishioners (and others) in Chicago who could affirm or contradict that Obama was asleep during the Reverend's worst rants? Or the reverse -- that Obama in fact agreed with some or all of them?

What about the deep articles describing "community organizers", what they do, who they revere, etc? The nation has never had a President whose principal job before entering politics was "community organizer." One would think at least some people would be interested to learn a bit about that profession before voting a "community organizer" into the Oval Office. If Sarah palin had been a "community organizer" would we see such articles?

Hillary would like to have seen a lot of such such stuff back in December, 2007, and the cold days before Super Tuesday in February of this year. If she -- and the public -- had, she very probably would have a different status now.

All of which brings me to my simple point: McCain/Palin supporters do not object to proper media scrutiny of Palin's past (though they do object to many of the irrelevant subjects of recent inquiry).

Measuring whether a candidate is in fact who he/she claims to be by digging into the candidate's record is the core function of the media in our electoral democracy.

The complaint, rather, is that the media never for a moment, let alone a week, scrutinized Barack Obama's origins in Chicago at all, let alone to the extent it already has Sarah Palin's in Alaska. And Obama wants to be President on January 20. At least Governor Palin expects to wait several years after the election before the possibility of sitting at the big desk arises.

McCain/Palin supporters, I am certain, would take the following bargain from the mainstream media in a heartbeat:

Decide how many reporters, smut-mongers, detectives and investigators you intend to send to Alaska in an effort to discredit Governor Palin. Then take that number --be it 20, 200 or 2000 -- divide in half, and send one battalion to Chicago to find out how Obama rose from total obscurity to great heights in record time, who his closest associates were, what portion of those associates' beliefs he shares, and what he really believes.

In short, send a team to Chicago to find out and tell us who Barack Obama is.

James Edmund Pennington is the pseudonym of a lawyer.
on "Media's Treatment of Palin and Obama"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-palin5-2008oct05,0,5117713.story

Sarah Palin claims Barack Obama would 'pal around with terrorists'

Email Picture
Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks to an enthusiastic crowd of more than 8,000 in Carson.
John McCain's running mate questions the Democrat's ties to William Ayers during a rally in Carson. The Republican running mate also visits Costa Mesa, and is expected to appear today in Burlingame.
By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 5, 2008
You can't say she didn't warn them.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced herself to the nation with a now-famous joke about lipstick being the only difference between a certain dog breed and a hockey mom. On Saturday, the Republican vice presidential nominee unleashed her inner pit bull, accusing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of being someone who would "pal around with terrorists."

Her accusation -- made before an overflow crowd of more than 8,000 at Home Depot Center's tennis stadium in Carson, and earlier in the day at a Denver fundraiser -- signaled an increasingly abrasive stance toward Obama on behalf of her running mate, Republican nominee John McCain.

In Carson, Palin signaled her intentions early on in her 23-minute speech.

"One of my campaign staff said as I was walking out here, 'OK, the heels are on, the gloves are off,' " she said.

The "terrorists" to whom Palin was referring is William Ayers, founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, who is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an acquaintance of Obama.

Palin began the attack with a wry observation about her disastrous Katie Couric interview -- she appeared to draw a blank when asked which newspapers and magazines she reads. Palin, who later told Fox News that she reads the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications, said she was annoyed by Couric's question.

Clearly buoyed by a well-received performance against her Democratic opponent, Sen. Joe Biden, in their only debate Thursday, Palin apologized for what she described as her "impatient" response to Couric.

"Evidently there's been a lot of interest in what I read lately," she said. "I was reading today a copy of the New York Times. And I was really interested to read in there about Barack Obama's friends from Chicago. Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times, was a domestic terrorist, that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.' "

The New York Times article, an investigation published Friday into whether Obama had a relationship with Ayers, concluded that the men were never close and that Obama has denounced Ayers' radical past, which occurred when Obama was a child. The article also said Obama "has played down his contacts with" Ayers.

"This is not a man who sees America as you and I see America," Palin said of Obama. "We see America as a force for good in this world. We see America as a force for exceptionalism. . . . Our opponents see America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who would bomb their own country."

The Obama campaign responded forcefully. "Gov. Palin's comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign's statement this morning that they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills," said spokesman Hari Sevugan.

"In fact, the very newspaper story Gov. Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Sen. Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less 'pals,' and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

Republicans have long been expected to attack Obama on the issue. In August a major fundraiser for McCain spent $2.8 million on an ad by the American Issues Project that questioned Obama's relationship with Ayers.

(The donor, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, helped fund Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that damaged John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign when it called his Navy service into question.)

The anti-Obama ad aired in Ohio and Michigan in the summer. Last week, the McCain campaign said it would pull out of Michigan, a tacit admission that it expected Obama to carry the state. Palin, who did not know the campaign pulled out of Michigan until she read about it Friday, according to McCain aides, implied Saturday in Denver that she regretted the decision.

"Well, as I said the other day, I would sure love to get to run to Michigan and make sure that Michigan knows we haven't given up there," Palin said as she left a diner after visiting with soldiers' mothers. "We care much about Michigan and every other state."

California is a reliably Democratic state in the presidential race -- yet it also is a reliable source of cash for Republicans. After the Carson rally Saturday, Palin attended a fundraiser in Costa Mesa.

Today she is scheduled to headline a fundraiser in Burlingame, after which she is expected to leave for Florida. McCain, meanwhile, will take time off to prepare for his second debate with Obama, on Tuesday.

In Carson, Palin was interrupted numerous times by protesters, who were in turn shouted down by the crowd. She said that her father, Chuck Heath, was born in North Hollywood and that her grandfather was a Los Angeles photographer who specialized in shooting boxers. "I learned a few points about fighting from him," she said.

Many people in the Carson crowd compared Palin favorably with Ronald Reagan.

"What's wonderful about Sarah is that she's liberated without being liberal," said LaDell Jorgensen, 42, who drove from San Clemente for the rally. "She really connects with the old Ronnie Reagan patriotic people who love America."

Paul Nissan, 56, of Culver City, said it gets kind of lonely being a Republican on the Westside of Los Angeles.

"What's been set in motion with her makes it seem like California can get in the mix," he said. "It's encouraging for those of us out here in Reagan Country."

Nissan's friend, Jeanne Tanigawa, 57, said she was a McCain supporter even before he chose Palin.

"She's like the cherry on top," Tanigawa said.

Neither Nissan nor Tanigawa was bothered by Palin's claim that Obama "would pal around with terrorists."

"I'm aware of the background there," Nissan said. "I think it's down to where we've got to be blunt about associations and values. The ideological differences are so stark."

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Sarah is the New Reagan only Better

2008-10-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Noonan implies Sarah is the new Reagan.

I agree. She is prayerful like him and loved even in spoofs.

She, I think, is better because she is a fallen human like us all, but we can see she loves her special needs babies, her family and us who are worrying and prayering for her. She seems to even love Biden and all the media persons who hate her.

Fred

Sarah Palin Saved John McCain Again

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We've got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.

http://www.gopusa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53637

Palin and Populism The downside of appealing to Joe Six-Pack.By PEGGY NOONAN

She killed. She had him at "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy.

APThe whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation.

As far as Mrs. Palin was concerned, Gwen Ifill was not there, and Joe Biden was not there. Sarah and the camera were there. This was classic "talk over the heads of the media straight to the people," and it is a long time since I've seen it done so well, though so transparently. There were moments when she seemed to be doing an infomercial pitch for charm in politics. But it was an effective infomercial.

Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation. He showed great forbearance. Too much forbearance. She said of his intentions on Iraq, "Your plan is a white flag of surrender." This deserved an indignant response, or at least a small bop on the head, from Mr. Biden, who has been for five years righter on Iraq than the Republican administration. He was instead mild.

The heart of her message was a complete populist pitch. "Joe Six-Pack" and "soccer moms" should unite to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of "Main Streeters like me." A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We've got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.

Her triumph comes at an interesting time. The failure of the first bailout bill was an epic repudiation of the Washington leadership class by the American people. Two weeks ago the president of the United States, the speaker of the House, the secretary of the Treasury and the leadership of both parties in Congress came forward and announced that the economy was in crisis and a federal bill to solve it urgently needed. The powers were in agreement, the stars aligned, it was going to happen.

And then the phones began to ring, from one end of Capitol Hill to the other. And the message in those calls was, essentially: We don't trust you to fix the problem, we suspect you may have caused it. Go away.

It was an epic snub, aimed at both parties. And the bill tanked.

We have simply, as a nation, never had a moment like this, in which the American people voted such a stunning no-confidence in America's leaders in a time of real and present danger. The fate of the second bill is unclear as I write, but the fact that it has morphed from three pages to roughly 450, and is festooned with favors, will do nothing to allay public suspicions about the trustworthiness of Congress. This, as a background, could not have helped Mr. Biden.

We have never seen an economic meltdown like this? We've never seen a presidential meltdown like this. George W. Bush's weakness is not all lame-duckship. In the last year of his presidency Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and helped change the world. In the penultimate year of his presidency, Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops, successfully, into Kosovo.

After the first bailout failed, Mr. Bush spoke like a man who was a mere commentator, not the leader in a crisis.

We witness here a great political lesson. When you are president, it matters—it really matters—that a majority of the people support and respect you. When you squander that affection, you lose more than mere popularity. You lose the ability to lead when your country is in crisis. This is a terrible loss, and a dangerous one, for the whole world is watching.

Young aides to Reagan used to grouse, late in his second term, that he had high popularity levels, that popularity was capital, and that he should spend it more freely on potential breakthroughs of this kind or that. But Reagan and the men around him were wiser. They spent when they had to and were otherwise prudent. (Is there a larger lesson here?) They were not daring when they didn't have to be. They knew presidential popularity is a jewel to be protected, and to be burnished when possible, because without it you can do nothing. Without the support and trust of the people you cannot move, cannot command. You are left, like Mr. Bush, talking to an empty room.

We saw this week, too, a turn in the McCain campaign's response to criticisms of Mrs. Palin. I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America—small towns, sound values. "It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents "backwoods types," or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun. I'm not sure the McCain campaign is aware of it—it's possible they are—but this is subtly divisive. As for the dismissal of conservative critics of Mrs. Palin as "Georgetown cocktail party types" (that was Mr. McCain), well, my goodness. That is the authentic sound of the aggression, and phony populism, of the Bush White House. Good move. That ended well.

We must take happiness where we can. Tina Fey's Sarah Palin has become, in that old phrase, a national sensation, and Ms. Fey is becoming, with her show "30 Rock," and now the Palin impression, one of the great comic figures of her generation. Her work with Amy Poehler (as Katie Couric) in last weekend's spoof on "Saturday Night Live" was so astoundingly good—the hand gestures, the vocal tone and spirit—that it captured some of the actual heart of the Palin story. Ms. Poehler as Couric: "Mrs. Palin, are you aware that when cornered you become increasingly adorable?" Ms. Fey as Palin mugs, adorably.

To spoof someone well takes talent, but to utterly nail a political figure while not brutalizing him takes a real gift, and amounts almost to a public service. After all, to capture someone is a kind of tribute: it concedes he is real, vivid, worthy of note. We are not as a nation manufacturing trust all that well, or competence, or leadership. But some things we do well, and one is comedy. Ms. Fey plays characters who are sour, stressed and who, on "30 Rock," live in a world that is cynical, provisional and shallow. But to observe life so closely takes a kind of love.

Pollster Luntz's Focus Group: "Almost Unanimously said [Palin] had [Won]"

2008-10-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

Palin Gets Rave Reviews for Debate

On Thursday night, Sarah Palin showed that she has the "right stuff" to be one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Under fire for rambling answers in recent television interviews, Palin went into last night's debate the underdog against the sharp-tongued Joe Biden.

But Palin, in style and substance, demonstrated she can hold her own on the national stage.

Pollster Frank Luntz's focus group on Fox News watched the St. Louis debate. The group was evenly divided between Kerry and Bush supporters from the 2004 election. After the debate Luntz asked if she won, and his group almost unanimously said she had.

The New York Post cover Friday shared a similar sentiment , roaring: "PIT BULL SARAH SHOWS HER BITE."

The Post began "Sarah Palin used folksy language, winks, smiles and sharp elbows to try to put seasoned rival Joe Biden on the defensive in last night's vice-presidential debate."

The Post's star columnist, Andrea Peyser, offered effusive praise.

"I walked in last night expecting a train wreck from our gal of the moment. Instead, I saw fireworks," Peyser wrote. "Sarah rules," she continued, adding, "In her first, and last, vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin was strong. Articulate. Folksy. And warm."

During the verbal fisticuffs, Palin made clear she is not one of the good old boys.

"It's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and I'm someone who's just not used to the way you guys operate," Palin said.

Palin employed a similar "outsider" strategy to defeat the incumbent Republican governor in Alaska.

Even the liberal New York Times had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Palin scored points in the first and last vice presidential debate.

The Times began its coverage this way: "Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign."

Across the blogoshere, positive reviews for her debate performance were pouring in for the first woman on a national Republican ticket.

Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Daily News, declared Palin had a "slim" victory over Biden.

"She sometimes sputtered nonsense, seemed like a Thanksgiving turkey stuffed with facts and was no match for his knowledge and experience on foreign affairs," Goodwin wrote. "But Sarah Palin demonstrated a remarkable political skill Thursday night: She looked into the camera and talked to people as one of them, while Joe Biden talked mostly to the moderator as a teacher to a student.

"On her ability to connect with the audience, and because the expectations for her were so pitifully low, Palin was the victor."

And Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Appearing assertive and confident in her national debate premiere, Palin battled Sen. Joseph Biden on a broad range of issues - the Wall Street meltdown, taxes and spending, Iraq, foreign relations, which candidate best represents change - and more than held her own."

Not every one so pleased about Palin's performance, especially among the pro-Obama cheerleaders in the major media.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC said Palin seemed like she was appearing at a spelling bee and CBS was quick to post an instant survey claiming "independents" believed Biden had won the debate.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Andy Martin Asks FBI Investigation of Obama's Watergate

2008-10-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Obama’s Quarter Billion Dollars of “Clandestine Cash” Shows “Overwhelming Circumstantial Evidence” of Criminal Conspiracy

http://contrariancommentary.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/andy-martin-seeks-criminal-investigation-of-barack-obama%E2%80%99s-quarter-billion-dollars-of-%E2%80%9Cclandestine-cash%E2%80%9D/

Martin seeks criminal investigation of Barack Obama’s quarter billion dollars of “clandestine cash”
Martin was the first reveal the extent of Obama-Rezko connection, in 2006. Andy says there is “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” of a criminal conspiracy in the Obama campaign.

CHICAGO News Conference: Thursday, October 2
Andy Martin asks FBI investigation into Obama’s clandestine cash

ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ATTENTION DAYBOOK/ASSIGNMENT EDITORS

ANNOUNCEMENT OF CHICAGO NEWS CONFERENCE OCTOBER 2, 2008

ANDY MARTIN ASKS FBI, U. S. ATTORNEY AND ATTORNEY GENERAL TO INVESTIGATE OBAMA’S “CLANDESTINE CASH”

MARTIN SAYS OBAMA’S NEARLY QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS OF SECRET CONTRIBUTIONS SHOULD VIOLATE THE LAW AND MAY INDICATE A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY TO EVADE CAMPAIGN LIMITS

WHO ARE “GOOD WILL, DOODAD PRO AND NY NANDO?”

MARTIN SAYS MCCAIN CAMPAIGN IS INEPT AND INEFFECTIVE

(CHICAGO)(October 2, 2008) Anti-Obama author and investigator Andy Martin will hold a Chicago news conference today, Thursday, October 2nd to announce that he has asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Chicago U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the Chicago FBI to open a criminal investigation into Senator Barack Obama’s nearly quarter billion dollar hoard of clandestine campaign cash.

Martin was the first to disclose the extensive financial relationships between Obama and convicted Chicago wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko. (read Obama: The Man Behind the Mask pp. 94-98 [see below])

Martin will also issue mild criticism of the campaign of Senator John McCain, for “once again failing to deliver a focused campaign and meaningful challenge to Obama’s financial shenanigans.” McCain is releasing the names of all of his campaign donors.

“Like almost everyone, I was paying scant attention to the minutiae of Barack Obama’s fund raising operation. I saw the ‘Gaza Strip’ contribution stories but assumed they were a tiny portion of Obama’s overall operation.

“I was smacked in the face by recent reports that Obama has raised almost a quarter of a billion dollars, almost $250 million, of clandestine campaign cash whose origins Obama has never disclosed. This amount is unbelievable and appears to reflect clear criminal intent to evade federal campaign contribution limitations.

“How does Obama think he can hide a quarter of a billion dollars by labeling the origins as ‘petty cash?’ Where are the mainstream media? Bothering Sarah Palin?

“I have asked General Mukasey, the Chicago U. S. Attorney and the FBI to open an investigation into the identities and sources of this secret cash. If the cash hoard is legal, we have a right to know. If the cash is tainted or even criminal, we also have a right to know, before the election, not afterwards. The American People should not have a ‘pig in a poke’ to vote for on November 4th.

Recent media reports focused my attention on Obama’s secret cash hoard:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13981,
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html?s=al&promo_code=6BD9-1

“While we are opening our own investigation, we obviously don’t have the unlimited resources of the FBI or U. S. Attorney’s office. The origins and legality of Obama’s secret $250 million dollars mandates a governmental investigation.

“Obama, who began his campaign by claiming he would uphold the highest ethical standards, has created the seemingly most corrupt campaign fund-raising operation since Watergate. What is Obama hiding? Why won’t he release the names of his contributors?

“If Obama has a scintilla of ethics and commitment to campaign transparence he should immediately release the names of all of his contributors. His relentless attempts to engage in secrecy—over his family history, his education and personal life—are once again apparent in Obama’s clandestine campaign cash whose origins he refuses to identify. Is the money coming from Islamic supporters? Kenya collaborators? African dictators? Middle East sources? The American people have a right to know where a quarter of a billion dollars is coming from. We aren’t talking chopped liver.

“Obama has received money from ‘names’ that are obvious fictions and represent a transparent attempt to criminally corrupt the campaign finance system. Who are ‘Good Will, Doodad Pro and NY Nando?’ There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of a criminal conspiracy to violate federal campaign laws, certainly more than necessary to open a grand jury investigation. Obama has received an endorsement from Moammar Gadhafi. Is this who we want funding our campaigns? Is this the 2008 Democratic Party?

“I would be remiss if I did not mildly criticize Senator John McCain for his inept and ineffective campaign operation. Focusing attention on an opponent’s weaknesses or suspicious activities should be the role of McCain as a candidate. But, once again, in a misguided belief in his own apodictic qualifications, McCain refuses to tackle Obama and to take him on, mano a mano, over the origins of the clandestine cash.

“Why isn’t McCain screaming every day at every stop about Obama’s secret $250 million cash hoard? Why not? Senator McCain owes his supporters an explanation other than the mistaken belief McCain’s record is so well know he doesn’t have to confront Obama. McCain’s strategy is obviously faltering,” says Martin.

Martin will release copies of his DOJ/USA/FBI letters at his news conference.

NEWS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

WHO:

National anti-Obama leader and Author/Editor/Internet Columnist Andy Martin

WHAT:

National anti-Obama leader Andy Martin asks Chicago’s U. S. Attorney, FBI and Department of Justice to open investigation into Barack Obama’s “secret cash” hoard which is approaching a quarter of a billion dollars

WHERE:

Southeast corner of Huron and Wabash Streets, Chicago

WHEN: Thursday, October 2, 1:00 P. M.

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639; CELL (917) 664-9329

TO PURCHASE BOOK: http://www.Amazon.com or http://www.OrangeStatePress.com

Obama-ACORN Root Causes of Mortgage Crisis?

2008-10-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

FBI Investigates U.S. Financial Crisis - Where Did $1 Trillion Go?

The high-risk subprime mortgage social engineering community service experiment by left-wing ACORN and Obama has created the largest financial crisis since The Great Depression. The full reach of the corruption and scandal may never be known but those who created it must not be rewarded. The architects, primarily left-wing Democrats, created laws, took donations, looked the other way and instead were too bus y overseeing donations to their own presidential campaigns and robbing main street blind. Now these same left-wing Democrats blame everyone else and get up on their high horses and say, “we are here to save you” from the crises they created.

Yes, Mr. Obama knows a great deal about the mess. He is a central figure in the left-wing ACORN exploitation of financial institutions and pressuring them to make high risk loans. The very same left-wing ACORN was guilty of voter fraud in the last presidential election.

Now these same Democrats want to do another high risk “community service,” social engineering experiment. They want to elect a high-risk, low experience, socialist one of the same community organizers that created the mess to be our next president. We cannot experiment with the office of president and learn as we go. Barack Obama is not qualified and has no history of success as a leader in government or business.

The FBI investigation

An FBI investigation is under way at Lehman Brothers and three other contributors to America’s financial crisis to determine whether they put pressure on ratings agencies to award top ratings to securities they issued.

Concerns that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or Lehman may have sought to encourage agencies to inflate their ratings — by offering higher fees or the promise of more work — form part of a broad inquiry by the bureau.

The agencies are widely regarded as having failed debt holders by attributing the top ratings to many securities that turned out to be extremely risky and have lost investors hundreds of billions of dollars.

The FBI, which is also investigating whether any of the four institutions deliberately misled investors about the true health of their assets, is expected to demand that they “hold all papers and e-mails under lock and key” as it sifts through the evidence, a source said.

How did we get here?

FOLLOW THE MONEY AND CORRUPTION! A Lending Policy created by democrats for democrats run by democrats monitored by democrats enforced by community organizer democrats and profited from by democrats.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster. ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Obama Trains ACORN Staff in Shakedown Tactics

acorn_activists It would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

Obama Funds ACORN

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

More, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Obama Aware of Intimidation Tactics

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

In short, to understand the roots of the subprime mortgage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Select Below to Demand Congress Protect Taxpayers Not Speculators
FAX All Congressmen - Tell Them No Bailout – Prosecute Offenders!

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HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of faxes are needed to be delivered to EACH AND EVERY Congressman right away. Be sure to send this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help FORCE our government to STOP the EXCUSES and Save Main Street Not Wall Street!

Tell the Congress to Stop the Wall Street Bailout and Prosecute!

FAX All Congressmen - Tell Them No Bailout – Prosecute Offenders!

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Keep calling your Congressmen today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-225-3121 AND REGISTER YOUR OUTRAGE at increasing oil prices!

DO NOT BE SILENCED – MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

NOTE: We need HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of FAXES and PHONE CALLS delivered to ALL Congressmen right away!

Together, we can preserve the Constitutional rights our Founding Fathers intended our people to have forever.

Since 1980, AmeriPAC has helped fund and elect a large number of candidates to public office. In addition to direct financial support of candidates, AmeriPAC also makes independent expenditures, funding proven campaign techniques such as media appearances, press releases, newspaper and magazine advertisements, direct mail, yard signs, television and radio commercials, bumper stickers, and billboards. Scores of candidates from coast-to-coast have received direct and indirect support through AmeriPAC.

Tell us you agree that our nation would be jeopardized by the radical changes being advocated by Barack Obama and his far left friends. Send your contribution to help defeat Barack Obama and restore the Republican majority in Congress in the upcoming November election.

It is time to say we the American people will pick our president.

Your voice can be heard — we need your urgent help at AmeriPAC

Your maximum possible gift of $5,000 would help us enormously.

Even smaller donations are going to help.

Do anything you can to give us the ammunition we need to fight for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Any amount — $1000, $500, $250, or even $100 will help show the truth before the November Presidential election It’s time we stood up and said enough is enough! Please join us with your AmeriPAC donation TODAY. Thank you.

SELECT HERE to DONATE NOW. Stop Obama and His Supporters!
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AmeriPAC

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www.Ameripac.org

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Website PrayforSarahPalin.com Plots Zip Codes and Shows Number of People Praying for Governor Palin

2008-10-03T08:33:00.001-07:00

Website PrayforSarahPalin.com Plots Zip Codes and Shows Number of People Praying for Governor Palin
DALLAS, Oct. 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- This election season is critical and the burden to pray is felt by many. Vicki Garza, owner of Garza Creative Group, explains what led her to form a website dedicated to praying for the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. The website was created by volunteers for the sole purpose of generating prayer for our national leaders and is not affiliated with any political party.

"Many people are excited about the thought of having a strong believer like Sarah Palin in office but how many of us can say that we pray for her daily? This website is dedicated to doing just that. Whoever would like to make a commitment to pray for Sarah Palin can go to www.prayforsarahpalin.com and enter their zip code. A marker will automatically be placed on the prayer coverage map, which can be viewed live in Google maps. There are approximately 43,000 zip codes in the United States. Our goal is to have people praying for Sarah Palin in every zip code. I believe prayer changes things."

To see how many people are currently praying for Sarah Palin go to www.prayforsarahpalin.com and check the prayer counter on the home page.

For more information and to view a video go to www.prayforsarahpalin.com.

Christian Newswire

Secret "Small Donors" Raise $200 Million, Obama Won't Disclose Names

2008-09-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

http://community.mccainspace.com/kickapps/_SECRETSLIESFOREIGN-MONEY-FLOODS-OBAMAS-CAMP/BLOG/110759/41158.html

SECRETS...LIES..FOREIGN MONEY FLOODS OBAMA'S CAMP!!!
More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.

But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.

But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.

But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.

“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.

But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.

Ritsch acknowledges that there is skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers.

“We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he said. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”

The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raises new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.

But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed for far more abuse.

“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.

Already, the FEC has noted unusual patterns in Obama campaign donations among donors who have been disclosed because they have gone beyond the $200 minimum.

FEC and Mr. Doodad Pro

When FEC auditors have questions about contributions, they send letters to the campaign’s finance committee requesting additional information, such as the complete address or employment status of the donor.

Many of the FEC letters that Newsmax reviewed instructed the Obama campaign to “redesignate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.

Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.

TO READ FULL ARTICLE BY KENNETH TIMMERMAN VISIT: WWW.NEWSMAX.COM

GOD BLESS,

Will Christianity be a Hate Crime if Same-Sex Marriage Proposition 8 Wins?

2008-09-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

Gay Canada is Proposition 8's model of change for the USA.

Fred

Catholicism - A Hate Crime in Canada?
June 4th, 2008 by Pete Vere

“If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?”

The question was not rhetorical. Nor was it theoretical. Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy, is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) — a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it. The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant has ever won once the allegation has gone to tribunal — the next stage of the process.

Most defendants end up paying thousands of dollars in fines and compensation. This is in addition to various court costs. Moreover, defendants are responsible for their own legal defense. In contrast, the commission provides free legal assistance to the complainant.

What was Father de Valk’s alleged ‘hate act’?

Father defended the Church’s teaching on marriage during Canada’s same-sex ‘marriage’ debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages - many of who are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman.

The response from Mark van Dusen, a media consultant and spokesperson for CHRC, shocked me. I have interviewed van Dusen in the past and he has always struck me as an honest person willing to field tough questions on behalf of the commission. If he feels an accusation against the commission is hogwash, he states so plainly. If he feels the CHRC and its personnel are being unfairly tainted, he states so boldly.

Yet van Dusen did not dismiss the question out-of-hand as I thought he would. “We investigate complaints, Mr. Vere,” he said, “we don’t set public policy or moral standards. We investigate complaints based on the circumstances and the details outlined in the complaint. And …if…upon investigation, deem that there is sufficient evidence, then we may forward the complaint to the tribunal, but the hate is defined in the Human Rights Act under section 13-1.”

In other words, individual Jews, Muslims, Catholics and other Christians who, for reasons of conscience, hold to their faith’s traditional teaching concerning marriage, could very well be guilty of promoting hate in Canada. The same is true of any faith community in Canada that does not embrace this modern redefinition of one of the world’s oldest institutions — a redefinition that even the highly-secularist France rejects.

“Our job is to look at it, compare it to the act, to accumulated case law, tribunal and court decisions that have reflected on hate and decide whether to advance the complaint, dismiss it or whether there is room for a settlement between parties,” van Dusen continued. The truth of the CHRC considering adherence to Catholicism or Islam a possible hate crime was made real by van Dusen’s implicit admission that the commission could dismiss the complaint against Fr. De Valk. Over six months have passed since the commission first notified Father of the complaint. There has been no hint of the commission dropping the complaint.

Father de Valk publishes Catholic Insight, a Canadian magazine that “bases itself on the Church’s teaching and applies it to various circumstances in our time.” He is being accused by a homosexual activist of promoting “extreme hatred and contempt” against homosexuals.

Yet following the example of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XV, Father has stated on several occasions that we must love homosexuals and treat them with the dignity due every human person. “The basic view of the Church is that homosexual acts are a sin, but we love the sinner,” Father told me during an interview. “Opposing same-sex marriage is not the same as rejecting homosexuals as persons.” This is the deeply-held belief of orthodox Christians that is now considered a possible hate act warranting state intervention. This is what happens when government agencies broadly define homophobia as opposition to any homosexual act.

Yet the complaint against Father de Valk is just one of several in recent years that has been pursued against Christians by Canada’s human rights commissions. In 2005, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal fined a Knights of Columbus council over $1,000 dollars for declining to rent their hall to a couple for a lesbian marriage ceremony.

Five years previous, the Ontario Human Rights Commission fined Protestant printer Scott Brockie $5,000 for declining to print homosexual-themed stationary. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined Hugh Owens thousands of dollars for quoting a couple of Bible verses in a letter to the local newspaper. And Mayor Diane Haskett in London, Ontario, was fined $10,000 plus interest for declining to proclaim a gay pride day.

Nor have Canada’s bishops been spared. Bishop Fred Henry, one of Canada’s most outspoken defenders of the sanctity of life and marriage, was brought before a human rights commission for upholding Catholic moral teaching. While the complaint was ultimately withdrawn — not by the commission, but by the individual who originally filed the complaint — Bishop Henry incurred thousands of dollars of legal costs.

Thus Bishop Henry sympathizes with Father de Valk, who the bishop praises as a model of Catholic orthodoxy and fidelity to Christian teaching. “The social climate right now is that we’re into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police,” His Excellency states.

Additionally, a message posted to a popular Catholic internet forum has reportedly made its way before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The alleged poster, who is an American writing from America, was commenting on an article written by Mark Steyn — a Canadian author who now lives in New Hampshire. The tribunal accepted this posting as evidence that Steyn promoted “hatred”. While the website is never mentioned by name in news reports - referred to only as “a Catholic website” — a source at the tribunal told me, off-the-record, that the website was Catholic Answers.

While the claim is unconfirmed as of this writing, the controversial Mark Steyn article, over which the British Columbia hearing is being held, was posted to the Catholic Answers message forum. Moreoever, popular Jewish-Canadian blogger Ezra Levant, who is blogging live from the hearing, and who is the subject of his own human rights commission complaint, published a description of the unnamed Catholic forum. Several details match, including the screen names of two participants to the Catholic Answers forum discussion of Steyn’s article.

Imagine that! Canada’s human rights tribunals are now attempting to prosecute a case against an American resident, based upon what an American citizen allegedly posted to a mainstream American Catholic website. What passes for mainstream Catholic discussion in America is now the basis for a hate complaint in Canada.

Moreover, Christians in America are not immune from what is happening to their co-religionists across the border. This past April, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ordered Elaine Huguenin, a self-employed Christian photographer, to pay a lesbian couple $6,600 for having declined to photograph their same-sex commitment ceremony. This fine and stress from the legal proceedings come at a time when Huguenin and her husband are expecting their first child.

The New Mexico commission ignored the fact that photography is a form of artistic expression. The state commission ignored the fact that the First Amendment protects individuals from compelled speech — that is, coercion from the state to give artistic expression that violates one’s most deeply held beliefs. The commission’s one-page ruling simply stated that Huguenin had “discriminated against [the lesbian complainant] because of sexual orientation.” As this New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruling shows, Americans are in grave danger of having their religious liberty ripped away from them by Canadian-style human rights commissions.

Pete Vere, JCL, is a canon lawyer and Catholic journalist. He writes from Sault Ste. Marie, a twin city in Northern Ontario and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He is the co-author of Surprised by Canon Law, volumes one and two.

[http://www.catholicexchange.com/2008/06/04/112780/]

Rights complaints against Catholic Insight dismissed

Written by Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News,

OTTAWA - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed an anti-homosexual hate speech complaint against Catholic Insight magazine.

“We are of course very cautious,” said Catholic Insight editor Fr. Alphonse de Valk, CSB, whose small-circulation magazine already faces more than $20,000 in legal bills. “A judicial review is still possible. We’re not out of the woods yet.

“It is chilling to think that a publication can be hauled before a government tribunal simply for reporting to interested citizens developments in these areas of controversy,” said de Valk in a July 4 statement. “This matter underscores once again the necessity of urgent reform of the Canadian human rights system.”

Edmonton-based homosexual activist Rob Wells filed the nine-point complaint against Catholic Insight in early 2007. Catholic Insight is going to see whether it can take legal action to recoup its costs because of “harassing and financially burdening” nature of the complaints. Catholic Insight has maintained it has always adhered to Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

posted by Fred Martinez @ 9:36 PM

1 Comments:
At 11:48 AM, Blazing Cat Fur said...
Catholic Insight faces attack on yet another front. You will also be interested to know Catholic Insight has been put on a Heritage Canada watch list for communicating Church doctrine.

http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2008/08/heritage-canada-letters-to-catholic.html

Is Obama the Manchurian Candidate?

2008-09-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.2sistersfromtheright.com/writings/Rich_Carroll/jihadcandidate.html

The Jihad Candidate

by Rich Carroll

Conspiracy theories make for interesting novels when the storyline is not so absurd that it can grasp our attention. 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Seven Days in May' are examples of plausible chains of events that captures the reader's imagination at best-seller level. 'What if' has always been the solid grist of fiction.

Get yourself something cool to drink, find a relaxing position, but before you continue, visualize the television photos of two jet airliners smashing into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and remind yourself this cowardly act of Muslim terror was planned for eight years.

How long did it take Islam and their oil money to find a candidate for President of the United States? As long as it took them to place a Senator from Illinois and Minnesota? The same amount of time to create a large Muslim enclave in Detroit? The time it took them to build over 2,000 mosques in America? The same amount of time required to place radical wahabbist clerics in our military and prisons as 'chaplains'?

Find a candidate who can get away with lying about their father being a 'freedom fighter' when he was actually part of the most corrupt and violent government in Kenya's history.

Find a candidate with close ties to The Nation of Islam and the violent Muslim overthrow in Africa, a candidate who is educated among white infidel Americans but hides his bitterness and anger behind a superficial toothy smile.

Find a candidate who changes his American name of Barry to the Muslim name of Barack Hussein Obama, and dares anyone to question his true ties under the banner of 'racism'.

Nurture this candidate in an atmosphere of anti-white American teaching and surround him with Islamic teachers. Provide him with a bitter, racist, anti-white, anti-American wife, and supply him with Muslim middle east connections and Islamic monies.

Allow him to be clever enough to get away with his anti-white rhetoric and proclaim he will give $834 billion taxpayer dollars to the Muslim controlled United Nations for use in Africa.

Install your candidate in an atmosphere of deception, because questioning him on any issue involving Africa or Islam would be seen as 'bigoted racism'; two words too powerful to allow the citizenry to be informed of facts.

Allow your candidate to employ several black racist Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan followers as members of his Illinois Senatorial and campaign staffs.

Where is the bloodhound American 'free press' who doggedly overturned every stone in the Watergate case?

Where are our nation's reporters that have placed every Presidential candidate under the microscope of detailed scrutiny; the same press who pursue Bush's 'Skull and Bones' club or ran other candidates off with persistent detective and research work?

Why haven't 'newsmen' pursued the 65 blatant lies told by this candidate during the Presidential primaries?

Where are the stories about this candidate's cousin and the Muslim butchery in Africa? Since when did our national press corps become weak, timid, and silent?

Why haven't they regaled us with the long list of socialists and communists who have surrounded this 'out of nowhere' Democrat candidate or the fact that his church re-printed the Hamas Manifesto in their bulletin, and that his 'close pastor friend and mentor' met with Middle East terrorist Muammar Qaddafi, (Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)?

Why isn't the American press telling us this candidate is supported by every Muslim organization in the world?

As an ultimate slap in the face, be blatant in the fact your candidate has ZERO interest in traditional American values and has the most liberal voting record in U.S. Senate history.

Why has the American mainstream media clammed up on any negative reporting on Barak Hussein Obama?

Why will they print Hillary Rodham Clinton's name but never write his middle name? Is it not his name?

Why, suddenly, is ANY information about this candidate not coming from mainstream media, but from the blogosphere by citizens seeking facts and the truth?

Why isn't our media connecting the dots with Islam? Why do they focus on 'those bad American soldiers' while Islam slaughters non-Muslims daily in 44 countries around the globe?

Why does our media refer to Darfur as 'ethnic cleansing' instead of what it really is: Muslims killing non-Muslims!

There is enough strange, anti-American activity surrounding Barack Hussein Obama to pique the curiosity of any reporter. WHERE IS OUR INVESTIGATIVE MEDIA!?

A formal plan for targeting America was devised three years after the Iranian revolution in 1982. The plan was summarized in a 1991 memorandum by Mohammed Akram, an operative of the global Muslim Brotherhood.

'The process of settlement' of Muslims in America, Akram explained, 'is a civilization jihad process.' This means that members of the Brotherhood must understand that their work in 'America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions.'

There is terrorism we can see, smell and fear, but there is a new kind of terror invading The United States in the form of Sharia law and finance. Condoning it is civilization suicide.

Middle East Muslims are coming to America in record numbers and building hate infidel mosques, buying our corporations, suing us for our traditions, but they and the whole subject of Islam is white noise leaving uninformed Americans about who and what is really peaceful.

Where is our investigative press? Any criticism of Islam or their intentions, even though Islamic leaders state their intentions daily around the globe, brings forth a volley of 'racist' from the left-wing Democrat crowd.

Lies and deception behind a master plan - the ingredients for 'The Manchurian Candidate' or the placement of an anti-American President in our nation's White House?

Is it mere coincidence that an anti-capitalist run for President at the same time Islamic Sharia finance and law is trying to make advancing strides into the United States?

Is it mere coincidence this same candidate wants to disarm our nuclear capability at a time when terrorist Muslim nations are expanding their nuclear weapons capability? Is it mere coincidence this candidate wants to reduce our military at a time of global jihad from Muslim nations?

Change for America? What change? To become another 'nation of Islam'?

© Rich Carroll 2008
crossedrifles@hotmail.com