Media for Obama, but Voters Are Split
Sunday, July 27, 2008 2:04 PM
By: dick Morris & Eileen McGann
If you read, watch and hear the media describe the campaign of 2008, it appears to be the most one-sided contest since Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale in 1984. John McCain always comes across as borderline senile, lethargic, and pitiful while Barack Obama is awash in media heroics and theatrical flourishes.
But the race is still basically tied according to the polls.
While Obama has gotten a four point bounce, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, from his European trip and the adulatory response of the left-leaning German crowds, the two candidates have been within one or two points of each other for the past three weeks.
Never has the disjuncture between coverage and reality loomed quite so large as it does in this race. You get one image from the media and a totally different one from the polling.
Behind this gap between perception and reality lies the more fundamental reality: Voters are worried about Obama. Recent national polls show Obama with just a 40% favorable ratio among white voters. He is clearly hitting up against some substantial sales resistance, particularly among middle aged and older white women.
Obama went to Europe as a steak seeking to recover his sizzle. The absence of weekly teleprompter victory speeches in primary contests has sapped some of the enthusiasm his candidacy generated all spring. But, for a more sustained bounce, he went abroad to hype his ratings as a potential commander-in-chief and his standing as a foreign policy expert.
But clearly Obama is a domestic policy candidate. Overall, he can only win if foreign issues do not intrude unduly in the election campaign. Any reminder of foreign concerns, the war on terror, Iraq, or Iran, serves to undermine his ability to win. Never has there been a clearer fact than that McCain is better able to handle a foreign policy crisis, just as Bush was more prepared in 1992 to do so than was Bill Clinton. Then, as now, the Democrat could only win if foreign affairs stayed on the periphery of the campaign.
But will they? Will Iran remain on a back burner as rumors of an impending Israeli or American military strike mount? Will Iraq stay off the front pages even though more than 100,000 American troops are at risk there? Will al Qaeda remain off balance and off the front pages?
Lately, it has become fashionable for McCain backers to complain about his seeming lethargy and the weakness of his campaign. Some extrapolate into speculation about his ability to handle the job of president. But, as delighted as the media is to fan such speculation, the fact is that he's not running a bad race. He's basically still tied and he has Obama on the defensive on the Iraq war issue, quite an achievement in itself.
Make no mistake about it, no matter how adulatory the media coverage of Obama gets, this race is still up for grabs and Obama has been unable to put it away. Sure McCain needs to step up his attacks and must pin Obama down on his flips and his flops. But even so, give credit where it is due — it is very unusual, in this sycophantic media atmosphere, for McCain to be running even with Obama this late in the game.
© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
July 31, 2008
Women Choosing McCain Over Obama
Women Choosing McCain Over Obama
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 5:06 PM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Ar
If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest.
Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain.
According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama’s 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary.
The problem is that older women don’t like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in their 40s feel the same way, and only 52 percent of those over 50 view him favorably.
For a Democrat to be losing among women over 40 is without precedent in the past 20 years.
In fact, the gap between male and female voting preference in this election is far lower than it normally is. Among people under 40, men back Obama by eight points and women support him by 13. Among those in their 40s, men back McCain by 11 points and women support him by four. And for those over 50, men vote for the Republican by a nine-point margin while women prefer him by three points.
Usually, the gender gap runs at least 10 points in each age group and, more usually, averages a 15-point differential. The lower gap in this race does not indicate any special popularity for McCain or negatives on Obama among men. Men are voting the way they usually do. It’s women who are making the big difference and keeping this race tied.
Part of the problem may stem from Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary drew her strongest support from older women who still remembered the sexism of their youth and their struggles to pierce the glass ceiling. For younger women, sexism has much less personal relevance and they were less drawn to her candidacy.
But a bigger problem may be a cultural alienation older white women feel toward Obama. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright may linger as a worry in their increasingly gray heads as they contemplate an Obama presidency. This fear of the unknown and the gap they seem to feel with Obama is so strong that it is overcoming their normal proclivity to back Democrats.
Of course, McCain is a uniquely attractive candidate to the Democratic and independent base. Long regarded as a maverick Republican, he attracts these swing voters and is ideally positioned to exploit the estrangement between older women and Barack Obama.
Would choosing Hillary as a running mate assuage the concerns of older white women? It might.
They could get enthusiastic, one would think, about seeing a woman sitting a few feet away from the president in the Oval Office (again!).
But Hillary would bring with her a different set of problems. Her candidacy would invite scrutiny of Bill’s financial dealings, most recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the incredible corruption of his buddy, the president of Kazakhstan.
The problem is Obama. And it can only be solved by Obama, not by his running mate. For his part, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.
The current favorite, Mitt Romney, does him no earthly good with these folks, and his Mormonism is likely to be a big turnoff. But McCain could choose Condi Rice or any number of other Republican women (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator) and attract these dissident women.
© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 5:06 PM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Ar
If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest.
Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain.
According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama’s 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary.
The problem is that older women don’t like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in their 40s feel the same way, and only 52 percent of those over 50 view him favorably.
For a Democrat to be losing among women over 40 is without precedent in the past 20 years.
In fact, the gap between male and female voting preference in this election is far lower than it normally is. Among people under 40, men back Obama by eight points and women support him by 13. Among those in their 40s, men back McCain by 11 points and women support him by four. And for those over 50, men vote for the Republican by a nine-point margin while women prefer him by three points.
Usually, the gender gap runs at least 10 points in each age group and, more usually, averages a 15-point differential. The lower gap in this race does not indicate any special popularity for McCain or negatives on Obama among men. Men are voting the way they usually do. It’s women who are making the big difference and keeping this race tied.
Part of the problem may stem from Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary drew her strongest support from older women who still remembered the sexism of their youth and their struggles to pierce the glass ceiling. For younger women, sexism has much less personal relevance and they were less drawn to her candidacy.
But a bigger problem may be a cultural alienation older white women feel toward Obama. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright may linger as a worry in their increasingly gray heads as they contemplate an Obama presidency. This fear of the unknown and the gap they seem to feel with Obama is so strong that it is overcoming their normal proclivity to back Democrats.
Of course, McCain is a uniquely attractive candidate to the Democratic and independent base. Long regarded as a maverick Republican, he attracts these swing voters and is ideally positioned to exploit the estrangement between older women and Barack Obama.
Would choosing Hillary as a running mate assuage the concerns of older white women? It might.
They could get enthusiastic, one would think, about seeing a woman sitting a few feet away from the president in the Oval Office (again!).
But Hillary would bring with her a different set of problems. Her candidacy would invite scrutiny of Bill’s financial dealings, most recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the incredible corruption of his buddy, the president of Kazakhstan.
The problem is Obama. And it can only be solved by Obama, not by his running mate. For his part, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.
The current favorite, Mitt Romney, does him no earthly good with these folks, and his Mormonism is likely to be a big turnoff. But McCain could choose Condi Rice or any number of other Republican women (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator) and attract these dissident women.
© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
July 30, 2008
FAIRNESS DOCTRINE,, AIN'T FAIR
Do you support the government forcing Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other conservatives on talk radio OFF THE AIR?
Well, that's exactly what Nancy Pelosi and other liberals in Congress are working to do RIGHT NOW through the reinstatement of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."
In fact, Pelosi admitted as much at a recent breakfast hosted by Christian Science Monitor and attended by the news media.
During the breakfast, Human Events Political Editor John Gizzi asked Pelosi if she would permit a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act -- the bill sponsored by Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) to prevent reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine -- if Pence secured the necessary signatures on his discharge petition to force his bill out of committee.
Without hesitation, Pelosis answer was an unequivocal "NO!"
But that's not all! According to Mr. Gizzi:
"[Pelosi] added that 'the interest in my caucus is the reverse' and that New York Democratic Rep. 'Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now.' ...
"'So I don't see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,' Pelosi said."
And, like any good reporter would do, Gizzi asked the obvious follow-up question:
"'Do you personally support revival of the Fairness Doctrine?' I asked."
"'Yes,' the speaker replied, without hesitation."
So there you have it. When it comes to silencing dissenting voices to their leftist agenda, Pelosi and Company says "silence them all, silence them now!"
Never mind the will of the people! Never mind the First Amendment to the Constitution, which Pelosi and her liberal cohorts took an oath to uphold!
Since we last alerted you to liberals' efforts to HUSH RUSH and other conservatives on talk radio, two more Members of Congress have stepped forward and signed Pence's discharge petition.
That means we are now only 16 signatures shy of forcing the Broadcaster Freedom Act to the House floor for a fair up-or-down vote.
That means your blast faxes, phone calls, and letters to Congress are having a major impact -- you and your fellow CFIF activists deserve all the credit for this progress.
But we must turn up the heat. Together, we must call Pelosi's bluff by helping Congressman Pence secure those 16 remaining signatures today to force Pelosi to hold a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act!
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
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THE LIBERAL DOUBLE STANDARD...
According to syndicated columnist David Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi's big push to force the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" down the throats of the American people is nothing BUT A BIG, FAT "COLOSSAL FRAUD!"
And just in case you needed an example; here's what Limbaugh wrote about the recent REFUSAL by the fair-and-balanced New York Times to publish Senator John McCain's response to an opinion editorial the Times published from Barack Obama:
"David Shipley, the Times' op-ed editor, sent an e-mail to McCain's staff rejecting the piece and offering suggestions on how to tailor it for resubmission. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. ... Let me suggest an approach.'"
"Just savor the dripping condescension. But it gets worse. Shipley said: 'The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information; ... he went into detail about his own plans. It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece.' It would have to 'articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq ... lay out a clear plan for achieving victory -- with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.'"
In other words, the folks at the New York Times essentially told a presidential candidate; 'Yeah, we know we published the other guy's opinion editorial but if you really want us to publish yours, YOU HAVE TO WRITE IT OUR WAY.... That's how WE define fairness.'
And let's face it. That's how MOST liberal elites in the media and in government define "fairness." In fact, any idea they don't like is essentially "unfair."
Don't get us wrong. Our criticism of McCain, especially on the issue of free speech, is well documented. But where was the pro-Fairness Doctrine crowd, who are calling for "equal time," when the Times chose to publish the Democrat nominee's editorial and not the Republican nominee's?
Limbaugh summed up the point very well:
"It is not conservatives who, having lost in the talk radio marketplace of ideas, are pushing to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine to suppress political viewpoints they find objectionable. And it is not conservative newspaper editors who -- masquerading as objective, high-minded journalists -- exhibit the stunning audacity to refuse publication of an op-ed by the presidential candidate they oppose, after having published one from the one they endorse."
And Limbaugh yet again:
"The left supports campaign finance reform, the Fairness Doctrine and other policies allegedly aimed at ensuring that both sides of the political argument be aired. But it's a colossal fraud."
" The Times' rejection of McCain's piece is a case study in how liberals apply these principles. They don't believe in both sides presenting their viewpoints, but in controlling the nature and scope of the discussion. [Emphasis Mine]
"Can you imagine what would be in store for political speech in this country if liberals resumed regulatory control of the airways?
"I can and am horrified at the prospect; and you should be, too."
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
JUST IN CASE YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS...
The case study from the New York Times has made it abundantly clear that liberal elites in the media and in government are totally oblivious to concepts like freedom and fairness and balance.
Their ONLY agenda is to control ALL debate, opinion and political discourse.
And when it comes to the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," their only purpose is to force talk-radio to CEASE AND DESIST... to SILENCE CONSERVATIVE DISSENT... to HUSH RUSH (and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck...).
Bill Ruder, John F. Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of Commerce, spelled it out long ago:
"Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."
Or as Senator James Inhofe recounts in reference to a conversation he claims he heard between Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Hillary Clinton:
"They said we've got to do something about this. These are nothing but far right-wing extremists.... There's got to be a legislative fix for this..."
In order to understand the intellectual tyranny behind this movement, read the following quote from Newshound, a left-wing blog:
"A year ago Sean Hannity was squawking about a 'direct assault on the First Amendment' via what he feared was an attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Now, it's free market be damned as he keeps whining that John McCain is not getting the same amount of press coverage as Barack Obama. FOX News' Democratic newcomer, Howard Wolfson, did an excellent job of arguing that Republicans should quit bellyaching..."
Again, some of these liberal elites are totally clueless.
There is no comparison! Neither Sean Hannity nor any other conservative has EVER advocated using the power of government to coerce CBS or the New York Times into changing its programming or politics.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
WHERE'S THE OUTCRY FROM THE LEFT?
We will ask the question again: Where was the pro-Fairness Doctrine crowd, who are calling for "equal time" in an attempt to silence conservative talk radio, during this recent New York Times incident?
Where was Senator Dick Durbin, Majority Whip and winner of the 2008 Al Gore Award for Conspicuous Self-Righteousness? Durbin once said: "It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision."
Where was Senator Dianne Feinstein? Feinstein once said: "I believe very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for profit. But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with some modicum of fairness."
Where was Senator John Kerry? Kerry once said: "I think the Fairness Doctrine ought to be there, and I also think equal time doctrine ought to come back. These are the people that wiped out... one of the most profound changes in the balance of the media is when the conservatives got rid of the equal time requirements and the result is that they have been able to squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views and I think its been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public eye."
Did you hear a peep from any of them?
Of course not!
Stupid Question: Are liberals REALLY concerned about media fairness?
Obvious Answer: Watch CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and PBS. If you're still in doubt, read the New York Times or the Washington Post. If you're still not convinced, go to a movie theater.
Make no mistake. They believe THEY are in control and ANY opposing thoughts must be squashed!
Today it might be Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.
Tomorrow, it might be you.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
DO LEFTIST OPPOSE FREE SPEECH?
Do Leftists oppose Free Speech?
Not at all.
In fact, they believe passionately in Free Speech when it fits their own agenda.
You can burn the flag, put four-letter-word bumper stickers on your car, commit lewd acts on-stage, and even use taxpayer funds to depict Jesus suspended in urine.
But if you utter a conservative thought on the airwaves, they suddenly demand government enforced "fairness."
Why?
Because tens of millions of Americans listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Because liberals cannot counter conservative viewpoints in a fair fight.
Because, quite frankly, nobody wants to hear anymore bankrupt liberal ideas from Al Franken, Air America, and other left-wing ideologues. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the New York Times already have that territory covered.
But wait a minute. Is it really fair to say that all those mainstream media outlets are biased?
Well, according to Investor's Business Daily:
"An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans."
"Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans -- a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain."
Even the general public isn't fooled. A recent Rasmussen Reports survey, taken prior to the New York Times controversy, found that "49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrats with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago."
MAKE NO MISTAKE: The very real efforts to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" are nothing more than a politically-motivated attempt to silence talk radio -- the one medium on which conservatives have a real voice.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
Yours In Freedom,
Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.org
Well, that's exactly what Nancy Pelosi and other liberals in Congress are working to do RIGHT NOW through the reinstatement of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."
In fact, Pelosi admitted as much at a recent breakfast hosted by Christian Science Monitor and attended by the news media.
During the breakfast, Human Events Political Editor John Gizzi asked Pelosi if she would permit a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act -- the bill sponsored by Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) to prevent reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine -- if Pence secured the necessary signatures on his discharge petition to force his bill out of committee.
Without hesitation, Pelosis answer was an unequivocal "NO!"
But that's not all! According to Mr. Gizzi:
"[Pelosi] added that 'the interest in my caucus is the reverse' and that New York Democratic Rep. 'Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now.' ...
"'So I don't see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,' Pelosi said."
And, like any good reporter would do, Gizzi asked the obvious follow-up question:
"'Do you personally support revival of the Fairness Doctrine?' I asked."
"'Yes,' the speaker replied, without hesitation."
So there you have it. When it comes to silencing dissenting voices to their leftist agenda, Pelosi and Company says "silence them all, silence them now!"
Never mind the will of the people! Never mind the First Amendment to the Constitution, which Pelosi and her liberal cohorts took an oath to uphold!
Since we last alerted you to liberals' efforts to HUSH RUSH and other conservatives on talk radio, two more Members of Congress have stepped forward and signed Pence's discharge petition.
That means we are now only 16 signatures shy of forcing the Broadcaster Freedom Act to the House floor for a fair up-or-down vote.
That means your blast faxes, phone calls, and letters to Congress are having a major impact -- you and your fellow CFIF activists deserve all the credit for this progress.
But we must turn up the heat. Together, we must call Pelosi's bluff by helping Congressman Pence secure those 16 remaining signatures today to force Pelosi to hold a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act!
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
THE LIBERAL DOUBLE STANDARD...
According to syndicated columnist David Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi's big push to force the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" down the throats of the American people is nothing BUT A BIG, FAT "COLOSSAL FRAUD!"
And just in case you needed an example; here's what Limbaugh wrote about the recent REFUSAL by the fair-and-balanced New York Times to publish Senator John McCain's response to an opinion editorial the Times published from Barack Obama:
"David Shipley, the Times' op-ed editor, sent an e-mail to McCain's staff rejecting the piece and offering suggestions on how to tailor it for resubmission. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. ... Let me suggest an approach.'"
"Just savor the dripping condescension. But it gets worse. Shipley said: 'The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information; ... he went into detail about his own plans. It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece.' It would have to 'articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq ... lay out a clear plan for achieving victory -- with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.'"
In other words, the folks at the New York Times essentially told a presidential candidate; 'Yeah, we know we published the other guy's opinion editorial but if you really want us to publish yours, YOU HAVE TO WRITE IT OUR WAY.... That's how WE define fairness.'
And let's face it. That's how MOST liberal elites in the media and in government define "fairness." In fact, any idea they don't like is essentially "unfair."
Don't get us wrong. Our criticism of McCain, especially on the issue of free speech, is well documented. But where was the pro-Fairness Doctrine crowd, who are calling for "equal time," when the Times chose to publish the Democrat nominee's editorial and not the Republican nominee's?
Limbaugh summed up the point very well:
"It is not conservatives who, having lost in the talk radio marketplace of ideas, are pushing to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine to suppress political viewpoints they find objectionable. And it is not conservative newspaper editors who -- masquerading as objective, high-minded journalists -- exhibit the stunning audacity to refuse publication of an op-ed by the presidential candidate they oppose, after having published one from the one they endorse."
And Limbaugh yet again:
"The left supports campaign finance reform, the Fairness Doctrine and other policies allegedly aimed at ensuring that both sides of the political argument be aired. But it's a colossal fraud."
" The Times' rejection of McCain's piece is a case study in how liberals apply these principles. They don't believe in both sides presenting their viewpoints, but in controlling the nature and scope of the discussion. [Emphasis Mine]
"Can you imagine what would be in store for political speech in this country if liberals resumed regulatory control of the airways?
"I can and am horrified at the prospect; and you should be, too."
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
JUST IN CASE YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS...
The case study from the New York Times has made it abundantly clear that liberal elites in the media and in government are totally oblivious to concepts like freedom and fairness and balance.
Their ONLY agenda is to control ALL debate, opinion and political discourse.
And when it comes to the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," their only purpose is to force talk-radio to CEASE AND DESIST... to SILENCE CONSERVATIVE DISSENT... to HUSH RUSH (and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck...).
Bill Ruder, John F. Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of Commerce, spelled it out long ago:
"Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."
Or as Senator James Inhofe recounts in reference to a conversation he claims he heard between Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Hillary Clinton:
"They said we've got to do something about this. These are nothing but far right-wing extremists.... There's got to be a legislative fix for this..."
In order to understand the intellectual tyranny behind this movement, read the following quote from Newshound, a left-wing blog:
"A year ago Sean Hannity was squawking about a 'direct assault on the First Amendment' via what he feared was an attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Now, it's free market be damned as he keeps whining that John McCain is not getting the same amount of press coverage as Barack Obama. FOX News' Democratic newcomer, Howard Wolfson, did an excellent job of arguing that Republicans should quit bellyaching..."
Again, some of these liberal elites are totally clueless.
There is no comparison! Neither Sean Hannity nor any other conservative has EVER advocated using the power of government to coerce CBS or the New York Times into changing its programming or politics.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
WHERE'S THE OUTCRY FROM THE LEFT?
We will ask the question again: Where was the pro-Fairness Doctrine crowd, who are calling for "equal time" in an attempt to silence conservative talk radio, during this recent New York Times incident?
Where was Senator Dick Durbin, Majority Whip and winner of the 2008 Al Gore Award for Conspicuous Self-Righteousness? Durbin once said: "It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision."
Where was Senator Dianne Feinstein? Feinstein once said: "I believe very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for profit. But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with some modicum of fairness."
Where was Senator John Kerry? Kerry once said: "I think the Fairness Doctrine ought to be there, and I also think equal time doctrine ought to come back. These are the people that wiped out... one of the most profound changes in the balance of the media is when the conservatives got rid of the equal time requirements and the result is that they have been able to squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views and I think its been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public eye."
Did you hear a peep from any of them?
Of course not!
Stupid Question: Are liberals REALLY concerned about media fairness?
Obvious Answer: Watch CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and PBS. If you're still in doubt, read the New York Times or the Washington Post. If you're still not convinced, go to a movie theater.
Make no mistake. They believe THEY are in control and ANY opposing thoughts must be squashed!
Today it might be Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.
Tomorrow, it might be you.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
DO LEFTIST OPPOSE FREE SPEECH?
Do Leftists oppose Free Speech?
Not at all.
In fact, they believe passionately in Free Speech when it fits their own agenda.
You can burn the flag, put four-letter-word bumper stickers on your car, commit lewd acts on-stage, and even use taxpayer funds to depict Jesus suspended in urine.
But if you utter a conservative thought on the airwaves, they suddenly demand government enforced "fairness."
Why?
Because tens of millions of Americans listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Because liberals cannot counter conservative viewpoints in a fair fight.
Because, quite frankly, nobody wants to hear anymore bankrupt liberal ideas from Al Franken, Air America, and other left-wing ideologues. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the New York Times already have that territory covered.
But wait a minute. Is it really fair to say that all those mainstream media outlets are biased?
Well, according to Investor's Business Daily:
"An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans."
"Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans -- a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain."
Even the general public isn't fooled. A recent Rasmussen Reports survey, taken prior to the New York Times controversy, found that "49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrats with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago."
MAKE NO MISTAKE: The very real efforts to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" are nothing more than a politically-motivated attempt to silence talk radio -- the one medium on which conservatives have a real voice.
Use the hyperlink below to send your personalized and urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush and EACH and EVERY Member of the Leadership of the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is STILL REFUSING to allow a fair up-or-down vote on Rep. Mike Pence's Broadcaster Freedom Act -- a simple bill that will thwart attempts by liberals to institute their so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and KILL CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO. Remember, we are making progress. We only need 16 more signatures on Pence's discharge petition to FORCE Pelosi to allow a fair up-or-down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.
And that means we need to keep bombarding them until they cry 'uncle' and finally do what their employers -- the American people -- want. Tell them the American people should be free to decide whether they want to listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Tell them we do not live in the former Soviet Union and that liberals in Congress have no right to decide what the American people should or should not hear!
http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/fairnessdoctrinexx.html
AOL Members Can Also Use This Hyperlink
If the above hyperlinks do not appear to function, copy and paste the first hyperlink into the address bar of your browser.
Yours In Freedom,
Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.org
A NEEDED READING
SENT TO US BY TWO DEDICATED READERS, THANKS
If you read anything today, please read this. The impact this writing may have on you just might determine the future of America , as we see it today. Two minutes, that's all it will take, two minutes.
This is very thought provoking ... it takes 2 minutes to read .... especially the last paragraph. Read it with an open mind.
When electing the next President, 'the only decision you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in the White House when - not if - WHEN we get hit again and millions of American lives are put at risk!'
This is from: 'You ain't gonna like losing.'
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military.
Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of porno-graphy, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause... Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits. So... We either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war.
America is at the mall, or watching the movie stars.
(Remember Obama said in his book 'Audacity of Hope', 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction'.....
If you've ever forwarded an email, now's the time to do it!
If you read anything today, please read this. The impact this writing may have on you just might determine the future of America , as we see it today. Two minutes, that's all it will take, two minutes.
This is very thought provoking ... it takes 2 minutes to read .... especially the last paragraph. Read it with an open mind.
When electing the next President, 'the only decision you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in the White House when - not if - WHEN we get hit again and millions of American lives are put at risk!'
This is from: 'You ain't gonna like losing.'
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military.
Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of porno-graphy, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause... Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits. So... We either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war.
America is at the mall, or watching the movie stars.
(Remember Obama said in his book 'Audacity of Hope', 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction'.....
If you've ever forwarded an email, now's the time to do it!
China to Spy on Olympic Visitors
Sen. Brownback: China to Spy on Olympic Visitors
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 3:22 PM
By: Jim Meyers
Sen. Sam Brownback has charged that China is preparing a spy attack on visitors to the Olympics Games, which begin on Aug. 8.
The Kansas Republican on Tuesday told reporters from The Hill newspaper and other media outlets that China has “carefully plotted to take advantage of the situation of having thousands of foreign visitors on its soil” and “set up a system to be able to spy and gather information about each and every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are located.”
Brownback said China’s targets will include journalists, athletes’ families, and human rights advocates, The Hill reports.
He disclosed that his office had been contacted by attorneys for international hotel chains who said the Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB) told foreign-owned hotels to install Internet monitoring equipment.
“These measures are designed to assist the PSB to spy on the Internet activities of guests and record Web sites visited, searches entered and even keystrokes,” Brownback said.
“The text alludes to harsh punishment for failure to comply with the order, including loss of license to operate a hotel in China,” he said.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 3:22 PM
By: Jim Meyers
Sen. Sam Brownback has charged that China is preparing a spy attack on visitors to the Olympics Games, which begin on Aug. 8.
The Kansas Republican on Tuesday told reporters from The Hill newspaper and other media outlets that China has “carefully plotted to take advantage of the situation of having thousands of foreign visitors on its soil” and “set up a system to be able to spy and gather information about each and every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are located.”
Brownback said China’s targets will include journalists, athletes’ families, and human rights advocates, The Hill reports.
He disclosed that his office had been contacted by attorneys for international hotel chains who said the Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB) told foreign-owned hotels to install Internet monitoring equipment.
“These measures are designed to assist the PSB to spy on the Internet activities of guests and record Web sites visited, searches entered and even keystrokes,” Brownback said.
“The text alludes to harsh punishment for failure to comply with the order, including loss of license to operate a hotel in China,” he said.
MINI ARTICLES
Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Obama Pulls Fewer Evangelicals Than Kerry
2. Aging Icebreakers Hinder U.S. Oil Exploration Ability
3. Israel Sanctioning Al-Jazeera Over Released Murderer
4. Iran Already Has Diplomatic Channel With U.S.
5. Obama, McCain Like to Gamble
6. Arab Cartoons Depict ‘Jewish Control’ of U.S. Candidates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Obama Pulls Fewer Evangelicals Than Kerry
Despite assertions in the press that evangelical Christians are backing Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race, a new survey reveals that he is getting less support than John Kerry did four years ago.
A typical headline, which ran last week in U.S. News & World Report, announced: “Obama Campaign Is Making Progress With Evangelical Voters.”
But the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 25 percent of white evangelicals favor Obama over John McCain, while 26 percent favored John Kerry over President Bush in 2004.
In 2000, Al Gore enjoyed even more support — 28 percent.
“Not that this translates into evangelical enthusiasm for McCain, but the survey is worth noting for no other reason than it challenges the prevailing media assumption about how Obama’s overt religiosity is helping his campaign,” National Review’s Mark Hemingway observes.
And the Pew Center notes: “Obama has made no significant gains among this important constituency.”
The survey also found that 39 percent of white mainline Protestants support Obama, significantly less than the 46 percent who backed Gore in 2000.
And among white, non-Hispanic Catholics, 40 percent favor Obama, compared to 47 percent who supported Kerry and 45 percent who backed Gore.
Four in 10 respondents who said they attend religious services at least once a week are backing Obama, fewer than the 42 percent who favored Kerry.
According to Hemingway, press accounts of Obama’s support among evangelicals are “a classic example of the media trying to force a campaign narrative, regardless of whether it is true.”
2. Aging Icebreakers Hinder U.S. Oil Exploration Ability
As Arctic sea ice recedes, the U.S. and other nations are increasingly eyeing the region as a promising source of natural resources. But America’s ability to exploit those resources could be hampered by its aging and ailing icebreaker fleet.
The U.S. currently has three polar icebreakers. But two of them, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star, have surpassed their intended 30-year service lives, and the Polar Star has been inactive and docked in Seattle for more than two years.
The third icebreaker, the Healy, was commissioned in 2000. But while the Polar Sea and Polar Star can break through ice up to 6 feet thick, the Healy can’t handle ice more than 4 1/2 feet thick, according to the CQ Politics Web site.
Russia, on the other hand, has 20 icebreakers in its fleet, seven of them nuclear-powered. One of those ships can break through ice more than 9 feet thick.
“While U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic region expand, both domestically and internationally, our polar icebreaking capability is at risk,” Thad W. Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, recently told members of Congress.
“I am concerned that we are watching our nation’s domestic and international icebreaking capability decline as reliance on foreign icebreakers grows.”
He also stated in remarks reported by CQ: “We are losing ground in the global competition. Like Russia, Germany, China, Sweden and Canada are all investing and maintaining and expanding their national icebreaking capacity.”
Back in September 2006, a congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council said the U.S. should build two new polar icebreakers to protect its interests in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The report noted that melting sea ice in the Arctic was opening new shipping routes and sparking economic activity, such as exploration for natural resources.
But a new icebreaker would cost between $800 million and $925 million, and would take as long as 10 years to construct, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The stakes are high, however. The U.S. has “billion-dollar, if not trillion-dollar, national interests” in the Arctic, said Mead Treadwell, chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, which advises Congress.
Despite the receding polar ice cap, large areas of the region are still covered by thick ice.
And Treadwell told CQ that tougher operating conditions, due in part to changing wind and weather patterns, “will only make icebreaking capacity more critical.”
3. Israel Sanctioning Al-Jazeera Over Released Murderer
Israel’s Government Press Office will impose sanctions on Al-Jazeera after the influential Qatar-based TV station threw a party for released Lebanese murderer Samir Kuntar.
The party was organized by Al-Jazeera’s Beirut bureau to honor Kuntar, and hailed him as a hero who carried out a military operation against Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Kuntar thanked bureau chief Ghassan bin Jeddo and Al-Jazeera for waging a campaign for the release of Kuntar and other prisoners from Israeli jails.
Daniel Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, on Tuesday phoned Walid Omari, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Israel, and summoned him to a meeting to inform him of the decision to suspend ties with the station. Omari was abroad, however, but was told to report to the GPO upon his return, according to the Post.
“We will suspend all handling of Al-Jazeera requests,” Seaman told the newspaper. “For now, we won’t provide them with any of our services, which include issuing press credentials and assistance with bureaucracy and applications for visas.”
Kuntar and several others members of the Palestinian Liberation Front entered Israel by boat in April 1979, killed a policeman and kidnapped a man and his 4-year-old daughter. Kuntar, then age 16, shot the man in front of his daughter, then bludgeoned the girl to death.
He was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to several life terms, but was released on July 16 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Seaman called Al-Jazeera’s actions honoring Kuntar “not professional.”
4. Iran Already Has Diplomatic Channel With U.S.
For all the recent publicity surrounding the possibility of the U.S. and Iran opening "interests" sections in each other’s country, a diplomatic channel has in fact existed between the two nations for almost 20 years.
That channel is Iran's mission to the United Nations in Manhattan.
While its operations are officially restricted to U.N. business, it often unofficially tackles matters outside the world body.
The mission's last four ambassadors were all educated in the U.S.
Its current representative, Mohammad Khazaee, previously served at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and is a graduate of George Mason University.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, who recently retired from the U.N. post, spent more than 25 years living in the U.S., attending both the University of Denver and University of San Francisco. His children are American citizens.
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, one of Zarif's predecessors at the U.N., attended colleges in Kansas and the San Francisco area.
It was Mahallati who in 1989 said he thought President George H.W. Bush was "a man I think I can do business with." That opening led to the de facto establishment of the Iranian U.N. mission as a conduit to Washington.
Mahallati's assistant Zarif was given the assignment of opening the unofficial channel.
In the early 1990s, Zarif returned to Iran while a former university professor, Kamal Kharazi, took over as U.N. ambassador.
Kharazi eventually rose to become foreign minister under reformist president Mohammad Khatami. And as Kharazi progressed, so did Zarif, who became deputy foreign minister.
In 2002, not long after 9/11, Zarif was given two new assignments: U.N. ambassador in New York and senior nuclear negotiator.
In New York, the personable Iranian became the toast of local think tanks. He was a frequent and popular guest at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, and the Manhattan Institute co-founded by the late CIA director Bill Casey.
It was not unusual for him to entertain congressmen and senators at his fashionable 5th Ave. townhouse, which was once owned by the Shah of Iran.
Considered a moderate by the State Department, Zarif often told American reporters unofficially that he was "confused" by the inflammatory statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and really "did not know the man."
Zarif opted to retire in June 2007 and is now a professor at Tehran University. But his diplomatic life may not be over, according to Newsmax’s United Nations correspondent Stewart Stogel.
The Iranian is thought to be a prime candidate to head Tehran's "interests" section in Washington, or perhaps even emerge as foreign minister should President Ahmadinejad lose his re-election bid next year.
5. Obama, McCain Like to Gamble
Is the White House in the cards for Barack Obama? Will John McCain roll the dice with an unorthodox choice for his running mate?
The two questions play off the rival presidential candidates’ penchant for gambling. Obama’s game of choice has been poker. For McCain, it’s craps.
McCain’s love of gambling can be traced back to his early days. He has written that by his mid-20s he “had begun to aspire to a reputation for more commendable achievements than long nights of drinking and gambling.”
McCain gave up drinking bouts over time, but he never got over his liking for dice, Time magazine reports in an article headlined “Candidates Vices: Craps and Poker.”
In the past decade McCain has played on Mississippi riverboats, at Native American casinos, and at casinos on the Las Vegas strip.
Aides say McCain usually plays craps for a few thousand dollars at a time and “avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress,” according to Michael Scherer and Michael Weisskopf’s article in Time.
His goal is not financial; rather, “he loves the thrill of winning and the camaraderie at the table,” the authors write. But if McCain plays craps for thrills, Obama sees gambling as a way to exercise his competitive urge.
As an Illinois state senator in the late 1990s, Obama played poker regularly in another state senator’s basement in Springfield, competing against legislators and some lobbyists.
“For Obama, weekly poker games with lobbyists and fellow state senators helped cement his position as a rising star in Illinois politics,” according to Time.
When Obama announced that he was running for the U.S. Senate, his poker-playing friends were some of his earliest supporters.
The authors conclude, “In practice, the political battle is both a crapshoot and a poker game, a study in managing risk and in manipulating people. And there is no bigger gamble than a presidential run.”
6. Arab Cartoons Depict ‘Jewish Control’ of U.S. Candidates
Editorial cartoonists in the Arab world are using direct or borderline anti-Semitism in their portrayal of the U.S. presidential candidates as lackeys of the Jews and Israel.
A release from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued on Wednesday states: “The American elections have provided an excuse for the Arab media to promulgate perverse, bigoted and age-old conspiracy theories that portray Israelis and Jews as controlling the candidates . . .
“The cartoons ignore the issues of the campaign and instead engage in hate-filled characterizations of Jews and overt racist stereotypes.”
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said: "From Gaza to Ramallah, from Bahrain to Damascus, from Cairo to Riyadh, the press has unleashed a fusillade of virulent anti-Jewish images accusing Senators Barack Obama and John McCain as handmaidens of the Jews or the Israel lobby.
"Once again, the Arab media does not miss an opportunity to promote classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish control over Washington, the media, and the democratic process."
An ADL report, “The U.S. Presidential Candidates: Cartoons in the Arab Media,” contains numerous examples of cartoons appearing across the Middle East.
One from Bahrain shows Obama in the pocket of a “stereotypical vicious, bearded, black-hatted Jew,” the report notes.
Another cartoon from Saudi Arabia shows Obama and McCain in the jacket pocket of a man wearing a tie emblazoned with the Star of David.
A Jordanian cartoon depicts Obama emerging from an egg that bears the Star of David.
And a cartoon from Qatar shows McCain as a puppet on the fingers of a hand bearing the Israeli symbol.
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Obama Pulls Fewer Evangelicals Than Kerry
2. Aging Icebreakers Hinder U.S. Oil Exploration Ability
3. Israel Sanctioning Al-Jazeera Over Released Murderer
4. Iran Already Has Diplomatic Channel With U.S.
5. Obama, McCain Like to Gamble
6. Arab Cartoons Depict ‘Jewish Control’ of U.S. Candidates
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1. Obama Pulls Fewer Evangelicals Than Kerry
Despite assertions in the press that evangelical Christians are backing Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race, a new survey reveals that he is getting less support than John Kerry did four years ago.
A typical headline, which ran last week in U.S. News & World Report, announced: “Obama Campaign Is Making Progress With Evangelical Voters.”
But the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 25 percent of white evangelicals favor Obama over John McCain, while 26 percent favored John Kerry over President Bush in 2004.
In 2000, Al Gore enjoyed even more support — 28 percent.
“Not that this translates into evangelical enthusiasm for McCain, but the survey is worth noting for no other reason than it challenges the prevailing media assumption about how Obama’s overt religiosity is helping his campaign,” National Review’s Mark Hemingway observes.
And the Pew Center notes: “Obama has made no significant gains among this important constituency.”
The survey also found that 39 percent of white mainline Protestants support Obama, significantly less than the 46 percent who backed Gore in 2000.
And among white, non-Hispanic Catholics, 40 percent favor Obama, compared to 47 percent who supported Kerry and 45 percent who backed Gore.
Four in 10 respondents who said they attend religious services at least once a week are backing Obama, fewer than the 42 percent who favored Kerry.
According to Hemingway, press accounts of Obama’s support among evangelicals are “a classic example of the media trying to force a campaign narrative, regardless of whether it is true.”
2. Aging Icebreakers Hinder U.S. Oil Exploration Ability
As Arctic sea ice recedes, the U.S. and other nations are increasingly eyeing the region as a promising source of natural resources. But America’s ability to exploit those resources could be hampered by its aging and ailing icebreaker fleet.
The U.S. currently has three polar icebreakers. But two of them, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star, have surpassed their intended 30-year service lives, and the Polar Star has been inactive and docked in Seattle for more than two years.
The third icebreaker, the Healy, was commissioned in 2000. But while the Polar Sea and Polar Star can break through ice up to 6 feet thick, the Healy can’t handle ice more than 4 1/2 feet thick, according to the CQ Politics Web site.
Russia, on the other hand, has 20 icebreakers in its fleet, seven of them nuclear-powered. One of those ships can break through ice more than 9 feet thick.
“While U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic region expand, both domestically and internationally, our polar icebreaking capability is at risk,” Thad W. Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, recently told members of Congress.
“I am concerned that we are watching our nation’s domestic and international icebreaking capability decline as reliance on foreign icebreakers grows.”
He also stated in remarks reported by CQ: “We are losing ground in the global competition. Like Russia, Germany, China, Sweden and Canada are all investing and maintaining and expanding their national icebreaking capacity.”
Back in September 2006, a congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council said the U.S. should build two new polar icebreakers to protect its interests in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The report noted that melting sea ice in the Arctic was opening new shipping routes and sparking economic activity, such as exploration for natural resources.
But a new icebreaker would cost between $800 million and $925 million, and would take as long as 10 years to construct, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The stakes are high, however. The U.S. has “billion-dollar, if not trillion-dollar, national interests” in the Arctic, said Mead Treadwell, chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, which advises Congress.
Despite the receding polar ice cap, large areas of the region are still covered by thick ice.
And Treadwell told CQ that tougher operating conditions, due in part to changing wind and weather patterns, “will only make icebreaking capacity more critical.”
3. Israel Sanctioning Al-Jazeera Over Released Murderer
Israel’s Government Press Office will impose sanctions on Al-Jazeera after the influential Qatar-based TV station threw a party for released Lebanese murderer Samir Kuntar.
The party was organized by Al-Jazeera’s Beirut bureau to honor Kuntar, and hailed him as a hero who carried out a military operation against Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Kuntar thanked bureau chief Ghassan bin Jeddo and Al-Jazeera for waging a campaign for the release of Kuntar and other prisoners from Israeli jails.
Daniel Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, on Tuesday phoned Walid Omari, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Israel, and summoned him to a meeting to inform him of the decision to suspend ties with the station. Omari was abroad, however, but was told to report to the GPO upon his return, according to the Post.
“We will suspend all handling of Al-Jazeera requests,” Seaman told the newspaper. “For now, we won’t provide them with any of our services, which include issuing press credentials and assistance with bureaucracy and applications for visas.”
Kuntar and several others members of the Palestinian Liberation Front entered Israel by boat in April 1979, killed a policeman and kidnapped a man and his 4-year-old daughter. Kuntar, then age 16, shot the man in front of his daughter, then bludgeoned the girl to death.
He was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to several life terms, but was released on July 16 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Seaman called Al-Jazeera’s actions honoring Kuntar “not professional.”
4. Iran Already Has Diplomatic Channel With U.S.
For all the recent publicity surrounding the possibility of the U.S. and Iran opening "interests" sections in each other’s country, a diplomatic channel has in fact existed between the two nations for almost 20 years.
That channel is Iran's mission to the United Nations in Manhattan.
While its operations are officially restricted to U.N. business, it often unofficially tackles matters outside the world body.
The mission's last four ambassadors were all educated in the U.S.
Its current representative, Mohammad Khazaee, previously served at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and is a graduate of George Mason University.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, who recently retired from the U.N. post, spent more than 25 years living in the U.S., attending both the University of Denver and University of San Francisco. His children are American citizens.
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, one of Zarif's predecessors at the U.N., attended colleges in Kansas and the San Francisco area.
It was Mahallati who in 1989 said he thought President George H.W. Bush was "a man I think I can do business with." That opening led to the de facto establishment of the Iranian U.N. mission as a conduit to Washington.
Mahallati's assistant Zarif was given the assignment of opening the unofficial channel.
In the early 1990s, Zarif returned to Iran while a former university professor, Kamal Kharazi, took over as U.N. ambassador.
Kharazi eventually rose to become foreign minister under reformist president Mohammad Khatami. And as Kharazi progressed, so did Zarif, who became deputy foreign minister.
In 2002, not long after 9/11, Zarif was given two new assignments: U.N. ambassador in New York and senior nuclear negotiator.
In New York, the personable Iranian became the toast of local think tanks. He was a frequent and popular guest at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, and the Manhattan Institute co-founded by the late CIA director Bill Casey.
It was not unusual for him to entertain congressmen and senators at his fashionable 5th Ave. townhouse, which was once owned by the Shah of Iran.
Considered a moderate by the State Department, Zarif often told American reporters unofficially that he was "confused" by the inflammatory statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and really "did not know the man."
Zarif opted to retire in June 2007 and is now a professor at Tehran University. But his diplomatic life may not be over, according to Newsmax’s United Nations correspondent Stewart Stogel.
The Iranian is thought to be a prime candidate to head Tehran's "interests" section in Washington, or perhaps even emerge as foreign minister should President Ahmadinejad lose his re-election bid next year.
5. Obama, McCain Like to Gamble
Is the White House in the cards for Barack Obama? Will John McCain roll the dice with an unorthodox choice for his running mate?
The two questions play off the rival presidential candidates’ penchant for gambling. Obama’s game of choice has been poker. For McCain, it’s craps.
McCain’s love of gambling can be traced back to his early days. He has written that by his mid-20s he “had begun to aspire to a reputation for more commendable achievements than long nights of drinking and gambling.”
McCain gave up drinking bouts over time, but he never got over his liking for dice, Time magazine reports in an article headlined “Candidates Vices: Craps and Poker.”
In the past decade McCain has played on Mississippi riverboats, at Native American casinos, and at casinos on the Las Vegas strip.
Aides say McCain usually plays craps for a few thousand dollars at a time and “avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress,” according to Michael Scherer and Michael Weisskopf’s article in Time.
His goal is not financial; rather, “he loves the thrill of winning and the camaraderie at the table,” the authors write. But if McCain plays craps for thrills, Obama sees gambling as a way to exercise his competitive urge.
As an Illinois state senator in the late 1990s, Obama played poker regularly in another state senator’s basement in Springfield, competing against legislators and some lobbyists.
“For Obama, weekly poker games with lobbyists and fellow state senators helped cement his position as a rising star in Illinois politics,” according to Time.
When Obama announced that he was running for the U.S. Senate, his poker-playing friends were some of his earliest supporters.
The authors conclude, “In practice, the political battle is both a crapshoot and a poker game, a study in managing risk and in manipulating people. And there is no bigger gamble than a presidential run.”
6. Arab Cartoons Depict ‘Jewish Control’ of U.S. Candidates
Editorial cartoonists in the Arab world are using direct or borderline anti-Semitism in their portrayal of the U.S. presidential candidates as lackeys of the Jews and Israel.
A release from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued on Wednesday states: “The American elections have provided an excuse for the Arab media to promulgate perverse, bigoted and age-old conspiracy theories that portray Israelis and Jews as controlling the candidates . . .
“The cartoons ignore the issues of the campaign and instead engage in hate-filled characterizations of Jews and overt racist stereotypes.”
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said: "From Gaza to Ramallah, from Bahrain to Damascus, from Cairo to Riyadh, the press has unleashed a fusillade of virulent anti-Jewish images accusing Senators Barack Obama and John McCain as handmaidens of the Jews or the Israel lobby.
"Once again, the Arab media does not miss an opportunity to promote classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish control over Washington, the media, and the democratic process."
An ADL report, “The U.S. Presidential Candidates: Cartoons in the Arab Media,” contains numerous examples of cartoons appearing across the Middle East.
One from Bahrain shows Obama in the pocket of a “stereotypical vicious, bearded, black-hatted Jew,” the report notes.
Another cartoon from Saudi Arabia shows Obama and McCain in the jacket pocket of a man wearing a tie emblazoned with the Star of David.
A Jordanian cartoon depicts Obama emerging from an egg that bears the Star of David.
And a cartoon from Qatar shows McCain as a puppet on the fingers of a hand bearing the Israeli symbol.
The Mistake McCain Need Not Make
The Mistake McCain Need Not Make
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Fiscal Policy: Reneging on his no-new-taxes pledge cost President George H.W. Bush a second term. Will John McCain play into Barack Obama's hands by making the same mistake on Social Security taxes?
In describing the elder President Bush's colossal blunder in 1990, no one is more cogent than Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "The man who won his election promising never to raise taxes announced that this principle was negotiable and his word meant nothing," Norquist writes in the newly published "Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives."
Sen. McCain made his own "read my lips" pledge. Interviewed on Fox News in March, McCain was asked by Sean Hannity: "You have said three times in the last week or week and a half that you promised no new taxes. You mean none?"
McCain answered, "None." He added that "Americans are hurting" and asked, "Do we want to raise their taxes and have the government take more of their money right now when they are facing these challenges?"
In that context, McCain told Hannity: "I look forward to this debate between myself and Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama" because taxes would be a big difference between the two nominees.
But McCain will not at all be looking forward to debating Obama if his Democratic counterpart is able to turn to him in front of millions of TV viewers and gloat that McCain espoused the right-wing ideology of refusing to raise taxes — until he was smacked upside the head by reality and had to move closer to the Obama position.
That, unfortunately, is exactly what Obama will be able to say if the pending Republican nominee continues on his present course toward breaking his no-new-taxes pledge.
Asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on ABC about Social Security payroll-tax increases, McCain replied: "Nothing is off the table. I don't want tax increases. Of course, I'd like to have young Americans have some of their money put into an account with their name on it, but that doesn't mean that anything is off the table."
Washington's anti-tax Club for Growth called it "shocking," and Norquist's tax-reform group is rallying its members to "Tell Sen. McCain to rule out tax hikes on the American people."
The repercussions of McCain backpedaling on his commitment are serious. One of the keys to his success has been his mastery of town hall meetings, where he paints the stark difference between himself and his opponent.
"Sen. Obama will raise your taxes," McCain has said to attendees. "I won't." To switch that to "everything is on the table" — a stereotypical Washingtonian hedge — just doesn't have the same power with voters.
Meanwhile, top McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin has publicly stated that a President McCain would not consider an increase in Social Security taxes "under any imaginable circumstance." To renege on such a commitment will take away from McCain's ability to call Obama to task on the Democrat's flip-flops and vacillations.
Fortunately, it's not too late for McCain to regain his footing from this misstep. No one has more credibility as a spending hawk. Instead of talking about payroll tax hikes, he should use this presidential campaign to talk up the country's impending entitlement crisis and embrace the fundamental reforms necessary to prevent fiscal disaster.
The solutions to the catastrophes that lie ahead for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not new taxes that only delay the day of reckoning by a few more years. The answers are innovations like personal retirement accounts controlled by the individual and the expansion of tax-free health savings accounts to help pay private insurance costs.
Voters appreciate being told the facts. They will elect a straight talker with the guts to fix our biggest fiscal challenge.
Right now John McCain is missing an opportunity that seems tailor-made for him — which could mean the election of a president whose socialistic intentions will only shorten the fuse on America's entitlement time bomb.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Fiscal Policy: Reneging on his no-new-taxes pledge cost President George H.W. Bush a second term. Will John McCain play into Barack Obama's hands by making the same mistake on Social Security taxes?
In describing the elder President Bush's colossal blunder in 1990, no one is more cogent than Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "The man who won his election promising never to raise taxes announced that this principle was negotiable and his word meant nothing," Norquist writes in the newly published "Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives."
Sen. McCain made his own "read my lips" pledge. Interviewed on Fox News in March, McCain was asked by Sean Hannity: "You have said three times in the last week or week and a half that you promised no new taxes. You mean none?"
McCain answered, "None." He added that "Americans are hurting" and asked, "Do we want to raise their taxes and have the government take more of their money right now when they are facing these challenges?"
In that context, McCain told Hannity: "I look forward to this debate between myself and Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama" because taxes would be a big difference between the two nominees.
But McCain will not at all be looking forward to debating Obama if his Democratic counterpart is able to turn to him in front of millions of TV viewers and gloat that McCain espoused the right-wing ideology of refusing to raise taxes — until he was smacked upside the head by reality and had to move closer to the Obama position.
That, unfortunately, is exactly what Obama will be able to say if the pending Republican nominee continues on his present course toward breaking his no-new-taxes pledge.
Asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on ABC about Social Security payroll-tax increases, McCain replied: "Nothing is off the table. I don't want tax increases. Of course, I'd like to have young Americans have some of their money put into an account with their name on it, but that doesn't mean that anything is off the table."
Washington's anti-tax Club for Growth called it "shocking," and Norquist's tax-reform group is rallying its members to "Tell Sen. McCain to rule out tax hikes on the American people."
The repercussions of McCain backpedaling on his commitment are serious. One of the keys to his success has been his mastery of town hall meetings, where he paints the stark difference between himself and his opponent.
"Sen. Obama will raise your taxes," McCain has said to attendees. "I won't." To switch that to "everything is on the table" — a stereotypical Washingtonian hedge — just doesn't have the same power with voters.
Meanwhile, top McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin has publicly stated that a President McCain would not consider an increase in Social Security taxes "under any imaginable circumstance." To renege on such a commitment will take away from McCain's ability to call Obama to task on the Democrat's flip-flops and vacillations.
Fortunately, it's not too late for McCain to regain his footing from this misstep. No one has more credibility as a spending hawk. Instead of talking about payroll tax hikes, he should use this presidential campaign to talk up the country's impending entitlement crisis and embrace the fundamental reforms necessary to prevent fiscal disaster.
The solutions to the catastrophes that lie ahead for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not new taxes that only delay the day of reckoning by a few more years. The answers are innovations like personal retirement accounts controlled by the individual and the expansion of tax-free health savings accounts to help pay private insurance costs.
Voters appreciate being told the facts. They will elect a straight talker with the guts to fix our biggest fiscal challenge.
Right now John McCain is missing an opportunity that seems tailor-made for him — which could mean the election of a president whose socialistic intentions will only shorten the fuse on America's entitlement time bomb.
Obama Hasn't Closed the Deal With Voters
Obama Hasn't Closed the Deal With Voters
Monday, July 28, 2008
By Robert D. Novak
In the contest for president, Barack Obama is a magnetic candidate supported by a disciplined, well-organized campaign. John McCain seems wooden, with a campaign that appears to be in shambles. Yet Obama’s lead in the polls over McCain is fragile because he so far has not won the support of a majority of American voters.
An effective and massively publicized foreign trip failed to push Obama to the 50 percent mark. Hopes of Democrats and fears of Republicans that he would get a major bounce in the polls when he clinched the nomination and then on his campaigning abroad have not been realized.
Overnight surveys by Gallup and Rasmussen for the past two weeks have shown Obama hovering around 46 percent, while McCain has declined from 45 percent to 41 percent after the wild acclaim for Obama in Berlin, for a 6-point deficit that is by no means insurmountable. These numbers have prompted speculation among Republican political practitioners that McCain can back into the presidency, just as he backed into his party’s nomination.
Not even Bob Dole’s dismal candidacy in 1996 generated less enthusiasm in GOP ranks than McCain’s current effort. However, in winning the nomination this year, when he had been counted out after the disintegration of his campaign structure, McCain showed more fortitude than skill. He was blessed by a weak field of Republican competitors, who eliminated each other and left McCain as the last man standing.
But Obama is no Huckabee, Giuliani or Romney. He is the most spectacular campaigner of his generation, with appeal well beyond Democratic ranks. That he lingers below the 50 percent mark is a mystery among politicians of both parties.
It is particularly troubling to Democrats who recall past Democratic candidates taking a huge lead over the summer before being overtaken or nearly overtaken by a surging Republican opponent. In 1976, Jimmy Carter took a 33-point summer lead over President Gerald Ford and won in a photo finish. In 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by 17 points after being nominated in Atlanta before he lost the election. Al Gore and John Kerry were ahead of George W. Bush in the summer.
One candid Republican consultant says that the massive Carter and Dukakis summer leads were illusory, based on large generic Democratic leads. But their generic lead is back at 15 points after 12 years of a Republican Congress and eight years of George W. Bush.
Clearly, Obama has not yet closed the deal with the people to accept a young, inexperienced African-American as their president. Obama had virtually clinched the nomination when white working men in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia poured out to vote and carried their states comfortably for Hillary Clinton. It was not because of unalterable affection for her.
Obama’s difficulty in reaching the 50 percent mark reflects an overwhelmingly white undecided vote at 10 to 15 percent.
These were target voters for Obama when he ventured into the war zones to demonstrate his mettle as a future commander in chief. He looked good, sounded good and committed no serious gaffes. But sitting by the popular Gen. David Petraeus and disagreeing with his military judgment may not have been the way to win over undecided white working men.
The toughest interrogation of Obama was CBS anchor Katie Couric’s in Jordan last Tuesday. She asked four different times whether the troop surge he had opposed was instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq. Each time, Obama answered straight from talking points by citing “the great effort of our young men and women in uniform.” That sounded like the old politics. He would have sounded more like a new politician if he had simply said, “Yes, the strategy did work.” That would have infuriated anti-war activists, but not enough for them to drop Obama.
Several Democrats I have talked to noted that recent Democratic presidents got elected with a minority of the vote and also that McCain is further below the 50 percent standard than Obama. But McCain, running a flawed campaign in a big Democratic year, is dangerously close. He still could back in unless Obama closes the deal.
Monday, July 28, 2008
By Robert D. Novak
In the contest for president, Barack Obama is a magnetic candidate supported by a disciplined, well-organized campaign. John McCain seems wooden, with a campaign that appears to be in shambles. Yet Obama’s lead in the polls over McCain is fragile because he so far has not won the support of a majority of American voters.
An effective and massively publicized foreign trip failed to push Obama to the 50 percent mark. Hopes of Democrats and fears of Republicans that he would get a major bounce in the polls when he clinched the nomination and then on his campaigning abroad have not been realized.
Overnight surveys by Gallup and Rasmussen for the past two weeks have shown Obama hovering around 46 percent, while McCain has declined from 45 percent to 41 percent after the wild acclaim for Obama in Berlin, for a 6-point deficit that is by no means insurmountable. These numbers have prompted speculation among Republican political practitioners that McCain can back into the presidency, just as he backed into his party’s nomination.
Not even Bob Dole’s dismal candidacy in 1996 generated less enthusiasm in GOP ranks than McCain’s current effort. However, in winning the nomination this year, when he had been counted out after the disintegration of his campaign structure, McCain showed more fortitude than skill. He was blessed by a weak field of Republican competitors, who eliminated each other and left McCain as the last man standing.
But Obama is no Huckabee, Giuliani or Romney. He is the most spectacular campaigner of his generation, with appeal well beyond Democratic ranks. That he lingers below the 50 percent mark is a mystery among politicians of both parties.
It is particularly troubling to Democrats who recall past Democratic candidates taking a huge lead over the summer before being overtaken or nearly overtaken by a surging Republican opponent. In 1976, Jimmy Carter took a 33-point summer lead over President Gerald Ford and won in a photo finish. In 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by 17 points after being nominated in Atlanta before he lost the election. Al Gore and John Kerry were ahead of George W. Bush in the summer.
One candid Republican consultant says that the massive Carter and Dukakis summer leads were illusory, based on large generic Democratic leads. But their generic lead is back at 15 points after 12 years of a Republican Congress and eight years of George W. Bush.
Clearly, Obama has not yet closed the deal with the people to accept a young, inexperienced African-American as their president. Obama had virtually clinched the nomination when white working men in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia poured out to vote and carried their states comfortably for Hillary Clinton. It was not because of unalterable affection for her.
Obama’s difficulty in reaching the 50 percent mark reflects an overwhelmingly white undecided vote at 10 to 15 percent.
These were target voters for Obama when he ventured into the war zones to demonstrate his mettle as a future commander in chief. He looked good, sounded good and committed no serious gaffes. But sitting by the popular Gen. David Petraeus and disagreeing with his military judgment may not have been the way to win over undecided white working men.
The toughest interrogation of Obama was CBS anchor Katie Couric’s in Jordan last Tuesday. She asked four different times whether the troop surge he had opposed was instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq. Each time, Obama answered straight from talking points by citing “the great effort of our young men and women in uniform.” That sounded like the old politics. He would have sounded more like a new politician if he had simply said, “Yes, the strategy did work.” That would have infuriated anti-war activists, but not enough for them to drop Obama.
Several Democrats I have talked to noted that recent Democratic presidents got elected with a minority of the vote and also that McCain is further below the 50 percent standard than Obama. But McCain, running a flawed campaign in a big Democratic year, is dangerously close. He still could back in unless Obama closes the deal.
July 29, 2008
Obama's Global Tax
Obama's Global Tax
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.
Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."
What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.
Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."
Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.
A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."
These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.
His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.
It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.
It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.
We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.
Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.
During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.
If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.
The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."
Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.
Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?
In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.
Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."
What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.
Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."
Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.
A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."
These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.
His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.
It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.
It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.
We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.
Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.
During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.
If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.
The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."
Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.
Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?
In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.
THE JOB - URINE TEST
FROM SEVERAL READERS AND WE THANK ALL
THE JOB - URINE TEST
(Whoever wrote this one deserves a HUGE pat on the back!)
I HAVE TO PASS A URINE TEST FOR MY JOB... SO I AGREE 100%
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay
my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to
get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I
have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my
taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I
have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem
with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the
other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their A--, doing
drugs, while I work. . . . Can you im agine how much money the state would
save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
Pass this along if you agree or s im ply delete if you don't. Hope you all
will pass it along, though . . Something has to change in this country --
and soon!!!!!!!
I guess we could title that program, 'Urine or You're Out'.
Just a thought
THE JOB - URINE TEST
(Whoever wrote this one deserves a HUGE pat on the back!)
I HAVE TO PASS A URINE TEST FOR MY JOB... SO I AGREE 100%
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay
my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to
get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I
have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my
taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I
have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem
with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the
other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their A--, doing
drugs, while I work. . . . Can you im agine how much money the state would
save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
Pass this along if you agree or s im ply delete if you don't. Hope you all
will pass it along, though . . Something has to change in this country --
and soon!!!!!!!
I guess we could title that program, 'Urine or You're Out'.
Just a thought
Help us STOP Sen. Menendez as he tries to destroy illegal alien enforcement
Donations still below minimum for this month!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 8:30 a.m.
Can one man be powerful enough to destroy the work of millions?
If that man is a U.S. Senator, and he's firmly in the hip pocket of greedy business interests, the answer may be "yes." And if he's hostile to enforcement on illegal immigration, one man can practically be a Rule-Of-Law Demolition Squad!
What an ironic world we live in! One group of Representatives and Senators is struggling valiantly to make E-Verify mandatory. (As you know, E-Verify is the easy-to-use government database businesses use to make sure they do not hire illegal aliens.)
But one lawmaker, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), has put a "hold" on the vote to re-authorize the E-Verify system. Without a reauthorization vote, the entire E-Verify system will be dismantled by the government this Fall!
What does Menendez want? More than a half-million permanent work visas for skilled foreign workers! He wants to bring in 550,000 more foreign workers while American workers in nearly every occupation are seeing jobs disappear and while our own college students wonder how they'll get a foot in the door in a plunging economy.
And if he doesn't get his way, he'll personally destroy our best tool for keeping illegal aliens out of jobs they do not deserve.
It's not surprising that Sen. Menendez has "earned" a lifetime F- grade from our Immigration Report Cards. He deserves it!
So are we going to stand by and let one man destroy so much of what we've fought for? No, DAVE , we are not. We're going to wreck Menendez's plan to destroy E-Verify. But we're going to need your financial help, as well as your faxing and phoning, this month to do so.
You and your fellow NumbersUSA members have already sent hundreds of thousands of faxes to Congress this month, demanding that the law be upheld. We are girding ourselves up for much more struggle.
Many of our NumbersUSA members are having to take their belts in a notch. As a result, giving is off this summer to NumbersUSA. Would you be able to STEP UP a bit this month to help make up for the large number of members who cannot give during this bad economy?
That's what so many have already done. Listen to Angelo:
Dear Mr. Robb,
I would like to contribute more but cannot afford to. I believe illegal immigration is causing great damage to our country. I hope we succeed.
Angelo N.
> > Angelo is right. Illegal Immigration is hurting our country, and Sen. Menendez must be stopped from wrecking the hard-won advances we've made in enforcement.
So, please, volunteer and donate this month. < <
Remember, if you are ill, unemployed, or living on a small fixed income, please do not contribute. We only ask for help from those able to help.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE,
JIM ROBB
Vice President, Operations
NumbersUSA
Donations still below minimum for this month!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 8:30 a.m.
Can one man be powerful enough to destroy the work of millions?
If that man is a U.S. Senator, and he's firmly in the hip pocket of greedy business interests, the answer may be "yes." And if he's hostile to enforcement on illegal immigration, one man can practically be a Rule-Of-Law Demolition Squad!
What an ironic world we live in! One group of Representatives and Senators is struggling valiantly to make E-Verify mandatory. (As you know, E-Verify is the easy-to-use government database businesses use to make sure they do not hire illegal aliens.)
But one lawmaker, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), has put a "hold" on the vote to re-authorize the E-Verify system. Without a reauthorization vote, the entire E-Verify system will be dismantled by the government this Fall!
What does Menendez want? More than a half-million permanent work visas for skilled foreign workers! He wants to bring in 550,000 more foreign workers while American workers in nearly every occupation are seeing jobs disappear and while our own college students wonder how they'll get a foot in the door in a plunging economy.
And if he doesn't get his way, he'll personally destroy our best tool for keeping illegal aliens out of jobs they do not deserve.
It's not surprising that Sen. Menendez has "earned" a lifetime F- grade from our Immigration Report Cards. He deserves it!
So are we going to stand by and let one man destroy so much of what we've fought for? No, DAVE , we are not. We're going to wreck Menendez's plan to destroy E-Verify. But we're going to need your financial help, as well as your faxing and phoning, this month to do so.
You and your fellow NumbersUSA members have already sent hundreds of thousands of faxes to Congress this month, demanding that the law be upheld. We are girding ourselves up for much more struggle.
Many of our NumbersUSA members are having to take their belts in a notch. As a result, giving is off this summer to NumbersUSA. Would you be able to STEP UP a bit this month to help make up for the large number of members who cannot give during this bad economy?
That's what so many have already done. Listen to Angelo:
Dear Mr. Robb,
I would like to contribute more but cannot afford to. I believe illegal immigration is causing great damage to our country. I hope we succeed.
Angelo N.
> > Angelo is right. Illegal Immigration is hurting our country, and Sen. Menendez must be stopped from wrecking the hard-won advances we've made in enforcement.
So, please, volunteer and donate this month. < <
Remember, if you are ill, unemployed, or living on a small fixed income, please do not contribute. We only ask for help from those able to help.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE,
JIM ROBB
Vice President, Operations
NumbersUSA
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.
The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.
After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.
(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."
Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.
(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."
He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."
He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.
Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.
The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.
The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.
After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.
(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."
Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.
(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."
He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."
He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.
Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.
The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
McCain Surges to 4-Point Lead
Obama's Trip Backfires; McCain Surges to 4-Point Lead in USA Today/Gallup Poll
Monday, July 28, 2008 9:35 PM
A surprising poll released Monday confirms Sen. Barack Obama's worst nightmare: he actually lost ground to Sen. John McCain after a global trip meant to buck up his sagging credentials in foreign and military policy.
The USA Today/Gallup poll has McCain leading Obama by four points, 49 percent to Obama's 45 percent, among likely voters.
Just last month, the same poll had McCain trailing by six points to the neophyte U.S. senator.
Among registered voters, McCain was just three points behind Obama -- a statistical dead heat.
The USA Today/Gallup poll is consistent with the Rasmussen tracking poll, which also shows Obama ahead by just three percentage points -- again a statistical tie.
The polls suggest that Obama's efforts to act like a president abroad -- even though he has yet to be elected -- may have backfired among American voters.
In Berlin, Obama spoke to 200,000 cheering Germans. The Democratic candidate used the foreign platform to express the view that he was a "fellow citizen of the world" and apologized for America's imperfections.
Later, he decided not to visit wounded American soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany. When the Pentagon informed Obama's campaign that the hospital would be closed to the press and campaign staff -- only the senator and his official staff would be allowed in -- Obama decided to cancel the event.
McCain has been quick to seize on Obama's ill-advised decision to cancel the humanitarian visit to the hospital.
A McCain television commercial released on the Internet this past weekend chided Obama for his callous act.
"And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops,” the ad says. “Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras. John McCain is always there for our troops.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Monday, July 28, 2008 9:35 PM
A surprising poll released Monday confirms Sen. Barack Obama's worst nightmare: he actually lost ground to Sen. John McCain after a global trip meant to buck up his sagging credentials in foreign and military policy.
The USA Today/Gallup poll has McCain leading Obama by four points, 49 percent to Obama's 45 percent, among likely voters.
Just last month, the same poll had McCain trailing by six points to the neophyte U.S. senator.
Among registered voters, McCain was just three points behind Obama -- a statistical dead heat.
The USA Today/Gallup poll is consistent with the Rasmussen tracking poll, which also shows Obama ahead by just three percentage points -- again a statistical tie.
The polls suggest that Obama's efforts to act like a president abroad -- even though he has yet to be elected -- may have backfired among American voters.
In Berlin, Obama spoke to 200,000 cheering Germans. The Democratic candidate used the foreign platform to express the view that he was a "fellow citizen of the world" and apologized for America's imperfections.
Later, he decided not to visit wounded American soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany. When the Pentagon informed Obama's campaign that the hospital would be closed to the press and campaign staff -- only the senator and his official staff would be allowed in -- Obama decided to cancel the event.
McCain has been quick to seize on Obama's ill-advised decision to cancel the humanitarian visit to the hospital.
A McCain television commercial released on the Internet this past weekend chided Obama for his callous act.
"And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops,” the ad says. “Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras. John McCain is always there for our troops.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Israeli Election Could Impact Decision on Iran
Israeli Election Could Impact Decision on Iran
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:40 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
The most important primary for our 2008 election may be yet to come — the Kadima Party primary in Israel in mid or late September. It pits liberal-leaning Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni against hardliner and former Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz. (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to sit out the contest and concentrate on staying out of jail.)
The polls are neck and neck; in the most recent, Livni's once-formidable lead has shrunk to two points. Hanging over the battle is the Iranian nuclear program.
Livni is thought unlikely to attack Iran precipitously; she largely sees eye-to-eye with advocates of diplomatic solutions to the various problems her country faces. But Mofaz has openly said he'd resort to bombing Iran if it were necessary to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb.
So if Mofaz wins, military action becomes much more likely. But when?
By most accounts, the Israeli Defense Force would need considerable American cooperation to pull off such a strike. No top-level Israeli politician has much confidence that Barack Obama would be forthcoming. But most are confident that President Bush or John McCain would give Israel the help that it needs.
So if Obama wins here, a Mofaz government would feel great pressure to attack before Bush leaves office. If McCain wins, Israel would have more time.
But Mofaz might not want to wait for our election. Why risk antagonizing a President-elect Obama by taking military action that he might vigorously oppose? If Obama, having won, were to counsel patience, what Israeli prime minister could ignore him?
Before the U.S. election, on the other hand, Obama might be reluctant to take a position — and the Israelis need feel no compulsion to conform to any advice from a man who isn't yet be president-elect.
Surely, an Israeli attack on Iran would bring a sharp and instant response from Iran and from its satellites, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as its pawns in Iraq. It would presage war in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank along with an air war of Israeli missiles and bombers against Iranian missiles.
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states would criticize Israel in public but probably breathe a sign of relief in private that Iran's nuclear ambitions were thwarted or at least postponed.
The ensuing crisis would probably militate in McCain's favor if it erupted before the U.S. election. The more a foreign crisis intrudes on our politics, the more voters are apt to trust a seasoned hand like him and not to give an ingénue like Obama his shot.
Polls show that voters trust McCain much more than Obama to handle a foreign crisis. An unavoidable national-security threat would give McCain a huge boost. Just as in 2004, if the issue is terrorism or foreign crises, the Republican will prevail. If the issues are domestic policy, the Democrat will win.
Of course, Mofaz would need other parties to form a governing coalition. The dovish Labor Party might not lend itself to any aggressive purpose — but a Mofaz determined to bring down Iran's nuclear program might reach across to Likud and bring in hardline ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a war politically possible.
© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:40 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
The most important primary for our 2008 election may be yet to come — the Kadima Party primary in Israel in mid or late September. It pits liberal-leaning Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni against hardliner and former Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz. (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to sit out the contest and concentrate on staying out of jail.)
The polls are neck and neck; in the most recent, Livni's once-formidable lead has shrunk to two points. Hanging over the battle is the Iranian nuclear program.
Livni is thought unlikely to attack Iran precipitously; she largely sees eye-to-eye with advocates of diplomatic solutions to the various problems her country faces. But Mofaz has openly said he'd resort to bombing Iran if it were necessary to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb.
So if Mofaz wins, military action becomes much more likely. But when?
By most accounts, the Israeli Defense Force would need considerable American cooperation to pull off such a strike. No top-level Israeli politician has much confidence that Barack Obama would be forthcoming. But most are confident that President Bush or John McCain would give Israel the help that it needs.
So if Obama wins here, a Mofaz government would feel great pressure to attack before Bush leaves office. If McCain wins, Israel would have more time.
But Mofaz might not want to wait for our election. Why risk antagonizing a President-elect Obama by taking military action that he might vigorously oppose? If Obama, having won, were to counsel patience, what Israeli prime minister could ignore him?
Before the U.S. election, on the other hand, Obama might be reluctant to take a position — and the Israelis need feel no compulsion to conform to any advice from a man who isn't yet be president-elect.
Surely, an Israeli attack on Iran would bring a sharp and instant response from Iran and from its satellites, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as its pawns in Iraq. It would presage war in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank along with an air war of Israeli missiles and bombers against Iranian missiles.
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states would criticize Israel in public but probably breathe a sign of relief in private that Iran's nuclear ambitions were thwarted or at least postponed.
The ensuing crisis would probably militate in McCain's favor if it erupted before the U.S. election. The more a foreign crisis intrudes on our politics, the more voters are apt to trust a seasoned hand like him and not to give an ingénue like Obama his shot.
Polls show that voters trust McCain much more than Obama to handle a foreign crisis. An unavoidable national-security threat would give McCain a huge boost. Just as in 2004, if the issue is terrorism or foreign crises, the Republican will prevail. If the issues are domestic policy, the Democrat will win.
Of course, Mofaz would need other parties to form a governing coalition. The dovish Labor Party might not lend itself to any aggressive purpose — but a Mofaz determined to bring down Iran's nuclear program might reach across to Likud and bring in hardline ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a war politically possible.
© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
July 28, 2008
Did Obama Blow Off Troops at Bagram?
Did Obama Blow Off Troops at Bagram?
Monday, July 28, 2008 10:14 AM
By: Jim Meyers
The controversy over a report that Barack Obama “blew off” American troops during a visit to Afghanistan has taken a new turn, with an assertion that a photo issued to discount the report is false.
As Newsmax correspondent Kenneth R. Timmerman reported on Thursday, a U.S. Army captain sent an e-mail about Obama’s hour-long visit to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan on July 19 during his week-long foreign tour.
The e-mail was first posted to the pro-military blog Blackfive.net. Signed by an Air Force Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, the e-mail said in part that Obama “got off the plane and got into a bulletproof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General who is the commander here at Bagram. As the soldiers were lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General.”
Obama then went to a tent “so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball,” the e-mail continued, and “again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service.”
The e-mail was quickly circulated in thousands of e-mails and dozens of blogs. Several liberal blogs immediately claimed that the story was a hoax or a fabrication and that there was no such Capt. Porter.
But the Obama campaign went into high gear attacking Porter’s e-mail and got the Pentagon to issue a statement contradicting the claims made. An Army spokesperson acknowledged the e-mail was real and written by an actual Capt. Porter, at the same time seeking to deny its validity.
“These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect,” Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green told the New York Daily News.
Obama did not play basketball at Bagram or visit the tent, she said, adding that Obama “took time to shake hands, speak to troops, and pose for photographs.”
Capt. Porter also issued a statement via e-mail, asking those who received a copy of his posting to delete it and asking bloggers to take it from their sites.
“Some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong,” Porter wrote, according to the Military Times. “This e-mail was meant only for my family.”
Porter did not, however, specify which information was wrong, not did he issue a blanket denial of his account.
And the Army Times reported on Sunday: “An Army officer’s negative e-mail account of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit with the troops in Afghanistan that set the blogosphere ablaze prompted Army officials to correct aspects of the e-mail and resulted in a statement from the message’s author that ‘some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong.’”
The Army Times story was accompanied by an Associated Press photo captioned: “Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speaks to troops at Bagram Air Field on July 19.”
That prompted the blog Blackfive.net to report: “We have established that Senator Obama did not play basketball at Bagram airfield or visit a specific tent . . . However, that is not very important in establishing whether he did indeed blow off the troops . . .
“I have been asking for photos and searched for hours for photos of the Senator talking to troops at Bagram. That would debunk this whole notion that he didn’t talk to the troops at Bagram, wouldn’t it?
“At that Army Times post, part of their evidence is a photo of Senator Obama talking to troops at Bagram.
“Just one minor problem here — that’s not Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. That’s Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.”
Blackfive’s report includes an official Army photo showing Obama meeting with the same group of soldiers depicted in the wrongly captioned AP photo. The official photo was taken at Camp Arifjan on July 18.
Blackfive concludes: “So here we have a patently false photo in the Army Times.”
(Editor's Note: Following the Blackfive report, the Army Times changed the caption to correctly state that the photo was taken in Kuwait.)
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Monday, July 28, 2008 10:14 AM
By: Jim Meyers
The controversy over a report that Barack Obama “blew off” American troops during a visit to Afghanistan has taken a new turn, with an assertion that a photo issued to discount the report is false.
As Newsmax correspondent Kenneth R. Timmerman reported on Thursday, a U.S. Army captain sent an e-mail about Obama’s hour-long visit to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan on July 19 during his week-long foreign tour.
The e-mail was first posted to the pro-military blog Blackfive.net. Signed by an Air Force Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, the e-mail said in part that Obama “got off the plane and got into a bulletproof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General who is the commander here at Bagram. As the soldiers were lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General.”
Obama then went to a tent “so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball,” the e-mail continued, and “again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service.”
The e-mail was quickly circulated in thousands of e-mails and dozens of blogs. Several liberal blogs immediately claimed that the story was a hoax or a fabrication and that there was no such Capt. Porter.
But the Obama campaign went into high gear attacking Porter’s e-mail and got the Pentagon to issue a statement contradicting the claims made. An Army spokesperson acknowledged the e-mail was real and written by an actual Capt. Porter, at the same time seeking to deny its validity.
“These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect,” Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green told the New York Daily News.
Obama did not play basketball at Bagram or visit the tent, she said, adding that Obama “took time to shake hands, speak to troops, and pose for photographs.”
Capt. Porter also issued a statement via e-mail, asking those who received a copy of his posting to delete it and asking bloggers to take it from their sites.
“Some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong,” Porter wrote, according to the Military Times. “This e-mail was meant only for my family.”
Porter did not, however, specify which information was wrong, not did he issue a blanket denial of his account.
And the Army Times reported on Sunday: “An Army officer’s negative e-mail account of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit with the troops in Afghanistan that set the blogosphere ablaze prompted Army officials to correct aspects of the e-mail and resulted in a statement from the message’s author that ‘some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong.’”
The Army Times story was accompanied by an Associated Press photo captioned: “Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speaks to troops at Bagram Air Field on July 19.”
That prompted the blog Blackfive.net to report: “We have established that Senator Obama did not play basketball at Bagram airfield or visit a specific tent . . . However, that is not very important in establishing whether he did indeed blow off the troops . . .
“I have been asking for photos and searched for hours for photos of the Senator talking to troops at Bagram. That would debunk this whole notion that he didn’t talk to the troops at Bagram, wouldn’t it?
“At that Army Times post, part of their evidence is a photo of Senator Obama talking to troops at Bagram.
“Just one minor problem here — that’s not Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. That’s Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.”
Blackfive’s report includes an official Army photo showing Obama meeting with the same group of soldiers depicted in the wrongly captioned AP photo. The official photo was taken at Camp Arifjan on July 18.
Blackfive concludes: “So here we have a patently false photo in the Army Times.”
(Editor's Note: Following the Blackfive report, the Army Times changed the caption to correctly state that the photo was taken in Kuwait.)
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Obama’s Trip: No Bounce, No Flags, No Wounded Soldiers
Obama’s Trip: No Bounce, No Flags, No Wounded Soldiers
Sunday, July 27, 2008 8:15 PM
By: Newsmax Editorial
Sen. Barack Obama’s international globe-hopping to the Mideast and Europe was meant to burnish his credentials as a foreign policy and potential military leader – the strong suit of his Republican rival Sen. John McCain.
Despite the media love fest over the political junket, Obama has yet to pull away from McCain in the polls. His campaign had expected a minimum eight-point lead after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination back in June, with even more momentum moving his way as the campaign progressed.
Both the most recent Real Clear Politics rolling average and the Rasmussen tracking poll that coincided with the end of Obama’s trip this weekend show Obama with just a five-point lead over McCain -- consistent with his numbers for the past two months. [Press reports this weekend have almost completely ignored the Rasmussen poll to only report on a Gallup poll, which showed Obama with a nine-point lead. Not as good as the Newsweek poll from June, which had Obama 15 points ahead of McCain.]
With President Bush suffering low approval ratings, the economy moving into a recession as gas prices surge above $4 a gallon, and growing resentment about the unending war in Iraq, Obama should be pulling away in the polls.
But he isn’t.
The Obama campaign has been quick to be out front on the bad news, claiming -- at the end of the trip -- it never expected a poll bounce from Obama’s trip anyway.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told Politico’s Mike Allen: “We wouldn’t expect any sort of -- I guess the term people use is ‘bounce.’”
In fact, during Obama’s global meet-and-greet tour, McCain’s poll numbers have risen in key battleground states like Ohio.
As crowds cheered Obama globally, Americans here on the homefront were left wondering if the Illinois senator wants to be their president -- or the president of some other country. [And whether the major U.S. media would at least offer the pretense of objectivity. An MSNBC poll from last week found that 47 percent of the public thought the coverage of Obama’s trip was “excessive.”]
After Obama’s speech to an estimated 200,000 Germans in Berlin, a columnist for Britain’s Guardian newspaper began his review this way: “Barack Obama has found his people. But, unfortunately for his election prospects, they're German, not American.”
Obama's speech to the Germans left much to be desired, from an American’s perspective.
For starters, the crowd’s size was beefed up by the fact that the event was billed as a free rock concert for German citizens, with popular musical performers helping to draw the big crowd. Scant U.S. media even noted the warm-up rock draws of reggae artist Patrice and rock band Reamonn.
Then there was the simple stage, with the podium surrounded by three potted plants. Missing was the American flag -- nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Obama’s staff might consider the U.S. flag offensive.
And then there was his speech, in which he proudly proclaimed he was in Germany as a “a fellow citizen of the world.”
And there was the spectacle of the presidential wannabe going to a foreign land to apologize about the United States.
Obama told his German audience he was sorry about his country because “I know my country has not perfected itself.” [This comment was made in the former seat of Nazi power. A letter to editor published in Obama’s hometown Chicago Tribune noted the irony: “While America may not be perfect, there is no reason to apologize to the Germans, architects of the Holocaust.”]
As for America’s role in saving Germany from the onslaught of Stalinist communism and the subsequent Cold War, there was nothing.
There was a rhetorical flourish about the Berlin Wall coming down, but nothing about the great American sacrifice, not to mention how our military might made President Reagan’s call -- “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” -- a reality.
There was a fleeting mention of the famous Berlin airlift of 1948 that President Truman ordered to thwart the Soviet blockade that sought to starve West Berlin.
As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, “Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America's military might.
“Save for a solitary reference to ‘the first American plane,’ he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all. He spoke only of ‘the airlift,’ ‘the planes,’ ‘those pilots.’ Perhaps their American identity wasn't something he cared to stress amid all his ‘people of the world’ salutations and talk of ‘global citizenship.’”
The Hollywood-staged Obama event for a man who has yet to ascend to the presidency didn’t sit well with all the Germans. Germany’s Stern magazine carried the headline "Barack Kant Saves the World."
One of their columnists, Florian Güssgen, wrote: "The man is perfect, impeccable, slick. Almost too slick … Obama's speech was often vague, sometimes banal and more reminiscent of John Lennon's feel good song 'Imagine' than of a foreign policy agenda."
Slickness without substance seemed to be the enduring theme of his trip. Among the little hiccups covered up by the major media, there were several gaffes on the global coronation trip.
Perhaps the most notable -- and reprehensible -- was Obama’s decision to cancel a visit to wounded American soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany.
Apparently, the Pentagon informed Obama that since his visit was a political one, the hospital visit would be only open to him and his official Senate staff. This excluded the press and campaign officials.
The Pentagon did offer to allow Obama’s campaign plane to land at the nearby U.S. air base at Ramstein. The media also was to be accommodated there.
Without the photo opportunity and his press entourage, Obama declined to meet the wounded soldiers. At first, Obama’s campaign claimed to the press he decided to cancel the trip to visit the troops because it was "a trip funded by the campaign," and therefore somehow inappropriate. [What is inappropriate about a presidential candidate visiting wounded troops?]
But the Obama story belies the fact it was only after the Pentagon closed the event to his traveling press, that Obama’s campaign nixed the event.
Rightfully, McCain noted that it is never inappropriate for a candidate or official to visit U.S. troops.
"If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn't visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event," McCain said.
McCain continued the attack on ABC News Sunday show “This Week”: “Those troops would have loved to see him, and I know of no Pentagon regulation that would’ve prevented him from going there” without the news media.
The McCain campaign has been quick to pounce on Obama’s obvious slight to the troops and double-talk, airing a new commercial this weekend.
“And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops,” the ad says. “Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras. John McCain is always there for our troops.”
McCain added that Obama “certainly found time to do other things."
One of those other things Obama did was visit Paris and hold a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, typical of an American president visiting the French capital.
Interestingly, The New York Times quoted Elysee officials that “Obama aides insisted that an American flag not be displayed alongside the French flag because Mr. Obama is only a visiting senator and not the president.”
There is no protocol preventing an American official from having the flag displayed when abroad.
America snubbed once again by a lame excuse.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Sunday, July 27, 2008 8:15 PM
By: Newsmax Editorial
Sen. Barack Obama’s international globe-hopping to the Mideast and Europe was meant to burnish his credentials as a foreign policy and potential military leader – the strong suit of his Republican rival Sen. John McCain.
Despite the media love fest over the political junket, Obama has yet to pull away from McCain in the polls. His campaign had expected a minimum eight-point lead after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination back in June, with even more momentum moving his way as the campaign progressed.
Both the most recent Real Clear Politics rolling average and the Rasmussen tracking poll that coincided with the end of Obama’s trip this weekend show Obama with just a five-point lead over McCain -- consistent with his numbers for the past two months. [Press reports this weekend have almost completely ignored the Rasmussen poll to only report on a Gallup poll, which showed Obama with a nine-point lead. Not as good as the Newsweek poll from June, which had Obama 15 points ahead of McCain.]
With President Bush suffering low approval ratings, the economy moving into a recession as gas prices surge above $4 a gallon, and growing resentment about the unending war in Iraq, Obama should be pulling away in the polls.
But he isn’t.
The Obama campaign has been quick to be out front on the bad news, claiming -- at the end of the trip -- it never expected a poll bounce from Obama’s trip anyway.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told Politico’s Mike Allen: “We wouldn’t expect any sort of -- I guess the term people use is ‘bounce.’”
In fact, during Obama’s global meet-and-greet tour, McCain’s poll numbers have risen in key battleground states like Ohio.
As crowds cheered Obama globally, Americans here on the homefront were left wondering if the Illinois senator wants to be their president -- or the president of some other country. [And whether the major U.S. media would at least offer the pretense of objectivity. An MSNBC poll from last week found that 47 percent of the public thought the coverage of Obama’s trip was “excessive.”]
After Obama’s speech to an estimated 200,000 Germans in Berlin, a columnist for Britain’s Guardian newspaper began his review this way: “Barack Obama has found his people. But, unfortunately for his election prospects, they're German, not American.”
Obama's speech to the Germans left much to be desired, from an American’s perspective.
For starters, the crowd’s size was beefed up by the fact that the event was billed as a free rock concert for German citizens, with popular musical performers helping to draw the big crowd. Scant U.S. media even noted the warm-up rock draws of reggae artist Patrice and rock band Reamonn.
Then there was the simple stage, with the podium surrounded by three potted plants. Missing was the American flag -- nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Obama’s staff might consider the U.S. flag offensive.
And then there was his speech, in which he proudly proclaimed he was in Germany as a “a fellow citizen of the world.”
And there was the spectacle of the presidential wannabe going to a foreign land to apologize about the United States.
Obama told his German audience he was sorry about his country because “I know my country has not perfected itself.” [This comment was made in the former seat of Nazi power. A letter to editor published in Obama’s hometown Chicago Tribune noted the irony: “While America may not be perfect, there is no reason to apologize to the Germans, architects of the Holocaust.”]
As for America’s role in saving Germany from the onslaught of Stalinist communism and the subsequent Cold War, there was nothing.
There was a rhetorical flourish about the Berlin Wall coming down, but nothing about the great American sacrifice, not to mention how our military might made President Reagan’s call -- “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” -- a reality.
There was a fleeting mention of the famous Berlin airlift of 1948 that President Truman ordered to thwart the Soviet blockade that sought to starve West Berlin.
As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, “Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America's military might.
“Save for a solitary reference to ‘the first American plane,’ he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all. He spoke only of ‘the airlift,’ ‘the planes,’ ‘those pilots.’ Perhaps their American identity wasn't something he cared to stress amid all his ‘people of the world’ salutations and talk of ‘global citizenship.’”
The Hollywood-staged Obama event for a man who has yet to ascend to the presidency didn’t sit well with all the Germans. Germany’s Stern magazine carried the headline "Barack Kant Saves the World."
One of their columnists, Florian Güssgen, wrote: "The man is perfect, impeccable, slick. Almost too slick … Obama's speech was often vague, sometimes banal and more reminiscent of John Lennon's feel good song 'Imagine' than of a foreign policy agenda."
Slickness without substance seemed to be the enduring theme of his trip. Among the little hiccups covered up by the major media, there were several gaffes on the global coronation trip.
Perhaps the most notable -- and reprehensible -- was Obama’s decision to cancel a visit to wounded American soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany.
Apparently, the Pentagon informed Obama that since his visit was a political one, the hospital visit would be only open to him and his official Senate staff. This excluded the press and campaign officials.
The Pentagon did offer to allow Obama’s campaign plane to land at the nearby U.S. air base at Ramstein. The media also was to be accommodated there.
Without the photo opportunity and his press entourage, Obama declined to meet the wounded soldiers. At first, Obama’s campaign claimed to the press he decided to cancel the trip to visit the troops because it was "a trip funded by the campaign," and therefore somehow inappropriate. [What is inappropriate about a presidential candidate visiting wounded troops?]
But the Obama story belies the fact it was only after the Pentagon closed the event to his traveling press, that Obama’s campaign nixed the event.
Rightfully, McCain noted that it is never inappropriate for a candidate or official to visit U.S. troops.
"If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn't visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event," McCain said.
McCain continued the attack on ABC News Sunday show “This Week”: “Those troops would have loved to see him, and I know of no Pentagon regulation that would’ve prevented him from going there” without the news media.
The McCain campaign has been quick to pounce on Obama’s obvious slight to the troops and double-talk, airing a new commercial this weekend.
“And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops,” the ad says. “Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras. John McCain is always there for our troops.”
McCain added that Obama “certainly found time to do other things."
One of those other things Obama did was visit Paris and hold a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, typical of an American president visiting the French capital.
Interestingly, The New York Times quoted Elysee officials that “Obama aides insisted that an American flag not be displayed alongside the French flag because Mr. Obama is only a visiting senator and not the president.”
There is no protocol preventing an American official from having the flag displayed when abroad.
America snubbed once again by a lame excuse.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
July 27, 2008
Strip Sanctuary Cities of Federal Funds
Bush Should Strip Sanctuary Cities of Federal Funds
Friday, July 25, 2008 9:25 AM
By: Michael Reagan
Three good men are dead thanks largely to San Francisco’s outrageous sanctuary-city policy, which forbids city authorities from notifying federal immigration authorities when they arrest illegal aliens for crimes they commit, and it’s time for President Bush to crack down on all the cities in the United States that follow this absurd policy.
On June 22, Anthony Bologna and his sons Michael and Matthew were shot to death by Edwin Ramos, 21, after a brief traffic incident when Anthony Bologna allegedly briefly blocked Ramos' car from making a left turn, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ramos, an alleged member of the vicious the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13, should never have been around to kill the three men, and wouldn’t have been — were not for the city’s sanctuary-city policy. Ramos, an illegal immigrant, was found guilty of committing two felonies when he was 17 — involving a gang-related assault of a Municipal Railway passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman, yet was never surrendered by the city’s juvenile justice authorities to federal officials for possible deportation as required by federal law.
Ramos was taken to juvenile hall on charges of assault and participating in a street gang, and was later convicted in juvenile court and put in a shelter. Under federal law, he should have been referred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) but the Juvenile Probation Department's policy for dealing with offenders stipulated that "probation officers shall not discriminate in any fashion against minors based on their immigration status."
On April 2, 2004, Ramos was released to the custody of his mother, despite the fact that he had already been flagged by federal authorities as an illegal immigrant. He was still considered a ward of the court and was on probation. Just four days later, records show, he committed another crime at 19th and Mission Streets, two blocks from the site of the attack on the Muni passenger. He was released after city prosecutors declined to charge him in connection with an arrest in March on suspicion of weapons and gang violations.
There is a dispute revolving around the question of whether ICE was ever notified of the Ramos arrest, but the fact remains that for the last 10 years the city’s juvenile justice authorities have followed a policy of not turning over illegal-immigrant felons to the federal government, basing the practice on San Francisco's sanctuary-city status and state law barring local officials from surrendering them for deportation.
After a storm of protest following the slayings of the Bologna family men, San Francisco’s ultra-liberal Mayor Gavin Newsom belatedly rescinded that policy earlier this month following a report in the Chronicle that the city had flown a number of youths out of the country on its own, in possible violation of federal law, and then housed some in unlocked group homes from which they quickly escaped. His action came too late to save the lives of the Bologna men.
Those are the facts in this shocking case. They illustrate the lethal effects this idiotic and dangerous sanctuary-city policy can have on the safety of innocent Americans.
Sanctuary-city policies defy guidelines from the 9/11 Commission Report, which called on state and local authorities to help federal agencies crack down on illegal immigration. “There is a growing role for state and local law enforcement agencies [for the enforcement of immigration law],” the report stated. “They need more training and work with federal agencies so that they can cooperate more effectively with those federal authorities in identifying terrorist suspects.”
Instead, a host of cities across the United States classify themselves as havens for illegal aliens, despite the fact that such policies result in creating safe havens for illegal aliens who are criminals and potential terrorists. They allow criminal aliens to avoid deportation because they prevent local police from reporting them to ICE.
President Bush should issue an executive order denying any federal funds to those cities which either officially or unofficially provide sanctuaries enabling illegal aliens who commit crimes to escape deportation. They need to learn there is a price to be paid for exposing their citizens to criminal activities by aliens here illegally.
© 2008 Mike Reagan
Friday, July 25, 2008 9:25 AM
By: Michael Reagan
Three good men are dead thanks largely to San Francisco’s outrageous sanctuary-city policy, which forbids city authorities from notifying federal immigration authorities when they arrest illegal aliens for crimes they commit, and it’s time for President Bush to crack down on all the cities in the United States that follow this absurd policy.
On June 22, Anthony Bologna and his sons Michael and Matthew were shot to death by Edwin Ramos, 21, after a brief traffic incident when Anthony Bologna allegedly briefly blocked Ramos' car from making a left turn, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ramos, an alleged member of the vicious the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13, should never have been around to kill the three men, and wouldn’t have been — were not for the city’s sanctuary-city policy. Ramos, an illegal immigrant, was found guilty of committing two felonies when he was 17 — involving a gang-related assault of a Municipal Railway passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman, yet was never surrendered by the city’s juvenile justice authorities to federal officials for possible deportation as required by federal law.
Ramos was taken to juvenile hall on charges of assault and participating in a street gang, and was later convicted in juvenile court and put in a shelter. Under federal law, he should have been referred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) but the Juvenile Probation Department's policy for dealing with offenders stipulated that "probation officers shall not discriminate in any fashion against minors based on their immigration status."
On April 2, 2004, Ramos was released to the custody of his mother, despite the fact that he had already been flagged by federal authorities as an illegal immigrant. He was still considered a ward of the court and was on probation. Just four days later, records show, he committed another crime at 19th and Mission Streets, two blocks from the site of the attack on the Muni passenger. He was released after city prosecutors declined to charge him in connection with an arrest in March on suspicion of weapons and gang violations.
There is a dispute revolving around the question of whether ICE was ever notified of the Ramos arrest, but the fact remains that for the last 10 years the city’s juvenile justice authorities have followed a policy of not turning over illegal-immigrant felons to the federal government, basing the practice on San Francisco's sanctuary-city status and state law barring local officials from surrendering them for deportation.
After a storm of protest following the slayings of the Bologna family men, San Francisco’s ultra-liberal Mayor Gavin Newsom belatedly rescinded that policy earlier this month following a report in the Chronicle that the city had flown a number of youths out of the country on its own, in possible violation of federal law, and then housed some in unlocked group homes from which they quickly escaped. His action came too late to save the lives of the Bologna men.
Those are the facts in this shocking case. They illustrate the lethal effects this idiotic and dangerous sanctuary-city policy can have on the safety of innocent Americans.
Sanctuary-city policies defy guidelines from the 9/11 Commission Report, which called on state and local authorities to help federal agencies crack down on illegal immigration. “There is a growing role for state and local law enforcement agencies [for the enforcement of immigration law],” the report stated. “They need more training and work with federal agencies so that they can cooperate more effectively with those federal authorities in identifying terrorist suspects.”
Instead, a host of cities across the United States classify themselves as havens for illegal aliens, despite the fact that such policies result in creating safe havens for illegal aliens who are criminals and potential terrorists. They allow criminal aliens to avoid deportation because they prevent local police from reporting them to ICE.
President Bush should issue an executive order denying any federal funds to those cities which either officially or unofficially provide sanctuaries enabling illegal aliens who commit crimes to escape deportation. They need to learn there is a price to be paid for exposing their citizens to criminal activities by aliens here illegally.
© 2008 Mike Reagan
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