Liberals Harping on Race in Election
Friday, August 15, 2008 8:08 AM
By: David Limbaugh Art
Sadly, there isn't the slightest chance liberals will forgo the race narrative in this presidential race because painting the other side as racist is essential to their need to feel morally superior.
They can't accept Obama's candidacy as evidence of progress toward racial equality. They can't permit the advancement of colorblindness because they sense it is detrimental both to their political interests and their self-esteem. After all, if liberals lost their self-anointment as moral paragons, they'd have nothing left because their policy agenda has the track record of an Edsel, with the exception that it won't ever be taken off the market.
A mainstream media favorite, MSNBC's Howard Fineman, in a piece criticizing McCain for allegedly painting Barack Obama as less American and patriotic than McCain, couldn't help but throw in a pointed reference to race.
In describing the attendees at a Pennsylvania event for McCain that McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman headlined, Fineman wrote: "The crowd comprised a slice of America that McCain needs if he intends to win Pennsylvania and the election. And that slice is white (I did not spot a single African-American in the crowd), rural, 'exurban,' and mostly Protestant, with local roots stretching back centuries."
See who always brings up this subject? What conservative would spend his time obsessing on skin color to the point of surveying the crowd for evidence of racial diversity? And what conservative would refer to American Caucasians as a "slice" of America, as if whites were some monolithic voting bloc?
But now that you brought it up, Howard, I suppose all of us commentators, as fellow masters of the obvious, can acknowledge that because Barack Obama is uniformly projected to capture 90 percent of the African-American vote and the majority of Hispanics, simple arithmetic dictates McCain has to win a majority of white voters.
So in the very column Fineman condemns McCain for supposedly playing the patriotism card "to scare the bejesus out of . . . Southern whites, evangelical Christians and combative neocons," he dutifully plays the race card to scare and shame whites with all the subtlety one might expect from a liberal media soldier.
But Fineman is just one of hundreds of the media megaphone militia and academic armies foisting race into the campaign. They cannot and, more importantly will not, let it go.
Whether it's The New Republic's Peter Beinart intuiting a "large body of circumstantial evidence" indicating that "a significant number of white Democrats" won't vote for Obama or liberal academics accusing Republicans of speaking in code to appeal to the basest instincts of white voters, the libs are compelled to handicap this race with race.
Reuters featured a piece by Matthew Bigg, titled "When it comes to race, U.S. politicians talk in code." But while we're talking code, a more intelligible rendering of Bigg's title would be, "When it comes to race, U.S. conservative politicians speak in code to scare the bejesus out of white voters concerning Obama's candidacy."
Biggs says that references to Obama's alleged inexperience (alleged?) and perceived arrogance (perceived?) "could also be seen as subtle racial digs," according to unnamed commentators — probably meaning Biggs himself.
How do the unnamed clairvoyants infer racism from these legitimate criticisms against Obama? Simple. "Inexperience might be a substitute for an idea with roots in the era of U.S. slavery that African-Americans couldn't be trusted, while arrogance can be a way of suggesting that black people are 'uppity' or above their station."
If you think that's a stretch, check out the next one. Biggs cites Ronald Walters, professor of politics at the University of Maryland, as opining that McCain's recent ad lampooning Obama as a celebrity like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton "played on deep cultural fears about inter-racial dating and marriage, which was illegal until the 1960s in some U.S. states." "The code," said Walters, "is used to remind people that the opponent is black."
Could have fooled me. I thought it was a pretty direct slam on Obama for his vacuousness and superficial appeal. Not once did it cross my dark conservative mind that race had anything to do with it.
The irony is that liberals are the ones trapped in their own mythical narrative about white and conservative and evangelical racism because it is their best chance of holding their monopoly on black voters. If they were as concerned about blacks as much as they've convinced themselves they are, they would extricate themselves from the bonds of self-interest clouding their judgment and leading them to perpetuate the storyline and promote policies guaranteed, in the words of the insightful black writer William Owens Jr., to keep blacks "in the bondage of a welfare mentality that will never afford us our true worth today or future potential for our children and grandchildren."
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
© 2008 Creator's Syndicate
August 22, 2008
David Limbaugh Obama Abortion Stance Is Clear
David Limbaugh
Obama Abortion Stance Is Clear
Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:58 PM
By: David Limbaugh
You can always tell when you've scored points against a liberal candidate. He and his minions, following the combined examples of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, immediately assume counterattack mode — rather than addressing the allegations — and accuse the accusers of "swift boating," by which they mean smearing with false charges.
John Kerry's handlers adopted the technique when Kerry's fellow swift boat veterans unveiled his true military record after Kerry brazenly made his record an essential campaign issue. They attempted to turn the table on the truthful swiftees by painting them as liars.
The episode proved that the mainstream media will go to any lengths to save a floundering Democratic presidential campaign, including conspiring to manufacture a new word for our political lexicon designed to discredit and silence the accusers. Henceforth, "swift boating" would describe the untrue smearing of a political opponent.
The irony and injustice is that the swiftees — not John Kerry — owned the truth. Never did Kerry or the mainstream media refute any of their allegations. But the swiftees did expose Kerry, objectively, as having lied about his record in a surprising number of particulars. Kerry never even attempted to answer the allegations, despite repeatedly promising that he would. He didn't because he couldn't. The only option left open to him was to launch a diversionary and fraudulent counterattack.
Which brings us to the present campaign. The Democratic Party, acting like a man in heat who is driven by anything but his rational mind, lusted after Barack Obama and made him its nominee when it should have known better.
Even before the primary season was over, it was obvious not only that Obama was an unknown quantity but also that what we did know about him was very troubling. And many Democratic primary voters were beginning to realize it, which is why Hillary Clinton won the majority of the late-term primaries.
Every week, a new disturbing revelation surfaces about Obama, each arguably more damaging than its predecessor. Having no substantive response, Obama and the liberal media are reduced to accusing the McCain forces of dirty politics, when any reasonable person knows there is nothing unfair about exposing your opponent's character flaws and policy weaknesses.
Increasingly, these desperate Obama defenders have been accusing McCain of swift boating Obama, which signals that McCain has been scoring heavily with incontrovertible allegations.
The most damning one yet is Obama's disgraceful record on abortion. Obama enabled infanticide while in the Illinois legislature and has been dissembling about it.
David Freddoso, author of the excellent new book, "The Case Against Barack Obama," points out that Obama has repeatedly made the false claim that he only spoke out against an Illinois bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as "persons" because it would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. Yet "every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb."
Obama's own words, circulating in transcript form and on YouTube, are even more incriminating, as he articulates his opposition to the bill seeking to protect a baby born alive as a result of a botched abortion. "Essentially, adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."
Translation: Obama will not theoretically burden a woman's right to abort her child, but he will actually burden an already-born infant's chances of surviving.
Obama is so slavishly obedient to the abortion lobby's cultish protection of a woman's right to terminate her own offspring's life, that he opposed measures designed to protect an already-born baby's chances to survive. And you wonder why we say pro-abortion liberals have made abortion a ritualistic religious sacrament!
On "Hannity & Colmes," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel indignantly stated: "Are you suggesting Barack Obama wants babies to die? . . . I've never thought the Republicans would go this far . . . This is about as low as you can go."
Yes, Bob. Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois Senate to speak against a bill that would have granted legal protection to already-born babies still alive after a failed abortion. He used his power to prevent those innocent babies from having the best chance to survive. The evidence speaks for itself. It doesn't get much colder than that.
In the face of this latest smoking gun, Obama and his beleaguered defenders have no arrow left in their quiver except to attack their accusers and label them as "swift boaters."
Because swift boating really amounts to truth telling, the targets of those accusations should consider this an affirmation that the Obama forces know the charges are true.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
© 2008 Creator's Syndicate Inc.
E-mail Us
Obama Abortion Stance Is Clear
Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:58 PM
By: David Limbaugh
You can always tell when you've scored points against a liberal candidate. He and his minions, following the combined examples of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, immediately assume counterattack mode — rather than addressing the allegations — and accuse the accusers of "swift boating," by which they mean smearing with false charges.
John Kerry's handlers adopted the technique when Kerry's fellow swift boat veterans unveiled his true military record after Kerry brazenly made his record an essential campaign issue. They attempted to turn the table on the truthful swiftees by painting them as liars.
The episode proved that the mainstream media will go to any lengths to save a floundering Democratic presidential campaign, including conspiring to manufacture a new word for our political lexicon designed to discredit and silence the accusers. Henceforth, "swift boating" would describe the untrue smearing of a political opponent.
The irony and injustice is that the swiftees — not John Kerry — owned the truth. Never did Kerry or the mainstream media refute any of their allegations. But the swiftees did expose Kerry, objectively, as having lied about his record in a surprising number of particulars. Kerry never even attempted to answer the allegations, despite repeatedly promising that he would. He didn't because he couldn't. The only option left open to him was to launch a diversionary and fraudulent counterattack.
Which brings us to the present campaign. The Democratic Party, acting like a man in heat who is driven by anything but his rational mind, lusted after Barack Obama and made him its nominee when it should have known better.
Even before the primary season was over, it was obvious not only that Obama was an unknown quantity but also that what we did know about him was very troubling. And many Democratic primary voters were beginning to realize it, which is why Hillary Clinton won the majority of the late-term primaries.
Every week, a new disturbing revelation surfaces about Obama, each arguably more damaging than its predecessor. Having no substantive response, Obama and the liberal media are reduced to accusing the McCain forces of dirty politics, when any reasonable person knows there is nothing unfair about exposing your opponent's character flaws and policy weaknesses.
Increasingly, these desperate Obama defenders have been accusing McCain of swift boating Obama, which signals that McCain has been scoring heavily with incontrovertible allegations.
The most damning one yet is Obama's disgraceful record on abortion. Obama enabled infanticide while in the Illinois legislature and has been dissembling about it.
David Freddoso, author of the excellent new book, "The Case Against Barack Obama," points out that Obama has repeatedly made the false claim that he only spoke out against an Illinois bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as "persons" because it would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. Yet "every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb."
Obama's own words, circulating in transcript form and on YouTube, are even more incriminating, as he articulates his opposition to the bill seeking to protect a baby born alive as a result of a botched abortion. "Essentially, adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."
Translation: Obama will not theoretically burden a woman's right to abort her child, but he will actually burden an already-born infant's chances of surviving.
Obama is so slavishly obedient to the abortion lobby's cultish protection of a woman's right to terminate her own offspring's life, that he opposed measures designed to protect an already-born baby's chances to survive. And you wonder why we say pro-abortion liberals have made abortion a ritualistic religious sacrament!
On "Hannity & Colmes," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel indignantly stated: "Are you suggesting Barack Obama wants babies to die? . . . I've never thought the Republicans would go this far . . . This is about as low as you can go."
Yes, Bob. Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois Senate to speak against a bill that would have granted legal protection to already-born babies still alive after a failed abortion. He used his power to prevent those innocent babies from having the best chance to survive. The evidence speaks for itself. It doesn't get much colder than that.
In the face of this latest smoking gun, Obama and his beleaguered defenders have no arrow left in their quiver except to attack their accusers and label them as "swift boaters."
Because swift boating really amounts to truth telling, the targets of those accusations should consider this an affirmation that the Obama forces know the charges are true.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
© 2008 Creator's Syndicate Inc.
E-mail Us
Obama Slammed Over Clarence Thomas Remark
Obama Slammed Over Clarence Thomas Remark
Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:04 PM
By: Rick Pedraza
Critics are harshly attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s condescending remarks about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying they were not only demeaning to Thomas, but also ludicrous.
Appearing at a weekend forum at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Obama and Republican presidential rival John McCain were both asked which Supreme Court Justices they would not have nominated.
Obama declared that he would not have nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court because he was not a “strong enough jurist” for the job.
"I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution," Obama answered.
Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, told Cybercast News Service the remarks were “condescending.” She noted that Thomas’ jurisprudence background lead to him being confirmed by the Senate to three positions, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which Brand called the “second-most prestigious court in the land.”
Wendy Long, who worked as a law clerk for Thomas, agreed with Brand by saying Obama’s statement was “ludicrous.”
“They reveal that Obama is ignorant of facts and history, misunderstands the Constitution, and contradicts himself in his own alleged criteria for Supreme Court nominees,” she told CNS.
Even Douglas Kmiec, an Obama supporter and constitutional law scholar at Pepperdine University, said he was “disappointed” Obama mentioned Thomas.
“First of all, I think Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the best appointments that have been made by Republican presidents — or any presidents, for that matter — in recent times,” Kmiec told CNS.
Kmiec noted that Thomas is the only Supreme Court Justice who prior to his appointment “recognized the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — that the Constitution is a means of indicating the inalienable rights that are traceable to our Creator.”
Obama added that he also wouldn't have nominated Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, “though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job,” The Wall Street Journal noted.
In an editorial Monday, The Journal observed that Obama “isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note [with] his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a ‘community organizer’ and law school lecturer.”
© 2008 Newsmax.
Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:04 PM
By: Rick Pedraza
Critics are harshly attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s condescending remarks about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying they were not only demeaning to Thomas, but also ludicrous.
Appearing at a weekend forum at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Obama and Republican presidential rival John McCain were both asked which Supreme Court Justices they would not have nominated.
Obama declared that he would not have nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court because he was not a “strong enough jurist” for the job.
"I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution," Obama answered.
Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, told Cybercast News Service the remarks were “condescending.” She noted that Thomas’ jurisprudence background lead to him being confirmed by the Senate to three positions, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which Brand called the “second-most prestigious court in the land.”
Wendy Long, who worked as a law clerk for Thomas, agreed with Brand by saying Obama’s statement was “ludicrous.”
“They reveal that Obama is ignorant of facts and history, misunderstands the Constitution, and contradicts himself in his own alleged criteria for Supreme Court nominees,” she told CNS.
Even Douglas Kmiec, an Obama supporter and constitutional law scholar at Pepperdine University, said he was “disappointed” Obama mentioned Thomas.
“First of all, I think Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the best appointments that have been made by Republican presidents — or any presidents, for that matter — in recent times,” Kmiec told CNS.
Kmiec noted that Thomas is the only Supreme Court Justice who prior to his appointment “recognized the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — that the Constitution is a means of indicating the inalienable rights that are traceable to our Creator.”
Obama added that he also wouldn't have nominated Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, “though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job,” The Wall Street Journal noted.
In an editorial Monday, The Journal observed that Obama “isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note [with] his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a ‘community organizer’ and law school lecturer.”
© 2008 Newsmax.
Networks Gave Obama the Nomination
Report: Networks Gave Obama the Nomination
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
An exhaustive, eight-year Media Research Center study of the Big Three TV networks’ coverage of Barack Obama shows that their favorable spin on the Democrat gave him his margin of victory in the primaries, according to MRC president Brent Bozell.
The MRC notes that this year saw the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point — 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast — separating Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June.
“But Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks,” an MRC report on the study states.
“At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign.”
The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC logged every story, sound bite, and mention of Obama on ABC, CBS and NBC evening news telecasts from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries this past June — a total of 1,365 stories.
Among the key findings:
The three broadcast networks ran 462 positive stories about Obama — 34 percent of the total — compared with only 70 stories (5 percent) that were critical.
NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports, more than 10 times the number of anti-Obama stories, 17. The CBS Evening News ran 156 stories in favor of Obama, compared to just 21 anti-Obama reports. ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor — 127 positive stories to 32 negative reports.
Barack Obama received his best press “when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene,” the MRC report observed. All three networks lavished him with praise when he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full network reports, one each on ABC and NBC, and was mentioned in just 15 other stories. Also, CBS and NBC initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Obama’s best press of this year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6. After that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just 1 percent that were critical.
The networks referred to Obama as a "liberal" only 14 times in four years, while on twice as many occasions reporters referred to him as either a "rock star," "rising star," or "superstar" during the same period.
Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 that offered a negative opinion, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.
Brent Bozell said in a statement: “This study proves emphatically and without question that the Big Three networks had a horse in this year’s Democratic primary race. And that with their wall-to-wall, 24-hour daily assistance, NBC, ABC and CBS provided Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory.
“As the liberal media’s ardor with Sen. Hillary Clinton evaporated, so too did the inevitability of her victory. The press fixated their infatuated gazes on Sen. Obama, and afforded him the crucial coverage and support he needed to win.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
An exhaustive, eight-year Media Research Center study of the Big Three TV networks’ coverage of Barack Obama shows that their favorable spin on the Democrat gave him his margin of victory in the primaries, according to MRC president Brent Bozell.
The MRC notes that this year saw the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point — 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast — separating Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June.
“But Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks,” an MRC report on the study states.
“At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign.”
The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC logged every story, sound bite, and mention of Obama on ABC, CBS and NBC evening news telecasts from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries this past June — a total of 1,365 stories.
Among the key findings:
The three broadcast networks ran 462 positive stories about Obama — 34 percent of the total — compared with only 70 stories (5 percent) that were critical.
NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports, more than 10 times the number of anti-Obama stories, 17. The CBS Evening News ran 156 stories in favor of Obama, compared to just 21 anti-Obama reports. ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor — 127 positive stories to 32 negative reports.
Barack Obama received his best press “when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene,” the MRC report observed. All three networks lavished him with praise when he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full network reports, one each on ABC and NBC, and was mentioned in just 15 other stories. Also, CBS and NBC initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Obama’s best press of this year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6. After that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just 1 percent that were critical.
The networks referred to Obama as a "liberal" only 14 times in four years, while on twice as many occasions reporters referred to him as either a "rock star," "rising star," or "superstar" during the same period.
Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 that offered a negative opinion, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.
Brent Bozell said in a statement: “This study proves emphatically and without question that the Big Three networks had a horse in this year’s Democratic primary race. And that with their wall-to-wall, 24-hour daily assistance, NBC, ABC and CBS provided Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory.
“As the liberal media’s ardor with Sen. Hillary Clinton evaporated, so too did the inevitability of her victory. The press fixated their infatuated gazes on Sen. Obama, and afforded him the crucial coverage and support he needed to win.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
August 21, 2008
Governing Is Above Obama’s Pay Grade
Governing Is Above Obama’s Pay Grade
Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:23 AM
By: Michael Reagan
Anybody who watched Barack Obama’s sorry performance during Saturday's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency with Pastor Rick Warren had to come away with the question, “What is this guy doing running for president of the United States?”
The worshipping media described his comments as “nuanced,” the word they use to describe “wishy-washy.” It was full of those “on the other hand” answers to Pastor Warren’s probing questions.
Obama was anything but wishy-washy, however, when he said that knowing when human life begins was “above his pay grade.” He was just plain evasive, obviously seeking to play down his extremist view that abortion at any time, in any circumstance, is perfectly acceptable to him.
This isn’t surprising since he took the lead in the Illinois Senate in fighting a bill that would outlaw the barbarous murder of newborn infants who survive being killed in a partial-birth abortion.
During the forum, his struggle to please everybody by straddling the issues was plain for all to see. He showed he was willing to say and do what he believed everybody wanted to hear. When you try to find any real depth in his beliefs you quickly discover he is utterly shallow and soulless, a sloganeer instead of a missionary.
He’s just a politician on the make, trying to be all things to all people — an empty suit proclaiming empty promises.
Being without real depth, his platform merely floats on a surface of promises categorized as “Hope” and “Change,” neither of which is clearly defined.
He assures us that he wants to change Washington and sweep away all that this city represents. Yet one has only to look at next week’s Democratic National Convention to understand that it’s not change, but lots more of the same.
Just look at the roster of speakers lined up and try to find a single new face. It’s the same old lineup, the same old roll call of familiar Democrat politicians who have constituted the leadership of the national Democratic Party for eons.
Change? Does inviting Jimmy Carter (arguably the worst president in our long history and a dedicated foe of Israel) constitute meaningful change?
Is John Kerry a new face, or simply a retread of a failed presidential candidate who represents his party’s recent past as well as its immediate future?
How about putting Al Gore on the speaker’s dais? Al Gore, the high priest of the phony climate-change religion who to this day can’t accept the fact that he lost to George Bush in 2000 and never stops whining about it. That’s change?
Just what changes the old Democratic order when you have Bill Clinton speaking one night and Hillary Clinton the next night?
Is Mayor Daley, Obama’s strongest backer and the boss of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine, a symbol of change?
You look at this upcoming convention and you have to ask yourself, “Have I not seen this show before?”
We saw it in 2004 and 2000 and 1996 and 1992, and every other Democratic convention going back to Harry S. Truman. And by the way, if Truman were alive today he would be the one familiar face who wouldn’t be invited to speak.
Plain-spoken Harry would take one look at Obama and we’d be hearing some of his patented obscenities. Truman had no tolerance for politicians who tried to pass themselves off as messiahs, above the give and take of everyday politics.
Change? It’s simply more of the same old thing: power-hungry politicians lusting after the authority to impose the decades-old Democrat, socialist, big-brother programs on the American people. An authority the people wisely continue to deny them.
Barack Obama hasn’t demonstrated that by virtue of any past experience that he possesses the capacity to be president of the United States, a job far above his pay grade.
© 2008 Mike Reagan
Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:23 AM
By: Michael Reagan
Anybody who watched Barack Obama’s sorry performance during Saturday's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency with Pastor Rick Warren had to come away with the question, “What is this guy doing running for president of the United States?”
The worshipping media described his comments as “nuanced,” the word they use to describe “wishy-washy.” It was full of those “on the other hand” answers to Pastor Warren’s probing questions.
Obama was anything but wishy-washy, however, when he said that knowing when human life begins was “above his pay grade.” He was just plain evasive, obviously seeking to play down his extremist view that abortion at any time, in any circumstance, is perfectly acceptable to him.
This isn’t surprising since he took the lead in the Illinois Senate in fighting a bill that would outlaw the barbarous murder of newborn infants who survive being killed in a partial-birth abortion.
During the forum, his struggle to please everybody by straddling the issues was plain for all to see. He showed he was willing to say and do what he believed everybody wanted to hear. When you try to find any real depth in his beliefs you quickly discover he is utterly shallow and soulless, a sloganeer instead of a missionary.
He’s just a politician on the make, trying to be all things to all people — an empty suit proclaiming empty promises.
Being without real depth, his platform merely floats on a surface of promises categorized as “Hope” and “Change,” neither of which is clearly defined.
He assures us that he wants to change Washington and sweep away all that this city represents. Yet one has only to look at next week’s Democratic National Convention to understand that it’s not change, but lots more of the same.
Just look at the roster of speakers lined up and try to find a single new face. It’s the same old lineup, the same old roll call of familiar Democrat politicians who have constituted the leadership of the national Democratic Party for eons.
Change? Does inviting Jimmy Carter (arguably the worst president in our long history and a dedicated foe of Israel) constitute meaningful change?
Is John Kerry a new face, or simply a retread of a failed presidential candidate who represents his party’s recent past as well as its immediate future?
How about putting Al Gore on the speaker’s dais? Al Gore, the high priest of the phony climate-change religion who to this day can’t accept the fact that he lost to George Bush in 2000 and never stops whining about it. That’s change?
Just what changes the old Democratic order when you have Bill Clinton speaking one night and Hillary Clinton the next night?
Is Mayor Daley, Obama’s strongest backer and the boss of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine, a symbol of change?
You look at this upcoming convention and you have to ask yourself, “Have I not seen this show before?”
We saw it in 2004 and 2000 and 1996 and 1992, and every other Democratic convention going back to Harry S. Truman. And by the way, if Truman were alive today he would be the one familiar face who wouldn’t be invited to speak.
Plain-spoken Harry would take one look at Obama and we’d be hearing some of his patented obscenities. Truman had no tolerance for politicians who tried to pass themselves off as messiahs, above the give and take of everyday politics.
Change? It’s simply more of the same old thing: power-hungry politicians lusting after the authority to impose the decades-old Democrat, socialist, big-brother programs on the American people. An authority the people wisely continue to deny them.
Barack Obama hasn’t demonstrated that by virtue of any past experience that he possesses the capacity to be president of the United States, a job far above his pay grade.
© 2008 Mike Reagan
Dem's Platform Includes Slush Fund For Soros
Dem's Platform Includes Slush Fund For Soros
By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:30 PM PT
The Democratic Party platform is like a bag of pork rinds. You never know what high-fat liberal government morsel you're gonna get.
Buried in the 94-page document is a noble-sounding proposal to create a "Social Investment Fund Network." The program would provide federal money to "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations (that) are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities."
The Democratic Party promises to "support these results-oriented innovators" by creating an office to "coordinate government and nonprofit efforts" and then showering "a series of grants" on the chosen groups "to replicate these programs nationwide."
This brainchild of Barack Obama would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. This George Soros Slush Fund would be political payback in spades.
Obama owes much of his Chicago political success to financial support from radical, left-wing billionaire and leading "social entrepreneur" Soros. In June 2004, Soros threw a big fundraiser at his New York home for Obama's Illinois Senate campaign. Soros and family personally chipped in $60,000. In April 2007, Obama was back in New York for a deep-pocketed fundraising soiree, with Soros lurking in his shadow.
No doubt with Soros' approbation (if not advice from the hands-on "progressive" activist or his advisers), Obama fleshed out his Social Investment Fund Network plan last December. In concert with his mandatory volunteerism pitch and $6 billion anti-poverty plan, Obama called for the creation of a "Social Entrepreneurship Agency" to dispense the funds in unspecified amounts.
The agency would be a government-supported nonprofit corporation "similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," which runs public television.
Obama cites the Harlem Children's Zone, which provides after-school activities and mentors to children in New York, as an example of a program that should be funded. (Former senior leader Shawn Dove is now an official at Soros' Open Society Institute.)
The problem with such initiatives is that these private-public partnerships formed under the guise of economic renewal often become fronts that coordinate "an enormous safety net for social services."
Private donations give the illusion of self-help and philanthropic independence, but in reality, the "clients" are never weaned from the teat of the welfare state. They simply learn how to milk it more efficiently.
Even more troubling is how the Democratic Party/Obama plan would siphon millions or billions of tax dollars into the Soros empire without taxpayer recourse. Obama promises "accountability" measures to ensure the money is spent wisely. But who'd assess effectiveness of the spending? Why, experts in the social entrepreneurship community, of course. Fox, meet henhouse.
Soros has donated some $5 billion of his fortune to left-wing nonprofit groups through the Open Society Institute — an institution committed to Soros' militant ideology of toppling the "fascist" tyranny of the United States, which he says must undergo "de-Nazification" in favor of "justice."
The mob at Obama-endorsing MoveOn.org, purveyors of the "General Betray Us" smear against Commanding General, MNF-I, David Petraeus, is the most notorious Soros-backed political arm. But scores of other activist nonprofits have received Soros funding under the guise of doing nonpartisan "community" or "social justice" work — and it's exactly such groups that would be first in line for the Democratic Party/Obama's "social investments."
Point in case: Acorn. As I've reported, Obama's old friends at the Chicago-based nonprofit now take in 40% of their revenue from American taxpayers. They raked in tens of millions in federal antipoverty grants while some of their operatives presided over massive voter fraud and others were implicated in corporate shakedowns and mortgage scams across the country.
Soros has donated at least $150,000 to the group, according to Investor's Business Daily, and "heads a secretive rich-man's club called 'Democracy Alliance' that has doled out $20 million to activist groups like Acorn." Once the spigot is turned on, there's no turning back.
Where are fiscal conservatives on this boondoggle? Well, if you're wondering why the McCain campaign doesn't raise hell, it's because McCain himself is a Soros beneficiary. His "Reform Institute," a tax-exempt, supposedly independent 501c(3) group focused on campaign finance reform, was funded by the Soros-funded Open Society Institute and Tides Foundation.
Birds of a Big Government feather flock together — and look out for each other. Watch your wallet.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc
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By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:30 PM PT
The Democratic Party platform is like a bag of pork rinds. You never know what high-fat liberal government morsel you're gonna get.
Buried in the 94-page document is a noble-sounding proposal to create a "Social Investment Fund Network." The program would provide federal money to "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations (that) are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities."
The Democratic Party promises to "support these results-oriented innovators" by creating an office to "coordinate government and nonprofit efforts" and then showering "a series of grants" on the chosen groups "to replicate these programs nationwide."
This brainchild of Barack Obama would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. This George Soros Slush Fund would be political payback in spades.
Obama owes much of his Chicago political success to financial support from radical, left-wing billionaire and leading "social entrepreneur" Soros. In June 2004, Soros threw a big fundraiser at his New York home for Obama's Illinois Senate campaign. Soros and family personally chipped in $60,000. In April 2007, Obama was back in New York for a deep-pocketed fundraising soiree, with Soros lurking in his shadow.
No doubt with Soros' approbation (if not advice from the hands-on "progressive" activist or his advisers), Obama fleshed out his Social Investment Fund Network plan last December. In concert with his mandatory volunteerism pitch and $6 billion anti-poverty plan, Obama called for the creation of a "Social Entrepreneurship Agency" to dispense the funds in unspecified amounts.
The agency would be a government-supported nonprofit corporation "similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," which runs public television.
Obama cites the Harlem Children's Zone, which provides after-school activities and mentors to children in New York, as an example of a program that should be funded. (Former senior leader Shawn Dove is now an official at Soros' Open Society Institute.)
The problem with such initiatives is that these private-public partnerships formed under the guise of economic renewal often become fronts that coordinate "an enormous safety net for social services."
Private donations give the illusion of self-help and philanthropic independence, but in reality, the "clients" are never weaned from the teat of the welfare state. They simply learn how to milk it more efficiently.
Even more troubling is how the Democratic Party/Obama plan would siphon millions or billions of tax dollars into the Soros empire without taxpayer recourse. Obama promises "accountability" measures to ensure the money is spent wisely. But who'd assess effectiveness of the spending? Why, experts in the social entrepreneurship community, of course. Fox, meet henhouse.
Soros has donated some $5 billion of his fortune to left-wing nonprofit groups through the Open Society Institute — an institution committed to Soros' militant ideology of toppling the "fascist" tyranny of the United States, which he says must undergo "de-Nazification" in favor of "justice."
The mob at Obama-endorsing MoveOn.org, purveyors of the "General Betray Us" smear against Commanding General, MNF-I, David Petraeus, is the most notorious Soros-backed political arm. But scores of other activist nonprofits have received Soros funding under the guise of doing nonpartisan "community" or "social justice" work — and it's exactly such groups that would be first in line for the Democratic Party/Obama's "social investments."
Point in case: Acorn. As I've reported, Obama's old friends at the Chicago-based nonprofit now take in 40% of their revenue from American taxpayers. They raked in tens of millions in federal antipoverty grants while some of their operatives presided over massive voter fraud and others were implicated in corporate shakedowns and mortgage scams across the country.
Soros has donated at least $150,000 to the group, according to Investor's Business Daily, and "heads a secretive rich-man's club called 'Democracy Alliance' that has doled out $20 million to activist groups like Acorn." Once the spigot is turned on, there's no turning back.
Where are fiscal conservatives on this boondoggle? Well, if you're wondering why the McCain campaign doesn't raise hell, it's because McCain himself is a Soros beneficiary. His "Reform Institute," a tax-exempt, supposedly independent 501c(3) group focused on campaign finance reform, was funded by the Soros-funded Open Society Institute and Tides Foundation.
Birds of a Big Government feather flock together — and look out for each other. Watch your wallet.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc
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Finding Friends On Far, Far Left
Finding Friends On Far, Far Left
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.
Among Obama's biggest admirers, for example, is one Pepe Lozano. Unknown at the national level, Lozano is more of a small-time agitator, just as Obama was in his community organizing days in Chicago. Maybe that explains part of the attraction.
But it's more likely that Lozano, a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, finds that Obama is the communist party's best hope because of the junior senator's far-left positions.
"This is a history-making process," Lozano told a Chicago gathering of about 250 in June, "and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president."
The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term."
The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be "the people's president."
Also in February, Political Affairs editor Terri Albano talked about how the "kind of upsurge" surrounding Obama "comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives — each of us — (to) get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by."
While communists are endorsing Obama, the Communist Party USA isn't. But that's not because it doesn't like Obama. The CPUSA simply does not endorse candidates. Yet it issued what could be called a non-endorsement endorsement of Obama in March, saying "his campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."
"This election can begin to turn the tide: It can help bring universal health care, save the environment and start the restoration of our democratic rights," the group said. "This election can strengthen democracy for all."
If Obama is smarting because he didn't get an official Communist Party USA endorsement, maybe he will be mollified by the approval of an old communist to the south. Fidel Castro in the spring wrote in the state newspaper Granma that Obama is "the most progressive candidate for the U.S. presidency."
That's an endorsement that anyone who doesn't have a socialist agenda should be ashamed of, especially given Castro's murder and intimidation of his foes and his repeated, egregious human rights violations of average Cuban citizens.
But from what we can tell, Obama has not rejected Castro's support. What we can tell, though, is that when Obama says he stands for change, he could be talking about erasing facts that he considers to be politically damaging.
Last month he scrubbed clean from his Web site evidence that he opposed the successful Iraq surge, and last winter he deleted the endorsement of the extremist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had become a political liability.
But despite his campaign's penchant for cyberhygiene, the community blog on his own Web site still has an entry that's rather incriminating: "This group is for self-proclaimed Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. . . . We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!" The fact that it can still be found on Obama's official site would indicate that the campaign has no problem with it — and that it might even appreciate the endorsement.
The current campaign is not Obama's first association with groups that promote socialism or its more stringent ideological cousin, communism.
In 1995, he sought the endorsement of the New Party for his 1996 state Senate candidacy. The party — a collection of anti-capitalist ex-communists and socialists that disbanded in 1998 after six years of trying to push the Democratic Party even further left — gladly gave Obama its support.
Obama also was endorsed in that election by the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the U.S. While the name might sound benign, the DSA has a poisonous agenda. Its goal is to establish "an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics" and is committed to "restructuring society."
Members "are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo."
Just as it should be no surprise that a Che Guevara poster was found hanging in an Obama campaign office, it would not be a shock to see an Obama poster on a wall in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism's headquarters.
Mark Solomon, the group's national co-chair, wrote in a virtual endorsement in February that Obama "is an attractive, articulate and talented politician" whose "campaign has sparked a powerful surge."
But that would be expected, since this group, which branched off from the Communist Party USA in 1991, organized the October 2002 rally in which Obama criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq — while still serving as a state senator in Illinois. The ties between Obama and the committees go back years.
Across the Atlantic, the Party of European Socialists also has given its blessing.
President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen says that "Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world. . . . Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. elections."
Obama supporters might excuse the candidate's support from communists, Marxists and socialists, saying he is the only alternative since these groups would never support the Republican nominee. (Which is entirely correct and indicative of the Democratic Party's continuing decline into the pit of democratic socialism.)
But the truth is, these groups usually reserve their endorsements and support for fringe candidates, not someone from a major party. That's not the case this time around. They seem to have their man.
Email To Friend |
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.
Among Obama's biggest admirers, for example, is one Pepe Lozano. Unknown at the national level, Lozano is more of a small-time agitator, just as Obama was in his community organizing days in Chicago. Maybe that explains part of the attraction.
But it's more likely that Lozano, a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, finds that Obama is the communist party's best hope because of the junior senator's far-left positions.
"This is a history-making process," Lozano told a Chicago gathering of about 250 in June, "and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president."
The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term."
The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be "the people's president."
Also in February, Political Affairs editor Terri Albano talked about how the "kind of upsurge" surrounding Obama "comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives — each of us — (to) get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by."
While communists are endorsing Obama, the Communist Party USA isn't. But that's not because it doesn't like Obama. The CPUSA simply does not endorse candidates. Yet it issued what could be called a non-endorsement endorsement of Obama in March, saying "his campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."
"This election can begin to turn the tide: It can help bring universal health care, save the environment and start the restoration of our democratic rights," the group said. "This election can strengthen democracy for all."
If Obama is smarting because he didn't get an official Communist Party USA endorsement, maybe he will be mollified by the approval of an old communist to the south. Fidel Castro in the spring wrote in the state newspaper Granma that Obama is "the most progressive candidate for the U.S. presidency."
That's an endorsement that anyone who doesn't have a socialist agenda should be ashamed of, especially given Castro's murder and intimidation of his foes and his repeated, egregious human rights violations of average Cuban citizens.
But from what we can tell, Obama has not rejected Castro's support. What we can tell, though, is that when Obama says he stands for change, he could be talking about erasing facts that he considers to be politically damaging.
Last month he scrubbed clean from his Web site evidence that he opposed the successful Iraq surge, and last winter he deleted the endorsement of the extremist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had become a political liability.
But despite his campaign's penchant for cyberhygiene, the community blog on his own Web site still has an entry that's rather incriminating: "This group is for self-proclaimed Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. . . . We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!" The fact that it can still be found on Obama's official site would indicate that the campaign has no problem with it — and that it might even appreciate the endorsement.
The current campaign is not Obama's first association with groups that promote socialism or its more stringent ideological cousin, communism.
In 1995, he sought the endorsement of the New Party for his 1996 state Senate candidacy. The party — a collection of anti-capitalist ex-communists and socialists that disbanded in 1998 after six years of trying to push the Democratic Party even further left — gladly gave Obama its support.
Obama also was endorsed in that election by the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the U.S. While the name might sound benign, the DSA has a poisonous agenda. Its goal is to establish "an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics" and is committed to "restructuring society."
Members "are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo."
Just as it should be no surprise that a Che Guevara poster was found hanging in an Obama campaign office, it would not be a shock to see an Obama poster on a wall in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism's headquarters.
Mark Solomon, the group's national co-chair, wrote in a virtual endorsement in February that Obama "is an attractive, articulate and talented politician" whose "campaign has sparked a powerful surge."
But that would be expected, since this group, which branched off from the Communist Party USA in 1991, organized the October 2002 rally in which Obama criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq — while still serving as a state senator in Illinois. The ties between Obama and the committees go back years.
Across the Atlantic, the Party of European Socialists also has given its blessing.
President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen says that "Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world. . . . Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. elections."
Obama supporters might excuse the candidate's support from communists, Marxists and socialists, saying he is the only alternative since these groups would never support the Republican nominee. (Which is entirely correct and indicative of the Democratic Party's continuing decline into the pit of democratic socialism.)
But the truth is, these groups usually reserve their endorsements and support for fringe candidates, not someone from a major party. That's not the case this time around. They seem to have their man.
Email To Friend |
August 20, 2008
Fairness Down Your Throat
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Free Speech: Terrorism and oil aren't the only stand-out issues this year. A President Obama and Democratic Congress could empower a multimedia thought police whose long arms extend even to the Internet.
More than 20 years have passed since the Reagan administration sent the so-called Fairness Doctrine to the ash heap of history. In so doing, it ended a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free political speech that managed to survive for almost four decades.
Those old enough will remember how afternoon sitcom reruns were regularly interrupted by some little old lady or wild-eyed activist being given several minutes of "equal time." The mind-numbing interludes were how TV and radio complied with that erstwhile Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation requiring "balance" on the airwaves.
In the years since the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped, America's elite media establishment, which had thought its comfortable position of power was permanent, has been rocked by a free speech revolution courtesy of talk radio and a whole universe of bloggers. Their instant fact checks and counterpunches have dethroned the Big Three TV networks, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post.
Yet an alarming proportion of the public seems to think government-imposed "equality" should govern the airwaves. A Rasmussen survey this month found 47% in favor of requiring all radio and TV stations to provide an equal share of conservative and liberal political commentary.
( The same poll, however, found 57% opposed to making political Web sites and bloggers provide opposing viewpoints.)
The noises we now hear from Democrats in Congress about legislatively reinstating the Fairness Doctrine are really cries of defeat. As much as they've tried, liberals have found it impossible to compete with conservatives on talk radio. So they want to rig the game in their favor by forcing stations under law to accept liberal content no matter bad the ratings are.
Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have threatened to impose a revamped Fairness Doctrine, while on the other side of the Capitol Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ill., has collected 198 signatures and needs only 20 more to force a floor vote on his Broadcaster Freedom Act explicitly outlawing the Fairness Doctrine.
Human Events political editor John Gizzi reported in June that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him and dozens of other reporters she supported a new Fairness Doctrine and would not allow Pence's bill to reach the floor if his discharge petition fell short of the 218 signatories needed.
A 21st century Fairness Doctrine, however, would have to extend beyond the airwaves to accomplish its purposes of government-regulated "balance" in the opinions available to the public.
After appearing at the Heritage Foundation in Washington earlier this month, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave a videotaped interview to the Media Research Center and warned that "whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called Fairness Doctrine, which won't be called that — it'll be called something else."
And McDowell asked: "So, will Web sites (and) bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views, rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?"
According to McDowell, "this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine." But McDowell believed it would be given a different name and "intertwined into the net neutrality debate."
(The term "net neutrality" was dreamed up by Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo as a euphemism for using anti-competitive government measures against potential rivals.)
How painfully ironic it would be if this entity through which every imaginable indecent image can be accessed becomes policed regarding its political content.
Luckily, the Supreme Court has made it clear in multiple decisions that all it takes is proof that the Fairness Doctrine is "reducing rather than enhancing" speech to bring its constitutionality into question — a view embraced even by liberal justices like the late William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. That governmental muzzling of bloggers reduces speech wouldn't take a lawyer very much time or effort to substantiate.
The days of the Dan Rathers and Ben Bradlees deciding where and how we get our information are gone. The fact that Democrats want to take us back to governmental restriction of the dissemination of knowledge and opinion is — like the drilling issue — something John McCain and congressional Republicans can and should run with all the way to the end zone this year.
Email To Friend |
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Free Speech: Terrorism and oil aren't the only stand-out issues this year. A President Obama and Democratic Congress could empower a multimedia thought police whose long arms extend even to the Internet.
More than 20 years have passed since the Reagan administration sent the so-called Fairness Doctrine to the ash heap of history. In so doing, it ended a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free political speech that managed to survive for almost four decades.
Those old enough will remember how afternoon sitcom reruns were regularly interrupted by some little old lady or wild-eyed activist being given several minutes of "equal time." The mind-numbing interludes were how TV and radio complied with that erstwhile Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation requiring "balance" on the airwaves.
In the years since the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped, America's elite media establishment, which had thought its comfortable position of power was permanent, has been rocked by a free speech revolution courtesy of talk radio and a whole universe of bloggers. Their instant fact checks and counterpunches have dethroned the Big Three TV networks, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post.
Yet an alarming proportion of the public seems to think government-imposed "equality" should govern the airwaves. A Rasmussen survey this month found 47% in favor of requiring all radio and TV stations to provide an equal share of conservative and liberal political commentary.
( The same poll, however, found 57% opposed to making political Web sites and bloggers provide opposing viewpoints.)
The noises we now hear from Democrats in Congress about legislatively reinstating the Fairness Doctrine are really cries of defeat. As much as they've tried, liberals have found it impossible to compete with conservatives on talk radio. So they want to rig the game in their favor by forcing stations under law to accept liberal content no matter bad the ratings are.
Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have threatened to impose a revamped Fairness Doctrine, while on the other side of the Capitol Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ill., has collected 198 signatures and needs only 20 more to force a floor vote on his Broadcaster Freedom Act explicitly outlawing the Fairness Doctrine.
Human Events political editor John Gizzi reported in June that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him and dozens of other reporters she supported a new Fairness Doctrine and would not allow Pence's bill to reach the floor if his discharge petition fell short of the 218 signatories needed.
A 21st century Fairness Doctrine, however, would have to extend beyond the airwaves to accomplish its purposes of government-regulated "balance" in the opinions available to the public.
After appearing at the Heritage Foundation in Washington earlier this month, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave a videotaped interview to the Media Research Center and warned that "whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called Fairness Doctrine, which won't be called that — it'll be called something else."
And McDowell asked: "So, will Web sites (and) bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views, rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?"
According to McDowell, "this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine." But McDowell believed it would be given a different name and "intertwined into the net neutrality debate."
(The term "net neutrality" was dreamed up by Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo as a euphemism for using anti-competitive government measures against potential rivals.)
How painfully ironic it would be if this entity through which every imaginable indecent image can be accessed becomes policed regarding its political content.
Luckily, the Supreme Court has made it clear in multiple decisions that all it takes is proof that the Fairness Doctrine is "reducing rather than enhancing" speech to bring its constitutionality into question — a view embraced even by liberal justices like the late William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. That governmental muzzling of bloggers reduces speech wouldn't take a lawyer very much time or effort to substantiate.
The days of the Dan Rathers and Ben Bradlees deciding where and how we get our information are gone. The fact that Democrats want to take us back to governmental restriction of the dissemination of knowledge and opinion is — like the drilling issue — something John McCain and congressional Republicans can and should run with all the way to the end zone this year.
Email To Friend |
Finding Friends On Far, Far Left
Finding Friends On Far, Far Left
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.
Among Obama's biggest admirers, for example, is one Pepe Lozano. Unknown at the national level, Lozano is more of a small-time agitator, just as Obama was in his community organizing days in Chicago. Maybe that explains part of the attraction.
But it's more likely that Lozano, a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, finds that Obama is the communist party's best hope because of the junior senator's far-left positions.
"This is a history-making process," Lozano told a Chicago gathering of about 250 in June, "and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president."
The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term."
The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be "the people's president."
Also in February, Political Affairs editor Terri Albano talked about how the "kind of upsurge" surrounding Obama "comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives — each of us — (to) get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by."
While communists are endorsing Obama, the Communist Party USA isn't. But that's not because it doesn't like Obama. The CPUSA simply does not endorse candidates. Yet it issued what could be called a non-endorsement endorsement of Obama in March, saying "his campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."
"This election can begin to turn the tide: It can help bring universal health care, save the environment and start the restoration of our democratic rights," the group said. "This election can strengthen democracy for all."
If Obama is smarting because he didn't get an official Communist Party USA endorsement, maybe he will be mollified by the approval of an old communist to the south. Fidel Castro in the spring wrote in the state newspaper Granma that Obama is "the most progressive candidate for the U.S. presidency."
That's an endorsement that anyone who doesn't have a socialist agenda should be ashamed of, especially given Castro's murder and intimidation of his foes and his repeated, egregious human rights violations of average Cuban citizens.
But from what we can tell, Obama has not rejected Castro's support. What we can tell, though, is that when Obama says he stands for change, he could be talking about erasing facts that he considers to be politically damaging.
Last month he scrubbed clean from his Web site evidence that he opposed the successful Iraq surge, and last winter he deleted the endorsement of the extremist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had become a political liability.
But despite his campaign's penchant for cyberhygiene, the community blog on his own Web site still has an entry that's rather incriminating: "This group is for self-proclaimed Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. . . . We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!" The fact that it can still be found on Obama's official site would indicate that the campaign has no problem with it — and that it might even appreciate the endorsement.
The current campaign is not Obama's first association with groups that promote socialism or its more stringent ideological cousin, communism.
In 1995, he sought the endorsement of the New Party for his 1996 state Senate candidacy. The party — a collection of anti-capitalist ex-communists and socialists that disbanded in 1998 after six years of trying to push the Democratic Party even further left — gladly gave Obama its support.
Obama also was endorsed in that election by the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the U.S. While the name might sound benign, the DSA has a poisonous agenda. Its goal is to establish "an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics" and is committed to "restructuring society."
Members "are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo."
Just as it should be no surprise that a Che Guevara poster was found hanging in an Obama campaign office, it would not be a shock to see an Obama poster on a wall in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism's headquarters.
Mark Solomon, the group's national co-chair, wrote in a virtual endorsement in February that Obama "is an attractive, articulate and talented politician" whose "campaign has sparked a powerful surge."
But that would be expected, since this group, which branched off from the Communist Party USA in 1991, organized the October 2002 rally in which Obama criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq — while still serving as a state senator in Illinois. The ties between Obama and the committees go back years.
Across the Atlantic, the Party of European Socialists also has given its blessing.
President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen says that "Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world. . . . Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. elections."
Obama supporters might excuse the candidate's support from communists, Marxists and socialists, saying he is the only alternative since these groups would never support the Republican nominee. (Which is entirely correct and indicative of the Democratic Party's continuing decline into the pit of democratic socialism.)
But the truth is, these groups usually reserve their endorsements and support for fringe candidates, not someone from a major party. That's not the case this time around. They seem to have their man.
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By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.
Among Obama's biggest admirers, for example, is one Pepe Lozano. Unknown at the national level, Lozano is more of a small-time agitator, just as Obama was in his community organizing days in Chicago. Maybe that explains part of the attraction.
But it's more likely that Lozano, a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, finds that Obama is the communist party's best hope because of the junior senator's far-left positions.
"This is a history-making process," Lozano told a Chicago gathering of about 250 in June, "and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president."
The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term."
The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be "the people's president."
Also in February, Political Affairs editor Terri Albano talked about how the "kind of upsurge" surrounding Obama "comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives — each of us — (to) get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by."
While communists are endorsing Obama, the Communist Party USA isn't. But that's not because it doesn't like Obama. The CPUSA simply does not endorse candidates. Yet it issued what could be called a non-endorsement endorsement of Obama in March, saying "his campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."
"This election can begin to turn the tide: It can help bring universal health care, save the environment and start the restoration of our democratic rights," the group said. "This election can strengthen democracy for all."
If Obama is smarting because he didn't get an official Communist Party USA endorsement, maybe he will be mollified by the approval of an old communist to the south. Fidel Castro in the spring wrote in the state newspaper Granma that Obama is "the most progressive candidate for the U.S. presidency."
That's an endorsement that anyone who doesn't have a socialist agenda should be ashamed of, especially given Castro's murder and intimidation of his foes and his repeated, egregious human rights violations of average Cuban citizens.
But from what we can tell, Obama has not rejected Castro's support. What we can tell, though, is that when Obama says he stands for change, he could be talking about erasing facts that he considers to be politically damaging.
Last month he scrubbed clean from his Web site evidence that he opposed the successful Iraq surge, and last winter he deleted the endorsement of the extremist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had become a political liability.
But despite his campaign's penchant for cyberhygiene, the community blog on his own Web site still has an entry that's rather incriminating: "This group is for self-proclaimed Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. . . . We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!" The fact that it can still be found on Obama's official site would indicate that the campaign has no problem with it — and that it might even appreciate the endorsement.
The current campaign is not Obama's first association with groups that promote socialism or its more stringent ideological cousin, communism.
In 1995, he sought the endorsement of the New Party for his 1996 state Senate candidacy. The party — a collection of anti-capitalist ex-communists and socialists that disbanded in 1998 after six years of trying to push the Democratic Party even further left — gladly gave Obama its support.
Obama also was endorsed in that election by the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the U.S. While the name might sound benign, the DSA has a poisonous agenda. Its goal is to establish "an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics" and is committed to "restructuring society."
Members "are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo."
Just as it should be no surprise that a Che Guevara poster was found hanging in an Obama campaign office, it would not be a shock to see an Obama poster on a wall in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism's headquarters.
Mark Solomon, the group's national co-chair, wrote in a virtual endorsement in February that Obama "is an attractive, articulate and talented politician" whose "campaign has sparked a powerful surge."
But that would be expected, since this group, which branched off from the Communist Party USA in 1991, organized the October 2002 rally in which Obama criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq — while still serving as a state senator in Illinois. The ties between Obama and the committees go back years.
Across the Atlantic, the Party of European Socialists also has given its blessing.
President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen says that "Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world. . . . Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. elections."
Obama supporters might excuse the candidate's support from communists, Marxists and socialists, saying he is the only alternative since these groups would never support the Republican nominee. (Which is entirely correct and indicative of the Democratic Party's continuing decline into the pit of democratic socialism.)
But the truth is, these groups usually reserve their endorsements and support for fringe candidates, not someone from a major party. That's not the case this time around. They seem to have their man.
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THE FIX
Obama's Late V.P. Date: Pros and Cons
With Barack Obama's schedule now public through tomorrow night -- he spends the next 48 hours on a bus tour through Virginia -- it seems increasingly likely that the announcement of his vice presidential pick will come Friday or even Saturday.
Such a late pick, coming 72 hours or less before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, carries both potential risks and rewards for the Obama campaign.
The Fix interviewed a handful of top strategists from each party and asked them to outline the pros and cons of such a late choice by Obama. A sampling of their best ideas are below. Have some of your own? The comments section is open for business.
PROS
• Media Domination: Speculation about who the pick will be has dominated news coverage this week. By holding off on the announcement until late this week (or even this weekend), Obama ensures wall-to-wall coverage over the weekend and in the direct run-up to the start of the convention. As Chris Cooper, a Democratic direct mail consultant put it: "They have definitely squeezed this decision for all the earned media value it is worth, and with no leaks, they are in total control. Brilliant."
• Leak Proof: The ability to control a campaign's day-to-day messaging is a critical part of any successful bid. And, the only way you can ensure message control is to keep leaks to a minimum. Obama's campaign prides itself on the code of silence among its top strategists and, so far at least, the lack of major leaks about the veep deliberations has been impressive. With almost no new information about the pick coming out of the Obama campaign, the focus of the veepstakes coverage has been on the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the serious candidates. That focus works in Obama's favor, according to a Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak freely. "The debate is not on Obama's experience (or lack thereof) but on the merits of the most highly qualified VP selections," the source said.
• Limit V.P. Exposure: If the pick comes either Friday or Saturday and is followed -- as expected -- by a swing state tour featuring Obama and the vice presidential nominee, there will be a VERY limited window in which the veep will be on his (or her) own. That means a very short period of time in which the vice presidential nominee can screw up or take the ticket off message. And, even if the veep pick does make a misstep, it is much more likely to be diluted or even missed entirely among the crush of convention coverage.
• Convention/Post-Convention on Steroids: Announcing his vice presidential pick so soon before the start of the convention, makes the four days in Denver feel all that much more special. (To the Fix's mind, it's like living separately when you are engaged and then moving in together when you are married. Just adds a little special something.) And, when the inevitable bus/boat/airplane tour comes post-convention, there will be more excitement surrounding it with a freshly minted vice president by Obama's side.
CONS
• The Clinton Conundrum: While most political insiders have long considered Hillary Rodham Clinton a long shot -- at best -- to be Obama's vice presidential pick, many of the most ardent supporters of the New York senator are still holding out hope that she will be the pick. Assuming she's not (and it seems a pretty safe assumption at this point), there will be real unhappiness in some circles about Clinton being passed over; that discontent isn't likely to resolve itself in the 48 or even 72 hours between when the pick is announced and when the convention starts, a reality that could lead to more public division at the convention than party bigwigs would like.
• Lost Swing State Opportunity: Vice presidential nominees are, in the words of one Democratic operative, "force multipliers." That is, according to the source: "Candidate visits have more impact than spending the equivalent on television ads in a given market so every day [Obama] waits means four media markets that don't get a visit that day." That point is especially true given Obama's pledge to expand the traditional presidential playing field into states like South Dakota, Kansas and Alaska. A single visit to any of those states by a vice presidential candidate would draw HUGE coverage locally as none of them have seen a member of the national ticket in any election in modern political history. Could the veep pick make a quick stop in them some time in September or October? Of course. But, every day post Labor Day is precious and the campaign may not want to "waste" one in a state that is considered a longshot.
• Momentum Changer: The storyline in the campaign over the last month has been the alleged comeback of McCain with polls -- including a new one by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg -- showing the race narrowing. Obama and his team have clearly been playing defense of late -- a position that could have been remedied by an earlier veep selection. "[Obama's] been getting killed the last 2-3 weeks, his numbers have dropped and he really could have used a veep nominee to fight back as only a good veep nominee can," said one prominent Republican strategist. Not only would an earlier vice presidential pick allowed Obama to, in essence, double team McCain but it would also have let the Illinois Senator play the good cop while his vice presidential pick adopted the bad cop/attack dog role against McCain.
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With Barack Obama's schedule now public through tomorrow night -- he spends the next 48 hours on a bus tour through Virginia -- it seems increasingly likely that the announcement of his vice presidential pick will come Friday or even Saturday.
Such a late pick, coming 72 hours or less before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, carries both potential risks and rewards for the Obama campaign.
The Fix interviewed a handful of top strategists from each party and asked them to outline the pros and cons of such a late choice by Obama. A sampling of their best ideas are below. Have some of your own? The comments section is open for business.
PROS
• Media Domination: Speculation about who the pick will be has dominated news coverage this week. By holding off on the announcement until late this week (or even this weekend), Obama ensures wall-to-wall coverage over the weekend and in the direct run-up to the start of the convention. As Chris Cooper, a Democratic direct mail consultant put it: "They have definitely squeezed this decision for all the earned media value it is worth, and with no leaks, they are in total control. Brilliant."
• Leak Proof: The ability to control a campaign's day-to-day messaging is a critical part of any successful bid. And, the only way you can ensure message control is to keep leaks to a minimum. Obama's campaign prides itself on the code of silence among its top strategists and, so far at least, the lack of major leaks about the veep deliberations has been impressive. With almost no new information about the pick coming out of the Obama campaign, the focus of the veepstakes coverage has been on the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the serious candidates. That focus works in Obama's favor, according to a Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak freely. "The debate is not on Obama's experience (or lack thereof) but on the merits of the most highly qualified VP selections," the source said.
• Limit V.P. Exposure: If the pick comes either Friday or Saturday and is followed -- as expected -- by a swing state tour featuring Obama and the vice presidential nominee, there will be a VERY limited window in which the veep will be on his (or her) own. That means a very short period of time in which the vice presidential nominee can screw up or take the ticket off message. And, even if the veep pick does make a misstep, it is much more likely to be diluted or even missed entirely among the crush of convention coverage.
• Convention/Post-Convention on Steroids: Announcing his vice presidential pick so soon before the start of the convention, makes the four days in Denver feel all that much more special. (To the Fix's mind, it's like living separately when you are engaged and then moving in together when you are married. Just adds a little special something.) And, when the inevitable bus/boat/airplane tour comes post-convention, there will be more excitement surrounding it with a freshly minted vice president by Obama's side.
CONS
• The Clinton Conundrum: While most political insiders have long considered Hillary Rodham Clinton a long shot -- at best -- to be Obama's vice presidential pick, many of the most ardent supporters of the New York senator are still holding out hope that she will be the pick. Assuming she's not (and it seems a pretty safe assumption at this point), there will be real unhappiness in some circles about Clinton being passed over; that discontent isn't likely to resolve itself in the 48 or even 72 hours between when the pick is announced and when the convention starts, a reality that could lead to more public division at the convention than party bigwigs would like.
• Lost Swing State Opportunity: Vice presidential nominees are, in the words of one Democratic operative, "force multipliers." That is, according to the source: "Candidate visits have more impact than spending the equivalent on television ads in a given market so every day [Obama] waits means four media markets that don't get a visit that day." That point is especially true given Obama's pledge to expand the traditional presidential playing field into states like South Dakota, Kansas and Alaska. A single visit to any of those states by a vice presidential candidate would draw HUGE coverage locally as none of them have seen a member of the national ticket in any election in modern political history. Could the veep pick make a quick stop in them some time in September or October? Of course. But, every day post Labor Day is precious and the campaign may not want to "waste" one in a state that is considered a longshot.
• Momentum Changer: The storyline in the campaign over the last month has been the alleged comeback of McCain with polls -- including a new one by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg -- showing the race narrowing. Obama and his team have clearly been playing defense of late -- a position that could have been remedied by an earlier veep selection. "[Obama's] been getting killed the last 2-3 weeks, his numbers have dropped and he really could have used a veep nominee to fight back as only a good veep nominee can," said one prominent Republican strategist. Not only would an earlier vice presidential pick allowed Obama to, in essence, double team McCain but it would also have let the Illinois Senator play the good cop while his vice presidential pick adopted the bad cop/attack dog role against McCain.
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Obama — the New Jimmy Carter
Obama — the New Jimmy Carter
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 8:45 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Article Font Size
Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter.
Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt the convention or demonstrate outside, she would pay a huge price among the party faithful.
If Obama lost — after Hillary made a fuss at the convention — they would blame her for all eternity (just like Democrats blame Ted Kennedy for Carter’s defeat). But, without having any leverage or a decent hand to play, the Clintons bluffed Obama into amazing concessions.
Hillary will get to play a film extolling her virtues produced by Harry Bloodworth Thomason. Bill will speak on Wednesday night. Hillary’s name will be placed into nomination. She will get to have nominating and seconding speeches on her behalf. And, on Thursday night, the last night of the convention, the roll call will show how narrowly Obama prevailed.
So Obama gave away Tuesday night, Wednesday night and part of Thursday night to the Clintons. It will really be their convention. A stronger candidate would’ve called their bluff and confined the Clintons to one night on which both Hillary and Bill spoke (he would have outshone her). He would have blocked a roll call by allowing a voice vote to nominate by acclimation. He would have stood up to the Clintons and recaptured his own convention.
If Obama can’t stand up to the Clintons, after they have been defeated, how can he measure up to a resurgent Putin who has just achieved a military victory? When the Georgia invasion first began, Obama appealed for “restraint” on both sides.
He treated the aggressive lion and the victimized lamb even-handedly. His performance was reminiscent of the worst of appeasement at Munich, where another dictator got away with seizing another breakaway province of another small neighboring country, leading to World War II.
After two days, Obama corrected himself, spoke of Russian aggression and condemned it. But his initial willingness to see things from the other point of view and to buy the line that Georgia provoked the invasion by occupying a part of its own country betrayed a world view characterized by undue deference to aggressors.
We know so little about Obama. His experience is so thin that it’s hard to tell what kind of a president he’d be. While he nominally has been in the Senate for four years, he really only served the first two and consumed the rest of his tenure running for president and disregarding his Senate duties.
So we have no choice but to scrutinize his current transactions and statements for some clue as to who he is and what he’d do. In that context, his reaction to the first real-time foreign-policy crisis he faced as a nominee leaves his strength in doubt. So does his palsied response to the Clintons’ attempt to make Denver a Clinton convention.
Is Obama an over-intellectualizing Hamlet who is incapable of decisive, strong action? With Iran on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and Russia resurgent, there isn’t much room for on-the-job learning.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 8:45 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Article Font Size
Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter.
Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt the convention or demonstrate outside, she would pay a huge price among the party faithful.
If Obama lost — after Hillary made a fuss at the convention — they would blame her for all eternity (just like Democrats blame Ted Kennedy for Carter’s defeat). But, without having any leverage or a decent hand to play, the Clintons bluffed Obama into amazing concessions.
Hillary will get to play a film extolling her virtues produced by Harry Bloodworth Thomason. Bill will speak on Wednesday night. Hillary’s name will be placed into nomination. She will get to have nominating and seconding speeches on her behalf. And, on Thursday night, the last night of the convention, the roll call will show how narrowly Obama prevailed.
So Obama gave away Tuesday night, Wednesday night and part of Thursday night to the Clintons. It will really be their convention. A stronger candidate would’ve called their bluff and confined the Clintons to one night on which both Hillary and Bill spoke (he would have outshone her). He would have blocked a roll call by allowing a voice vote to nominate by acclimation. He would have stood up to the Clintons and recaptured his own convention.
If Obama can’t stand up to the Clintons, after they have been defeated, how can he measure up to a resurgent Putin who has just achieved a military victory? When the Georgia invasion first began, Obama appealed for “restraint” on both sides.
He treated the aggressive lion and the victimized lamb even-handedly. His performance was reminiscent of the worst of appeasement at Munich, where another dictator got away with seizing another breakaway province of another small neighboring country, leading to World War II.
After two days, Obama corrected himself, spoke of Russian aggression and condemned it. But his initial willingness to see things from the other point of view and to buy the line that Georgia provoked the invasion by occupying a part of its own country betrayed a world view characterized by undue deference to aggressors.
We know so little about Obama. His experience is so thin that it’s hard to tell what kind of a president he’d be. While he nominally has been in the Senate for four years, he really only served the first two and consumed the rest of his tenure running for president and disregarding his Senate duties.
So we have no choice but to scrutinize his current transactions and statements for some clue as to who he is and what he’d do. In that context, his reaction to the first real-time foreign-policy crisis he faced as a nominee leaves his strength in doubt. So does his palsied response to the Clintons’ attempt to make Denver a Clinton convention.
Is Obama an over-intellectualizing Hamlet who is incapable of decisive, strong action? With Iran on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and Russia resurgent, there isn’t much room for on-the-job learning.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
August 19, 2008
Barack Obama, Doubting Thomas
Barack Obama, Doubting Thomas
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Politics: Sen. Obama joins the high-tech lynch mob that still thinks Clarence Thomas is unfit for the Supreme Court. The ex-state legislator with no accomplishments to his name dares to question Thomas' experience.
The issue of Supreme Court appointments had faded into the background until Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren at a weekend forum asked the presidential candidates which sitting Supreme Court justice they wouldn't have appointed. What Barack Obama answered should rally the GOP base and scare the rest of middle America.
"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he was an exp . . . a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation," Obama replied, catching himself before the "e" word — experience — fell from his teleprompter-trained lips.
Even he knows that Clarence Thomas is eminently more qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than Obama is to sit in the Oval Office.
Before he was elevated to the nation's highest court in 1991, Thomas had worked in the office of Missouri's attorney general, served as an assistant secretary of education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court.
Rachel Brand, an assistant attorney general under Bush the elder, called Obama's comments "condescending" and noted that Thomas had already been confirmed by the Senate to three different positions before he was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Obama also said he wouldn't have appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
"I would not nominate Justice Scalia," he said, "although I don't think there's any doubt about his intellectual brilliance, uh, because he and I just disagree."
Uh, did Obama just call Clarence Thomas dumb? Where's the media gaffe patrol?
Obama's credentials include being elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. Interestingly, the volume that Obama edited (No. 104, 1990-91) is the least cited of that prestigious legal publication in the last 20 years.
Legal scholar Obama also said of Thomas: "I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution." One of those interpretations involves gun control.
In the 5-4 Heller decision, Thomas determined with the majority that the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms" was an individual right and therefore the District of Columbia's gun ban was unconstitutional.
In a February debate, moderator Leon Harris of Washington television station WJLA asked Obama: "You said in Idaho recently — I'm quoting here — 'I have no intention of taking away folks' guns.' But you support the D.C. gun ban, and you've said that it's constitutional."
Obama nodded as Harris spoke and said, "Right, right." Obama was, in fact, saying that the Second Amendment is wrong, wrong.
On the political front, Obama has been no groundbreaking profile in courage. As David Ignatius of the Washington Post has written, after being elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, Obama "gained a reputation for skipping tough votes." Interestingly, these included a key gun-control vote in December 1999 because he was vacationing in his home state of Hawaii.
Ignatius quotes a Chicago politician as saying that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone." Obama is the Illinois state senator who voted "present" some 135 times lest he be forced to take a position he would have to intellectually explain and defend.
At Saddleback in Lake Forest, Calif., McCain named the four most liberal members of the Supreme Court — John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter — as judges he would not have appointed.
Obama would appoint justices who would rewrite the liberals' "living Constitution" while legislating from the bench on issues from gun control to national security. It's Obama who lacks the judgment and experience for the position he seeks.
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By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Politics: Sen. Obama joins the high-tech lynch mob that still thinks Clarence Thomas is unfit for the Supreme Court. The ex-state legislator with no accomplishments to his name dares to question Thomas' experience.
The issue of Supreme Court appointments had faded into the background until Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren at a weekend forum asked the presidential candidates which sitting Supreme Court justice they wouldn't have appointed. What Barack Obama answered should rally the GOP base and scare the rest of middle America.
"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he was an exp . . . a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation," Obama replied, catching himself before the "e" word — experience — fell from his teleprompter-trained lips.
Even he knows that Clarence Thomas is eminently more qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than Obama is to sit in the Oval Office.
Before he was elevated to the nation's highest court in 1991, Thomas had worked in the office of Missouri's attorney general, served as an assistant secretary of education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court.
Rachel Brand, an assistant attorney general under Bush the elder, called Obama's comments "condescending" and noted that Thomas had already been confirmed by the Senate to three different positions before he was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Obama also said he wouldn't have appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
"I would not nominate Justice Scalia," he said, "although I don't think there's any doubt about his intellectual brilliance, uh, because he and I just disagree."
Uh, did Obama just call Clarence Thomas dumb? Where's the media gaffe patrol?
Obama's credentials include being elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. Interestingly, the volume that Obama edited (No. 104, 1990-91) is the least cited of that prestigious legal publication in the last 20 years.
Legal scholar Obama also said of Thomas: "I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution." One of those interpretations involves gun control.
In the 5-4 Heller decision, Thomas determined with the majority that the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms" was an individual right and therefore the District of Columbia's gun ban was unconstitutional.
In a February debate, moderator Leon Harris of Washington television station WJLA asked Obama: "You said in Idaho recently — I'm quoting here — 'I have no intention of taking away folks' guns.' But you support the D.C. gun ban, and you've said that it's constitutional."
Obama nodded as Harris spoke and said, "Right, right." Obama was, in fact, saying that the Second Amendment is wrong, wrong.
On the political front, Obama has been no groundbreaking profile in courage. As David Ignatius of the Washington Post has written, after being elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, Obama "gained a reputation for skipping tough votes." Interestingly, these included a key gun-control vote in December 1999 because he was vacationing in his home state of Hawaii.
Ignatius quotes a Chicago politician as saying that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone." Obama is the Illinois state senator who voted "present" some 135 times lest he be forced to take a position he would have to intellectually explain and defend.
At Saddleback in Lake Forest, Calif., McCain named the four most liberal members of the Supreme Court — John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter — as judges he would not have appointed.
Obama would appoint justices who would rewrite the liberals' "living Constitution" while legislating from the bench on issues from gun control to national security. It's Obama who lacks the judgment and experience for the position he seeks.
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It is our rights being taken away from US
IT IS AMAZING HOW THINGS GO, THIS IS ACTUALLY FROM A YOUNG READER THAT HAS ALWAYS SHARED ITEMS OF INTEREST WITH US. SHE REC'D IT FROM ANOTHER POTENTIAL READER AND CONTRIBUTOR, WE THANK THE KNOWN , CYNTHIA AND ALSO THE NEW ONE. DAA
This is not about Democrats Or Republicans It is our rights being taken away from US
TAKE A FEW MOMENTS AND READ THIS LETTER. THESE ARE STRONG, POWERFUL AND COURAGEOUS
WORDS COMING FROM A RETIRED COLONEL.
AND READ WHAT LINCOLN HAD TO SAY AT THE END.
Subject: Si Habla
33 Senators Voted Against English as America 's Official Language on June 6, 2007. On Wed. 6 June 2007 23:35:23 - 0500 Colonel Harry Riley , USA , Ret. wrote:
Senators:
Your vote against an amendment to the immigration Bill 1348......to make English America's official language is astounding. On D-Day, no less, when we honor those that sacrificed in order to secure the bedrock, character and principles of America I can only surmise your vote reflects a loyalty to illegal aliens.
I don't much care where you come from. What your religion is. Whether you're black, white, or some other color......male or female......Democrat, Republican or Independent....... But I do care when you are a United States Senator representing Citizens of America .......and vote against English as the official language of the United States.
Your vote reflects Betrayal. Political Surrender. Violates
Your Pledge of Allegiance. Dishonors historical principle. Rejects Patriotism. Borders on traitorous action and, in my opinion, makes you unfit to serve as a United States Senator.
... Impeachment..Recall.....Or other appropriate action is warranted.. or worse.
Four of you voting against English as America 's Official Language are Presidential Candidates: Senator Biden, Senator Clinton, Senator Dodd, and Senator Obama. Four Senators vying to lead America, but won't or don't have the courage to cast a vote in favor of "English" as America's Official Language when 91% of American Citizens want English officially designated as our language. This is the second time in the last several months this list of Senators have disgraced themselves as "political hacks"...... Unworthy as Senators and certainly unqualified (OBAMA) to serve as President of the United States.
If America is as angry as I am, you will realize a backlash so stunning it will literally "rock you out of your boots"......... and preferably totally out of the United States Senate. The entire immigration bill is a farce.... your action only confirms this really isn't about America .....it is about self-serving politics......despicable at best.
It has been said "Never Argue with an Idiot.They'll drag you down to their level!"
The following Senators voted against making English the official language of America :
Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE) Wants to be President?
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Clinton (D-NY) Wants to be President? (GOD FORBID! )
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-MN) wants to be president
Domenici (R-NM) A coward. Protecting his senate seat(worse a traitor to NM)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WIN) Not unusual for him
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT) (Send him home)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA) wanted to be president
Kohl (D-WI))
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT) Disappointment here.....
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL) Wants to be President? GOD FORBID!
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV) Senate Majority Leader (Dinghy Harry)(Filthy POS)
Sa Lazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-M)
"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale, and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged" !!!
President Abraham Lincoln
PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING AROUND THE UNITED STATES TILL THE ELECTION!
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
This is not about Democrats Or Republicans It is our rights being taken away from US
TAKE A FEW MOMENTS AND READ THIS LETTER. THESE ARE STRONG, POWERFUL AND COURAGEOUS
WORDS COMING FROM A RETIRED COLONEL.
AND READ WHAT LINCOLN HAD TO SAY AT THE END.
Subject: Si Habla
33 Senators Voted Against English as America 's Official Language on June 6, 2007. On Wed. 6 June 2007 23:35:23 - 0500 Colonel Harry Riley , USA , Ret. wrote:
Senators:
Your vote against an amendment to the immigration Bill 1348......to make English America's official language is astounding. On D-Day, no less, when we honor those that sacrificed in order to secure the bedrock, character and principles of America I can only surmise your vote reflects a loyalty to illegal aliens.
I don't much care where you come from. What your religion is. Whether you're black, white, or some other color......male or female......Democrat, Republican or Independent....... But I do care when you are a United States Senator representing Citizens of America .......and vote against English as the official language of the United States.
Your vote reflects Betrayal. Political Surrender. Violates
Your Pledge of Allegiance. Dishonors historical principle. Rejects Patriotism. Borders on traitorous action and, in my opinion, makes you unfit to serve as a United States Senator.
... Impeachment..Recall.....Or other appropriate action is warranted.. or worse.
Four of you voting against English as America 's Official Language are Presidential Candidates: Senator Biden, Senator Clinton, Senator Dodd, and Senator Obama. Four Senators vying to lead America, but won't or don't have the courage to cast a vote in favor of "English" as America's Official Language when 91% of American Citizens want English officially designated as our language. This is the second time in the last several months this list of Senators have disgraced themselves as "political hacks"...... Unworthy as Senators and certainly unqualified (OBAMA) to serve as President of the United States.
If America is as angry as I am, you will realize a backlash so stunning it will literally "rock you out of your boots"......... and preferably totally out of the United States Senate. The entire immigration bill is a farce.... your action only confirms this really isn't about America .....it is about self-serving politics......despicable at best.
It has been said "Never Argue with an Idiot.They'll drag you down to their level!"
The following Senators voted against making English the official language of America :
Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE) Wants to be President?
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Clinton (D-NY) Wants to be President? (GOD FORBID! )
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-MN) wants to be president
Domenici (R-NM) A coward. Protecting his senate seat(worse a traitor to NM)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WIN) Not unusual for him
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT) (Send him home)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA) wanted to be president
Kohl (D-WI))
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT) Disappointment here.....
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL) Wants to be President? GOD FORBID!
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV) Senate Majority Leader (Dinghy Harry)(Filthy POS)
Sa Lazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-M)
"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale, and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged" !!!
President Abraham Lincoln
PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING AROUND THE UNITED STATES TILL THE ELECTION!
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
Windfall Tax on Retirement Income
Windfall Tax on Retirement Income
Adding a tax to your retirement is simply another way
of saying to the American people, you're so darn stupid that
we're going to keep doing this until we drain every cent from you..
That's what the Speaker of the House Read below...............
Nancy Pelosi wants a Windfall Tax on Retirement Income..
In other words tax what you have made by investing toward
your retirement. This woman is a nut case! You
aren't going to believe this.
Madam speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to put a Windfall
Tax on all stock market profits (including Retirement fund,
401K and Mutual Funds! Alas , it is true - all to help the
12 Million Illegal Immigrants and other unemployed Minorities!
This woman is frightening.
She quotes...' We need to work toward the goal of
equalizing income, (didn't Marx say something like the amount
the rich can invest.' ( I am not rich, are you)
When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied:
'We need to raise the standard of living of our poor,
unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an
estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country
who need our help along with millions of unemployed
minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a
long way to guarantee these people the standard of living
they would like to have as
'Americans'.' (Read that quote again and
again and let it sink in. 'Lower your retirement,
give it to others who have not worked as you have for it'
Send it on to your friends. I just did!! This lady is out
of her mind and she is the speaker of the house!
Adding a tax to your retirement is simply another way
of saying to the American people, you're so darn stupid that
we're going to keep doing this until we drain every cent from you..
That's what the Speaker of the House Read below...............
Nancy Pelosi wants a Windfall Tax on Retirement Income..
In other words tax what you have made by investing toward
your retirement. This woman is a nut case! You
aren't going to believe this.
Madam speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to put a Windfall
Tax on all stock market profits (including Retirement fund,
401K and Mutual Funds! Alas , it is true - all to help the
12 Million Illegal Immigrants and other unemployed Minorities!
This woman is frightening.
She quotes...' We need to work toward the goal of
equalizing income, (didn't Marx say something like the amount
the rich can invest.' ( I am not rich, are you)
When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied:
'We need to raise the standard of living of our poor,
unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an
estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country
who need our help along with millions of unemployed
minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a
long way to guarantee these people the standard of living
they would like to have as
'Americans'.' (Read that quote again and
again and let it sink in. 'Lower your retirement,
give it to others who have not worked as you have for it'
Send it on to your friends. I just did!! This lady is out
of her mind and she is the speaker of the house!
Obama Draws Ire Over Comments on Clarence Thomas
OBAMA HAS NO ROOM TO ADMONISH ANY ONE, HE IS A COMMUNIST RADICAL ISLAMIC A H.
CNSNews.com
Obama Draws Ire Over Comments on Clarence Thomas
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) –
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew howls of protest from conservatives over comments he made about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the weekend at Saddleback Church, a megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif.
Obama, the putative Democratic presidential nominee, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared at a televised forum at the church, at which Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, served as host. Warren, the nation’s most visible pastor and author, interviewed each man separately but asked the same questions to both.
When asked to name a Supreme Court justice he would not have appointed, Obama named Clarence Thomas.
"I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution," Obama said.
Conservative legal experts, who championed Thomas for elevation to the court in 1991, were livid at what they say was a personal attack on one of the top justices on the curt.
Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, said she was saddened by the comment, which she called “condescending.”
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)“Never mind that Thomas already had been confirmed by the Senate to three different positions – including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (the second-most prestigious court in the land after the U.S. Supreme Court) – before he was nominated to the Supreme Court,” Brand said.
“Never mind that he had accomplished all this after overcoming more personal adversity than any other sitting Justice has endured. Sen. Obama's comment simply ignored facts and history,” she added.
Wendy Long, a former law clerk to Thomas, defended her former boss, who had compared the liberal campaign to sink his nomination to a “high-tech lynching.”
“Obama’s statements regarding the Supreme Court were ludicrous,” said Long, who is currently legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a group that champions conservative judicial nominees.
“They reveal that Obama is ignorant of facts and history, misunderstands the Constitution, and contradicts himself in his own alleged criteria for Supreme Court nominees,” she said.
By the time he was nominated, Thomas had also worked in the Missouri attorney general's office, served as an assistant secretary of education, and run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Long said.
Even Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law scholar at Pepperdine University and an Obama supporter, said he was “disappointed” at his candidate’s mention of Thomas.
“First of all, I think Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the best appointments that have been made by Republican presidents – or any presidents, for that matter – in recent times,” Kmiec told CNSNews.com.
“I’ll tell you why: He’s the only justice on the Supreme Court who, prior to his appointment, had recognized the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – that the Constitution is a means of indicating the inalienable rights that are traceable to our Creator,” he added.
Obama also named Justices Antonin Scalia – “He and I just disagree, you know?”— and Chief Justice John Roberts – “(His) is a tougher question only because I find him to be a very compelling person, you know, in conversation individually” – as two justices he probably wouldn’t have appointed, but did not question their legal ability.
McCain, meanwhile, named the four most liberal members of the court as judges he would not have appointed – Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter.
CNSNews.com
Obama Draws Ire Over Comments on Clarence Thomas
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) –
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew howls of protest from conservatives over comments he made about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the weekend at Saddleback Church, a megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif.
Obama, the putative Democratic presidential nominee, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared at a televised forum at the church, at which Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, served as host. Warren, the nation’s most visible pastor and author, interviewed each man separately but asked the same questions to both.
When asked to name a Supreme Court justice he would not have appointed, Obama named Clarence Thomas.
"I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution," Obama said.
Conservative legal experts, who championed Thomas for elevation to the court in 1991, were livid at what they say was a personal attack on one of the top justices on the curt.
Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, said she was saddened by the comment, which she called “condescending.”
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)“Never mind that Thomas already had been confirmed by the Senate to three different positions – including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (the second-most prestigious court in the land after the U.S. Supreme Court) – before he was nominated to the Supreme Court,” Brand said.
“Never mind that he had accomplished all this after overcoming more personal adversity than any other sitting Justice has endured. Sen. Obama's comment simply ignored facts and history,” she added.
Wendy Long, a former law clerk to Thomas, defended her former boss, who had compared the liberal campaign to sink his nomination to a “high-tech lynching.”
“Obama’s statements regarding the Supreme Court were ludicrous,” said Long, who is currently legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a group that champions conservative judicial nominees.
“They reveal that Obama is ignorant of facts and history, misunderstands the Constitution, and contradicts himself in his own alleged criteria for Supreme Court nominees,” she said.
By the time he was nominated, Thomas had also worked in the Missouri attorney general's office, served as an assistant secretary of education, and run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Long said.
Even Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law scholar at Pepperdine University and an Obama supporter, said he was “disappointed” at his candidate’s mention of Thomas.
“First of all, I think Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the best appointments that have been made by Republican presidents – or any presidents, for that matter – in recent times,” Kmiec told CNSNews.com.
“I’ll tell you why: He’s the only justice on the Supreme Court who, prior to his appointment, had recognized the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – that the Constitution is a means of indicating the inalienable rights that are traceable to our Creator,” he added.
Obama also named Justices Antonin Scalia – “He and I just disagree, you know?”— and Chief Justice John Roberts – “(His) is a tougher question only because I find him to be a very compelling person, you know, in conversation individually” – as two justices he probably wouldn’t have appointed, but did not question their legal ability.
McCain, meanwhile, named the four most liberal members of the court as judges he would not have appointed – Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter.
Like Father, Like Son
IT IS A COMMON BELIEF ONCE A COMMUNIST ALWAYS A COMMUNIST, AND THE SAME APPLIES TO ISLAMIC TENENTS AND THEN THERE IS BARAK HUSSAIN OBAMA, OH MY GOD!!
Like Father, Like Son
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama's economic blueprint sounds like one his communist father tried to foist on Kenya 40 years ago, with massive taxes and succor shrouded as "investments."
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. advised the pro-Western Kenyan government there to "redistribute" income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government "investment" in social programs.
Barack Obama Sr., who died in 1982 at age 46 in a Kenya car crash.
Writing in a 1965 scholarly paper, Obama's late father slammed the administration of then-President Jomo Kenyatta for moving the Third World country away from socialism toward capitalism. He chafed at the idea of relying on private investors — who earn "dividends" on their venture capital — to develop the country's fledgling economy.
"What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all," said the senior Obama, a Harvard-educated economist. "This is the government's obligation." The "means" he had in mind were confiscatory taxes on a scale that redefines the term "progressive taxation."
"Theoretically," he wrote, "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."
Therefore, he added, "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."
As Obama's father saw it, taxes couldn't be high enough, so long as the collective benefited. "Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay," he said. "It is a fallacy to say that there is this limit, and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings."
His son is also pushing massive taxes and "investments" in social programs — at the expense of free enterprise. Sen. Obama wants to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to at least 39%, while increasing Social Security taxes on those with higher incomes by completely removing the payroll cap. That means many entrepreneurs would be paying 12.4% (6.2% on employer and 6.2% on employee) on Social Security payroll taxes alone, plus the 2.9% on Medicare taxes, for a total federal tax rate of 54%.
In addition, Obama wants to jack up the capital-gains tax rate and reinstate the death tax.
Echoing his father, he argues that the government should impose "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth."
And likewise, he asserts that the nation's wealth ought to be rechanneled by government into "investments" in the economy and welfare programs that create "a new American social compact."
"We can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance" in the global economy, the Democrat presidential hopeful said in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope." "And if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall."
"Training must be expanded," his father proposed as one of his government "investments." Likewise, Sen. Obama wants to "invest" billions more in federal jobs retraining.
His father's critique of Kenya's economic policy was published in the East Africa Journal under the title "Problems Facing Our Socialism." One discovers — after reading just a few pages into his eight-page tract, where he waxes quixotic about "communal ownership of major means of production" — that he wasn't criticizing the government for being too socialistic, but not socialistic enough.
Obama Sr. described his own economic plan, his counterproposal, as it were, as "scientific socialism — inter alia — communism." Yes, Obama's father was a communist who wanted to put socialist theory into action — by "force."
He trusted the collective over the individual, a theme he successfully instilled in his son, also Harvard-educated, with whom he visited once for a full month in Hawaii, even speaking to his prep school class. He kept up correspondence with his son through his college years.
(Media accounts portray Obama's father as being completely out of his life after leaving his mother and him at age 2. But Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that he remained an influential force in his life. Obama's first autobiography was devoted to "my father.")
Listen to what "the Old Man," as Obama and his siblings called him, wrote in proposing government-run farms: "If left to the individual, consolidation will take a long time to come. We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society, and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise."
He explained that "the government should restrict the size of farms that can be owned by one individual throughout the country."
More evil than individuals, Obama's father believed, are heads of corporations. More evil still are the bankers and investors, who conspire to control the world through their evil capitalist system.
"One who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to as the advanced stage of capitalism," he wrote. "But Marx even called it finance capitalism by which a few would control the finances of so many, and through this, have not only economic power but political power as well."
It's clear from Sen. Obama's own writings and speeches that he too is no fan of business or our system of "chaotic and unforgiving capitalism," as he wrote in "Audacity." He's fond of bashing Wall Street "greed" and the post-Reagan rise of individual investing over government investing. He wants to roll back the "Ownership Society." He resents the profit motive and individuals "on the make."
"Rather than vilify the rich," he laments, "we hold them up as role models, and our mythology is steeped in stories of men on the make."
This is no small point. The man who wants to be the nation's CEO actually believes we're living in a feudal society where the rich plunder the poor. And he thinks they should not only be vilified but punished.
"The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed are rooted in the desire among those at the top of the social ladder to maintain their wealth and status whatever the cost," he wrote. "Solving these problems will require changes in government policy."
That is, massive taxation, among other things (or "inter alia," as his "brilliant" father would say).
Obama wrote in "Dreams From My Father" that he was trying to impress his father by taking a low-paying job organizing and agitating in the Chicago ghetto right out of college. "I did feel that there was something to prove to my father," he said.
Yet, suspiciously, he does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory. No doubt he wanted to keep that hidden. All he tells readers is that his father was pushed out of the Kenyatta administration. He does not explain why.
"Word got back to Kenyatta that the Old Man was a troublemaker and he was called in to see the president," Obama wrote, quoting his half-sister, "because he could not keep his mouth shut." About what, we aren't told.
However, Obama writes sympathetically of a comrade of his father, Oginga Odinga, who stepped down as vice president and tried to start his own party. He too was angry that President Kenyatta was letting private investors buy up businesses and land "that should be redistributed to the people," Obama said.
By 1967, two years after Obama Sr. penned his paper, Odinga had been placed under house arrest for holding a rally that turned into a riot.
Like Obama's father, Odinga was a member of the Luo tribe of Kenya. His son, Raila Odinga, ran for president in 2006. That year, Obama traveled to Kenya and appeared with Odinga at rallies where he criticized the pro-U.S. government Odinga wanted to oust.
When he lost the election the next year, despite Obama's tacit endorsement, angry Odinga supporters crying fraud sparked riots that resulted in some 1,500 deaths. Amid his ancestral country's civil unrest, Obama took time out from the campaign trail to phone Odinga to voice his support.
After weeks of violence, Odinga was granted a power-sharing deal. He's now acting prime minister.
He's also a something of a communist like his father. An East German-trained engineer, he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro. Paralleling him, Sen. Obama wants to open dialogue with Cuba and once proposed lifting the trade embargo.
The two sons have much in common. However, the son who would lead the U.S. learned from his father's mistakes and keeps his "mouth shut." Obama learned that revealing his real beliefs can jeopardize his quest for the power needed to put his "redistribution" plans into action.
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Like Father, Like Son
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama's economic blueprint sounds like one his communist father tried to foist on Kenya 40 years ago, with massive taxes and succor shrouded as "investments."
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. advised the pro-Western Kenyan government there to "redistribute" income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government "investment" in social programs.
Barack Obama Sr., who died in 1982 at age 46 in a Kenya car crash.
Writing in a 1965 scholarly paper, Obama's late father slammed the administration of then-President Jomo Kenyatta for moving the Third World country away from socialism toward capitalism. He chafed at the idea of relying on private investors — who earn "dividends" on their venture capital — to develop the country's fledgling economy.
"What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all," said the senior Obama, a Harvard-educated economist. "This is the government's obligation." The "means" he had in mind were confiscatory taxes on a scale that redefines the term "progressive taxation."
"Theoretically," he wrote, "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."
Therefore, he added, "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."
As Obama's father saw it, taxes couldn't be high enough, so long as the collective benefited. "Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay," he said. "It is a fallacy to say that there is this limit, and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings."
His son is also pushing massive taxes and "investments" in social programs — at the expense of free enterprise. Sen. Obama wants to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to at least 39%, while increasing Social Security taxes on those with higher incomes by completely removing the payroll cap. That means many entrepreneurs would be paying 12.4% (6.2% on employer and 6.2% on employee) on Social Security payroll taxes alone, plus the 2.9% on Medicare taxes, for a total federal tax rate of 54%.
In addition, Obama wants to jack up the capital-gains tax rate and reinstate the death tax.
Echoing his father, he argues that the government should impose "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth."
And likewise, he asserts that the nation's wealth ought to be rechanneled by government into "investments" in the economy and welfare programs that create "a new American social compact."
"We can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance" in the global economy, the Democrat presidential hopeful said in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope." "And if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall."
"Training must be expanded," his father proposed as one of his government "investments." Likewise, Sen. Obama wants to "invest" billions more in federal jobs retraining.
His father's critique of Kenya's economic policy was published in the East Africa Journal under the title "Problems Facing Our Socialism." One discovers — after reading just a few pages into his eight-page tract, where he waxes quixotic about "communal ownership of major means of production" — that he wasn't criticizing the government for being too socialistic, but not socialistic enough.
Obama Sr. described his own economic plan, his counterproposal, as it were, as "scientific socialism — inter alia — communism." Yes, Obama's father was a communist who wanted to put socialist theory into action — by "force."
He trusted the collective over the individual, a theme he successfully instilled in his son, also Harvard-educated, with whom he visited once for a full month in Hawaii, even speaking to his prep school class. He kept up correspondence with his son through his college years.
(Media accounts portray Obama's father as being completely out of his life after leaving his mother and him at age 2. But Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that he remained an influential force in his life. Obama's first autobiography was devoted to "my father.")
Listen to what "the Old Man," as Obama and his siblings called him, wrote in proposing government-run farms: "If left to the individual, consolidation will take a long time to come. We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society, and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise."
He explained that "the government should restrict the size of farms that can be owned by one individual throughout the country."
More evil than individuals, Obama's father believed, are heads of corporations. More evil still are the bankers and investors, who conspire to control the world through their evil capitalist system.
"One who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to as the advanced stage of capitalism," he wrote. "But Marx even called it finance capitalism by which a few would control the finances of so many, and through this, have not only economic power but political power as well."
It's clear from Sen. Obama's own writings and speeches that he too is no fan of business or our system of "chaotic and unforgiving capitalism," as he wrote in "Audacity." He's fond of bashing Wall Street "greed" and the post-Reagan rise of individual investing over government investing. He wants to roll back the "Ownership Society." He resents the profit motive and individuals "on the make."
"Rather than vilify the rich," he laments, "we hold them up as role models, and our mythology is steeped in stories of men on the make."
This is no small point. The man who wants to be the nation's CEO actually believes we're living in a feudal society where the rich plunder the poor. And he thinks they should not only be vilified but punished.
"The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed are rooted in the desire among those at the top of the social ladder to maintain their wealth and status whatever the cost," he wrote. "Solving these problems will require changes in government policy."
That is, massive taxation, among other things (or "inter alia," as his "brilliant" father would say).
Obama wrote in "Dreams From My Father" that he was trying to impress his father by taking a low-paying job organizing and agitating in the Chicago ghetto right out of college. "I did feel that there was something to prove to my father," he said.
Yet, suspiciously, he does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory. No doubt he wanted to keep that hidden. All he tells readers is that his father was pushed out of the Kenyatta administration. He does not explain why.
"Word got back to Kenyatta that the Old Man was a troublemaker and he was called in to see the president," Obama wrote, quoting his half-sister, "because he could not keep his mouth shut." About what, we aren't told.
However, Obama writes sympathetically of a comrade of his father, Oginga Odinga, who stepped down as vice president and tried to start his own party. He too was angry that President Kenyatta was letting private investors buy up businesses and land "that should be redistributed to the people," Obama said.
By 1967, two years after Obama Sr. penned his paper, Odinga had been placed under house arrest for holding a rally that turned into a riot.
Like Obama's father, Odinga was a member of the Luo tribe of Kenya. His son, Raila Odinga, ran for president in 2006. That year, Obama traveled to Kenya and appeared with Odinga at rallies where he criticized the pro-U.S. government Odinga wanted to oust.
When he lost the election the next year, despite Obama's tacit endorsement, angry Odinga supporters crying fraud sparked riots that resulted in some 1,500 deaths. Amid his ancestral country's civil unrest, Obama took time out from the campaign trail to phone Odinga to voice his support.
After weeks of violence, Odinga was granted a power-sharing deal. He's now acting prime minister.
He's also a something of a communist like his father. An East German-trained engineer, he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro. Paralleling him, Sen. Obama wants to open dialogue with Cuba and once proposed lifting the trade embargo.
The two sons have much in common. However, the son who would lead the U.S. learned from his father's mistakes and keeps his "mouth shut." Obama learned that revealing his real beliefs can jeopardize his quest for the power needed to put his "redistribution" plans into action.
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Obama's Rapid Response Backfires
AS MORE OF THE BACKGROUND OF THIS COMMUNIST COMES TO THE FORE ONE CAN ONLY WAIT FOR THE NEXT PIECE OF INFORMATION TO HIT AND REMIND US NO NO HELL NO TO HIM ON ELECTION DAY.
Obama's Rapid Response Backfires
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama's fierce attack on Jerome Corsi's best-selling book, "The Obama Nation," has backfired. He has been forced to confirm things he'd hoped would stay buried.
Obama, for example, for the first time has acknowledged that the mysterious "Frank" in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," is in fact Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis, who during the height of the Cold War was investigated by both the FBI and Congress as a pawn of Moscow.
As we've noted, the late Davis was Obama's early mentor with whom he shared whiskey and rage while growing up in Hawaii. The militant black poet influenced the young Obama's decision to become a pro-labor community organizer and agitator in his hometown of Chicago.
Corsi writes about Davis in his critical new book, "The Obama Nation," which has hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. In an unusual 40-page rebuttal posted on his campaign Web site, Obama tries to smear the entire book as a "series of lies."
Only, Corsi's book is basically a critique of Obama's own first book, "Dreams From My Father," written in 1995. It finds hole after hole in the narrative. Dates don't add up. Stories don't square with reality. Identities of central characters like Davis are hidden from view.
In his angrily worded report, Obama attempts to play down the influence Corsi says Davis had on him. But he doesn't dispute anything the book documents about Davis' un-American activities with the Soviets.
Instead, Obama takes issue with Corsi claiming Davis' angry poems provided "a voice for Obama's black rage." He calls it a "lie."
In fact, Obama's own words appear to support the claim. On Page 171 of "Dreams," Obama flies into a fit over chronic black poverty in Chicago's South Side, blaming whites who took flight to the crime-free suburbs and took jobs with them. He's overcome by the same black rage Davis radiated in his Waikiki bungalow years earlier.
Obama took to heart Davis' advice to "keep your eyes open" to signs of institutional racism. He became race-conscious like never before. He admits he never "let it go," even when he could see that overt racism was a thing of the past.
But that wasn't even the point Corsi was making in his section on Davis, which he subtitled "Obama's Communist Mentor." The issue of black rage was a side point. The main point is Davis' communist influence, something voters have a right to know more about.
Obama in his rebuttal leaves that point completely unaddressed. He doesn't want to go there — for obvious reasons.
Obama's rapid response to Corsi's alleged "swift-boating" backfires again in the same report when he defends his wife, Michelle, against the charge that she was influenced by another black Marxist revolutionist, Stokely Carmichael, in formulating her Princeton thesis on black separatism.
Again, Obama calls it a "lie." But turning to Page 139 of his memoir, "Dreams," we find that he himself was inspired by Carmichael, a civil rights leader turned militant black nationalist. Changing his name to Kwame Toure, Carmichael wrote a book on "Black Power" that propounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision.
While living in New York, Obama says he was in "search of some inspiration" one day and "went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and Black Power fame, speak at Columbia." He clearly knew the background of the source for his inspiration that day.
"At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature and arguing with each other about Trotsky's place in history," he wrote, describing the scene. "Inside, Toure was proposing a program to establish economic ties between Africa and Harlem that would circumvent white capitalist imperialism."
Obama, who has family in Kenya, is proposing his own bailout of Africa.
Obama wants to run from this radical past, but his first memoir — written long before he had serious White House aspirations — is a peek into his soul. "Dreams" has become more of a nightmare, and he may just come to regret ever writing it.
Email To Friend |
Obama's Rapid Response Backfires
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama's fierce attack on Jerome Corsi's best-selling book, "The Obama Nation," has backfired. He has been forced to confirm things he'd hoped would stay buried.
Obama, for example, for the first time has acknowledged that the mysterious "Frank" in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," is in fact Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis, who during the height of the Cold War was investigated by both the FBI and Congress as a pawn of Moscow.
As we've noted, the late Davis was Obama's early mentor with whom he shared whiskey and rage while growing up in Hawaii. The militant black poet influenced the young Obama's decision to become a pro-labor community organizer and agitator in his hometown of Chicago.
Corsi writes about Davis in his critical new book, "The Obama Nation," which has hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. In an unusual 40-page rebuttal posted on his campaign Web site, Obama tries to smear the entire book as a "series of lies."
Only, Corsi's book is basically a critique of Obama's own first book, "Dreams From My Father," written in 1995. It finds hole after hole in the narrative. Dates don't add up. Stories don't square with reality. Identities of central characters like Davis are hidden from view.
In his angrily worded report, Obama attempts to play down the influence Corsi says Davis had on him. But he doesn't dispute anything the book documents about Davis' un-American activities with the Soviets.
Instead, Obama takes issue with Corsi claiming Davis' angry poems provided "a voice for Obama's black rage." He calls it a "lie."
In fact, Obama's own words appear to support the claim. On Page 171 of "Dreams," Obama flies into a fit over chronic black poverty in Chicago's South Side, blaming whites who took flight to the crime-free suburbs and took jobs with them. He's overcome by the same black rage Davis radiated in his Waikiki bungalow years earlier.
Obama took to heart Davis' advice to "keep your eyes open" to signs of institutional racism. He became race-conscious like never before. He admits he never "let it go," even when he could see that overt racism was a thing of the past.
But that wasn't even the point Corsi was making in his section on Davis, which he subtitled "Obama's Communist Mentor." The issue of black rage was a side point. The main point is Davis' communist influence, something voters have a right to know more about.
Obama in his rebuttal leaves that point completely unaddressed. He doesn't want to go there — for obvious reasons.
Obama's rapid response to Corsi's alleged "swift-boating" backfires again in the same report when he defends his wife, Michelle, against the charge that she was influenced by another black Marxist revolutionist, Stokely Carmichael, in formulating her Princeton thesis on black separatism.
Again, Obama calls it a "lie." But turning to Page 139 of his memoir, "Dreams," we find that he himself was inspired by Carmichael, a civil rights leader turned militant black nationalist. Changing his name to Kwame Toure, Carmichael wrote a book on "Black Power" that propounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision.
While living in New York, Obama says he was in "search of some inspiration" one day and "went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and Black Power fame, speak at Columbia." He clearly knew the background of the source for his inspiration that day.
"At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature and arguing with each other about Trotsky's place in history," he wrote, describing the scene. "Inside, Toure was proposing a program to establish economic ties between Africa and Harlem that would circumvent white capitalist imperialism."
Obama, who has family in Kenya, is proposing his own bailout of Africa.
Obama wants to run from this radical past, but his first memoir — written long before he had serious White House aspirations — is a peek into his soul. "Dreams" has become more of a nightmare, and he may just come to regret ever writing it.
Email To Friend |
August 18, 2008
Dr. Jack Wheeler Regarding Obama
Jack Wheeler is a brilliant man who was the author of Regan's strategy to break
the back of the Soviet Union with the star wars race and expose their inner
weakness. For years he wrote a weekly intelligence update that was extremely
interesting and well structured and informed. He consults(Ed) with several mega
corporations on global trends and the future, etc. I think he is in
semi-retirement now. He is a true patriot with a no-nonsense approach to
everything. He is also a somewhat well known mountain climber and adventurer.
Dr. Jack Wheeler Regarding Obama
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.
He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.
What h e isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.
Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.
Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it,
no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it. The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed I n Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it
because it is absurd.
Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.
His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.
Pass this on to every thinking American you know!
the back of the Soviet Union with the star wars race and expose their inner
weakness. For years he wrote a weekly intelligence update that was extremely
interesting and well structured and informed. He consults(Ed) with several mega
corporations on global trends and the future, etc. I think he is in
semi-retirement now. He is a true patriot with a no-nonsense approach to
everything. He is also a somewhat well known mountain climber and adventurer.
Dr. Jack Wheeler Regarding Obama
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.
He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.
What h e isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.
Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.
Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it,
no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it. The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed I n Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it
because it is absurd.
Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.
His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.
Pass this on to every thinking American you know!
August 17, 2008
WHO DID THE EDITING??
THIS IS SAD!!!!!
SHALL WE HIRE A MONUMENT ENGRAVER TO GO TO ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY AND ADD THE MISSING WORDS ?
A MESSAGE FROM AN APPALLED OBSERVER:
Today I went to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington , DC . I got an unexpected history lesson. Because I'm a baby boomer, I was one of the youngest in the crowd.. Most were the age of my parents, Veterans of 'the greatest war,' with their families. It was a beautiful day, and people were smiling and happy to be there. Hundreds of us milled around the memorial, reading the inspiring words of Eisenhower and Truman that are engraved there.
On the Pacific side of the memorial, a group of us gathered to read the words President Roosevelt used to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941-- a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.
One elderly woman read the words aloud:
'With confidence in our armed forces, with the abounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.'
But as she read, she was suddenly turned angry. 'Wait a minute,' she said, 'they left out the end of the quote.. They left out the most important part. Roosevelt ended the message with 'so help us God.'
Her husband said, 'You are probably right. We're not supposed to say things like that now .'
'I know I'm right,' she insisted. 'I remember the speech.' The two looked dismayed, shook their heads sadly and walked away.
Listening to their conversation, I thought to myself, Well, it has been over 50 years she's probably forgotten.'
But she had not forgotten. She was right.
I went home and pulled out the book my book club is reading --- 'Flags of Our Fathers' by James Bradley. It's all about the battle at Iwo Jima . I haven't gotten too far in the book. It's tough to read because it's a graphic description of the WWII battles in the Pacific.
But right there it was on page 58. Roosevelt 's speech to the nation ends in 'so help us God.'
The people who edited out that part of the speech when they engraved it on the memorial could have fooled me. I was born after the war.! But they couldn't fool the people who were there. Roosevelt 's words are engraved on their hearts.
Now I ask: 'WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THE WORDS OF HISTORY?????????'
Send this around to your friends. People need to know before everyone forgets. People today are trying to change the history of America by leaving God out of it, but the truth is, God has been a part of this nation, since the beginning. He still wants to be...and He always will be!
If you agree, pass this on and God Bless YOU!
DAVE ANDERSON HERE WITH A PLEA, I KNOW THAT OFTEN TIMES WE SEEM TO BE ASKING YOU TO SEND THIS ON, OR THAT ON, OR TO CALL SOMEONE AS IF WE THOUGHT YOU HAD NOTHING BETTER TO DO. REST ASSURED WE DO RESPECT THE FACT THAT TIME IS IMPORTANT TO ALL OF US.
WE DO ASK AT TIMES FOR YOU TO HELP IN THE HIGHER CONCLUSION OF AN ISSUE, AND SOMETIMES THE PLEA FALLS ON THOSE THAT ALWAYS COME THRU, JUST THIS PAST YEAR YOU AND YOUR PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS AND FAXES HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE IN MANY ISSUES, AND NOW WE WOULD ASK THAT YOU CONTACT YOUR LOCAL VFW AND AMERICAN LEGION AND YOUR FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES ABOUT THE EDITING DONE ON THIS STORY, WE NEED THOSE WORDS PUT BACK IN THE MEMORIAL.
THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH, DAA
SHALL WE HIRE A MONUMENT ENGRAVER TO GO TO ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY AND ADD THE MISSING WORDS ?
A MESSAGE FROM AN APPALLED OBSERVER:
Today I went to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington , DC . I got an unexpected history lesson. Because I'm a baby boomer, I was one of the youngest in the crowd.. Most were the age of my parents, Veterans of 'the greatest war,' with their families. It was a beautiful day, and people were smiling and happy to be there. Hundreds of us milled around the memorial, reading the inspiring words of Eisenhower and Truman that are engraved there.
On the Pacific side of the memorial, a group of us gathered to read the words President Roosevelt used to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941-- a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.
One elderly woman read the words aloud:
'With confidence in our armed forces, with the abounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.'
But as she read, she was suddenly turned angry. 'Wait a minute,' she said, 'they left out the end of the quote.. They left out the most important part. Roosevelt ended the message with 'so help us God.'
Her husband said, 'You are probably right. We're not supposed to say things like that now .'
'I know I'm right,' she insisted. 'I remember the speech.' The two looked dismayed, shook their heads sadly and walked away.
Listening to their conversation, I thought to myself, Well, it has been over 50 years she's probably forgotten.'
But she had not forgotten. She was right.
I went home and pulled out the book my book club is reading --- 'Flags of Our Fathers' by James Bradley. It's all about the battle at Iwo Jima . I haven't gotten too far in the book. It's tough to read because it's a graphic description of the WWII battles in the Pacific.
But right there it was on page 58. Roosevelt 's speech to the nation ends in 'so help us God.'
The people who edited out that part of the speech when they engraved it on the memorial could have fooled me. I was born after the war.! But they couldn't fool the people who were there. Roosevelt 's words are engraved on their hearts.
Now I ask: 'WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THE WORDS OF HISTORY?????????'
Send this around to your friends. People need to know before everyone forgets. People today are trying to change the history of America by leaving God out of it, but the truth is, God has been a part of this nation, since the beginning. He still wants to be...and He always will be!
If you agree, pass this on and God Bless YOU!
DAVE ANDERSON HERE WITH A PLEA, I KNOW THAT OFTEN TIMES WE SEEM TO BE ASKING YOU TO SEND THIS ON, OR THAT ON, OR TO CALL SOMEONE AS IF WE THOUGHT YOU HAD NOTHING BETTER TO DO. REST ASSURED WE DO RESPECT THE FACT THAT TIME IS IMPORTANT TO ALL OF US.
WE DO ASK AT TIMES FOR YOU TO HELP IN THE HIGHER CONCLUSION OF AN ISSUE, AND SOMETIMES THE PLEA FALLS ON THOSE THAT ALWAYS COME THRU, JUST THIS PAST YEAR YOU AND YOUR PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS AND FAXES HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE IN MANY ISSUES, AND NOW WE WOULD ASK THAT YOU CONTACT YOUR LOCAL VFW AND AMERICAN LEGION AND YOUR FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES ABOUT THE EDITING DONE ON THIS STORY, WE NEED THOSE WORDS PUT BACK IN THE MEMORIAL.
THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH, DAA
EXPERENCE IS IT NECESSARY?
OK these are funny...oh wait maybe not....
From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate.
That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days. I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.'
THIS IS A SAD COMMENTARY ON THE POLLITICAL HOPES OF THIS COUNTRY. DAVE ANDERSON
From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate.
That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days. I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.'
THIS IS A SAD COMMENTARY ON THE POLLITICAL HOPES OF THIS COUNTRY. DAVE ANDERSON
A BRIEF FROM A FRIEND
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I know that some of you don't like to read long drawn out missives...so here's the executive summary.........
Congress Military
John McCain 26 Years 22 Years
Barrack Obama 143 days 0
I know that some of you don't like to read long drawn out missives...so here's the executive summary.........
Congress Military
John McCain 26 Years 22 Years
Barrack Obama 143 days 0
A SIMPLE PRAYER
Billy Graham's prayer aired by Paul Harvey...........................
THIS GUY SURE HAS A GOOD VIEW OF WHAT'S HAPPENING TO THIS COUNTRY!
PAUL HARVEY'S ON- AIR PRAYER
'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'
Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'One nation under God.'
If possible, please pass this prayer on to your friends. 'If you don't stand for something, you will fall for everything.'
Think about this: If you forward this prayer to everyone on your e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be heard by the world. (It's worth a try!)
One Nation Under God
THIS GUY SURE HAS A GOOD VIEW OF WHAT'S HAPPENING TO THIS COUNTRY!
PAUL HARVEY'S ON- AIR PRAYER
'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'
Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'One nation under God.'
If possible, please pass this prayer on to your friends. 'If you don't stand for something, you will fall for everything.'
Think about this: If you forward this prayer to everyone on your e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be heard by the world. (It's worth a try!)
One Nation Under God
Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Poll: Few Americans Worried About Global Warming
2. No Signs of Obama Landslide
3. Sports Owners Backing McCain
4. Leno Move to ABC Could Doom ‘Nightline’
5. Fox Denies Huckabee Starring in Variety Show
6. ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance Boosts Democrats’ Fundraising
7. We Heard: Chelsea Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ron Paul
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Poll: Few Americans Worried About Global Warming
Only 1 in 4 Americans believes global warming is the biggest environmental challenge facing the world, a new poll reveals.
The ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University survey found that public concern over the global warming issue has diminished over the past year.
Fewer than half of the poll’s respondents, 47 percent, think global warming is an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007.
While 80 percent believe the earth is warming, that figure is down four percentage points from last year.
Doubts over the science behind the global warming issue still linger in people's minds, according to the poll results reported by the National Journal. Just 30 percent of respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," 39 percent said they trust them "a moderate amount," and 30 percent said they do not trust them.
Also, nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.
According to ABC News' Gary Langer, the diminished concern over global warming coincides with decreased media attention to climate change, in favor of the election and economy. "A database search finds 50 percent fewer news stories on global warming in the month before this poll was conducted, compared with the month before last year's survey," Langer wrote.
In any case, about 7 in 10 respondents said they're attempting to reduce their energy consumption by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.
But 63 percent are in favor of drilling for oil in coastal waters where it is currently not allowed, and 55 percent support drilling in U.S. wilderness areas where it is not allowed.
Editor's Note:
Special: Al Gore's 'Convenient Lie' Exposed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. No Signs of Obama Landslide
Predictions of a landslide victory by Democrat Barack Obama in the November election may be off base, according to a historical analysis.
In five of the six post-World War II landslides — defined as a victory of 10 percentage points or more — the eventual winner was ahead by at least 10 percentage points in the polls at the end of August, according to the analysis of Gallup Polls by Politico.
But recent Gallup tracking polls put Obama ahead of his Republican rival John McCain by a margin of only two to five points.
One landslide winner, Lyndon Johnson, was ahead of Barry Goldwater in a late August 1964 Gallup Poll by a huge margin — 67 percent to 26 percent. Johnson went on to win the election with 61 percent of the vote.
In 1972, incumbent Richard Nixon was ahead of George McGovern by about 20 points in August. He won by 23 points.
Incumbent Ronald Reagan was ahead of Walter Mondale by 10 points in 1984, and won by nearly twice that margin.
Dwight Eisenhower was ahead of Adlai Stevenson by at least 15 points in two late August 1952 Gallup Polls. Ike won by 11 points.
“There was a definite cockiness that Democrats felt once they regained control of Congress, and I’ve felt it was a misplaced cockiness,” pollster John Zogby said.
And political analyst Charlie Cook told Politico: “I don’t think you see leads in presidential races over five points in this day and age. [Obama has] averaged leads of three points since spring. The key is that Obama hasn’t closed the sale.
“The question is, Does Obama ever close the sale?”
Editor's Note:
President Obama's Coming Stock Market Crash
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Sports Owners Backing McCain
Owners of professional sports teams in the U.S. are overwhelmingly backing Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race.
Through the end of June, team owners and their families in the four major sports — baseball, football, basketball, and hockey — have reportedly contributed or raised more than $3.2 million to aid McCain, compared to only $615,000 for Obama.
McCain even raised over six times more than Obama from the owners of teams in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
And owners of the teams in McCain’s hometown, Phoenix, contributed or raised as much as $550,000 for the Republican — and nothing for Obama.
McCain’s wife’s family owns a share of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, and McCain is a season ticket holder for the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals.
Among McCain’s major backers, New York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson has raised more than $500,000 for McCain, and Thomas Hicks, owner of the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League and baseball’s Texas Rangers, has raised or donated as much as $309,000 for McCain, according to Politico.
Bob Johnson, owner of basketball’s Charlotte Bobcats and founder of Black Entertainment Television, is a former Hillary Clinton backer who now supports Obama. He told Politico he has raised about $200,000 for Obama, although he acknowledged that sports owners have predominantly given to McCain.
“I don’t think there’s any correlation between being a sports owner and supporting John McCain,” he said, adding, “I think there’s a correlation between being a businessman and supporting John McCain.”
Editor's Note:
Doctor: Your Iodine Problem Could Be Killing You
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Leno Move to ABC Could Doom ‘Nightline’
Speculation is rife that Jay Leno might end up at ABC after he leaves NBC’s nighttime lineup next year — and that move could spell the end of ABC’s “Nightline” after nearly three decades on the air.
Leno will step down from “The Tonight Show” in May after 17 years, and Conan O’Brien will replace him as host.
“But at 58, Leno isn’t ready to retire, and most TV executives believe he will seek a new berth,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Rival networks ABC and Fox are already mulling over the prospect of recruiting Leno, whose show earns about $50 million a year in profit for NBC.”
And a Leno move into the “Nightline” time slot would likely push the news show — which launched in 1979 during the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran — into oblivion.
This year, “Nightline” has been narrowing the viewer gap against CBS’ “Late Night with David Letterman,” thanks to a series of high-profile scoops — including interviews with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and John Edwards.
But Shari Anne Brill, director of programming for the ad-buying company Carat, told the Times that replacing the news show with a talk show hosted by Leno “would be so much more lucrative,” in large part because “Nightline” draws “a more narrow audience and a more narrow group of advertisers.”
There are several roadblocks to Leno’s transition to ABC, however. His NBC contract bars him from appearing on TV until 2010, meaning O’Brien would have a seven-month head start, and that could make it difficult for Leno to recapture his audience.
Also, Leno would be 60 by the time a new show got on the air, and it’s not certain how many more years he would want to remain the host.
ABC News President David Westin would say only, “The company will make the decision based on what’s best for the company.”
Editor's Note:
Doctor Warns that Hidden Cancers Lurk in Your Body
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Fox Denies Huckabee Starring in Variety Show
A published report asserting that former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has taped a pilot for a show on Fox is erroneous, according to Fox News.
The New York Post claimed Huckabee taped a weekend variety show, basing its reporting on an interview Huckabee gave the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last weekend.
Huckabee told the paper: “I can say [the show is] going to be unlike anything else that’s on Fox and maybe on cable.” When asked if it’s a talk show, Huckabee said: “Yes and no. Not a talk show like you’ve seen. We’ll have a live studio audience and some very innovative features.”
Fox News gave Politico this statement: “Contrary to what was reported . . . Mike Huckabee has not shot a pilot for Fox News Channel. We are in discussion about developing a show with him in the future, but remain in the early planning stages.”
Editor's Note:
Mike Huckabee Lost 100 Pounds the Old Fashioned Way
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance Boosts Democrats’ Fundraising
Democratic politicians see a major increase in campaign contributions after appearing on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” a new study reveals.
Political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego found that Democrats receive a 40 percent increase in donations in the month after they appear on the fake-news program, compared to colleagues who don’t appear, The Hill newspaper reports.
But Republicans “essentially gain nothing” from such an appearance, according to a release from Fowler.
He pointed to the fundraising of House members who have appeared on “The Colbert Report,” including Reps. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.
The Hill notes that Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida sparked controversy in July 2006 when Colbert cajoled him into saying he enjoyed cocaine and the company of prostitutes.
Editor's Note:
Special: High Blood Pressure Drugs Can Be More Dangerous Than Cure
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. We Heard . . .
THAT Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, and not her husband Bill, will introduce Hillary at the Democratic National Convention.
It was Hillary’s idea to have Chelsea introduce her, and party insiders say Barack Obama has agreed to the proposal, the New York Daily News reported.
Hillary will deliver an address in prime time on Aug. 26 at the convention in Denver.
An official close to the Obama and Clinton camps told the News that Obama “has a problem with Hillary’s more fanatical women supporters, and this is a way to help with that.”
THAT Jesse Jackson’s streak of speaking at Democratic conventions is likely to end this year.
Jackson has spoken at every Democratic convention since 1984. But his widely publicized remarks about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama have probably eliminated him as a speaker at the convention, The Hill reports.
A microphone last month recorded what Jackson thought was a private conversation in which he criticized Obama, using a racially charged remark and voicing a desire to remove a part of Obama’s male anatomy.
Ronald Walters, a former Jackson aide who is now the director of the African American Leadership Center at the University of Maryland, said about Jackson, “I think he should speak, but he won’t.”
THAT presidential historian Doug Wead will be among the speakers at a gathering of libertarian Republicans who support Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty.
The gathering, Rally for the Republic, is being billed as “the convention of the constitutional wing of the Republican Party,” and will be held beginning Aug. 31 across the street from the GOP convention in Minneapolis.
Wead, a New York Times best-selling author and former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush, has been credited with coining the phrase “compassionate conservative.”
Other speakers will include political pundit Tucker Carlson, and former congressman Barry Goldwater Jr.
According to its Web site, the mission of the Campaign for Liberty “is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.”
THAT Ron Paul has other concerns — his wife Carol was admitted to a Houston hospital on Monday and underwent three surgeries.
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton would not specify why she had entered the hospital, except to say that “she has had several abdominal surgeries,” The Associated Press reported.
Benton said on Thursday, “She has given us some big scares over the past 48 hours, but things appear to be improving and there is room for cautious optimism.”
Editor's
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Poll: Few Americans Worried About Global Warming
2. No Signs of Obama Landslide
3. Sports Owners Backing McCain
4. Leno Move to ABC Could Doom ‘Nightline’
5. Fox Denies Huckabee Starring in Variety Show
6. ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance Boosts Democrats’ Fundraising
7. We Heard: Chelsea Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ron Paul
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Poll: Few Americans Worried About Global Warming
Only 1 in 4 Americans believes global warming is the biggest environmental challenge facing the world, a new poll reveals.
The ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University survey found that public concern over the global warming issue has diminished over the past year.
Fewer than half of the poll’s respondents, 47 percent, think global warming is an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007.
While 80 percent believe the earth is warming, that figure is down four percentage points from last year.
Doubts over the science behind the global warming issue still linger in people's minds, according to the poll results reported by the National Journal. Just 30 percent of respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," 39 percent said they trust them "a moderate amount," and 30 percent said they do not trust them.
Also, nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.
According to ABC News' Gary Langer, the diminished concern over global warming coincides with decreased media attention to climate change, in favor of the election and economy. "A database search finds 50 percent fewer news stories on global warming in the month before this poll was conducted, compared with the month before last year's survey," Langer wrote.
In any case, about 7 in 10 respondents said they're attempting to reduce their energy consumption by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.
But 63 percent are in favor of drilling for oil in coastal waters where it is currently not allowed, and 55 percent support drilling in U.S. wilderness areas where it is not allowed.
Editor's Note:
Special: Al Gore's 'Convenient Lie' Exposed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. No Signs of Obama Landslide
Predictions of a landslide victory by Democrat Barack Obama in the November election may be off base, according to a historical analysis.
In five of the six post-World War II landslides — defined as a victory of 10 percentage points or more — the eventual winner was ahead by at least 10 percentage points in the polls at the end of August, according to the analysis of Gallup Polls by Politico.
But recent Gallup tracking polls put Obama ahead of his Republican rival John McCain by a margin of only two to five points.
One landslide winner, Lyndon Johnson, was ahead of Barry Goldwater in a late August 1964 Gallup Poll by a huge margin — 67 percent to 26 percent. Johnson went on to win the election with 61 percent of the vote.
In 1972, incumbent Richard Nixon was ahead of George McGovern by about 20 points in August. He won by 23 points.
Incumbent Ronald Reagan was ahead of Walter Mondale by 10 points in 1984, and won by nearly twice that margin.
Dwight Eisenhower was ahead of Adlai Stevenson by at least 15 points in two late August 1952 Gallup Polls. Ike won by 11 points.
“There was a definite cockiness that Democrats felt once they regained control of Congress, and I’ve felt it was a misplaced cockiness,” pollster John Zogby said.
And political analyst Charlie Cook told Politico: “I don’t think you see leads in presidential races over five points in this day and age. [Obama has] averaged leads of three points since spring. The key is that Obama hasn’t closed the sale.
“The question is, Does Obama ever close the sale?”
Editor's Note:
President Obama's Coming Stock Market Crash
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Sports Owners Backing McCain
Owners of professional sports teams in the U.S. are overwhelmingly backing Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race.
Through the end of June, team owners and their families in the four major sports — baseball, football, basketball, and hockey — have reportedly contributed or raised more than $3.2 million to aid McCain, compared to only $615,000 for Obama.
McCain even raised over six times more than Obama from the owners of teams in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
And owners of the teams in McCain’s hometown, Phoenix, contributed or raised as much as $550,000 for the Republican — and nothing for Obama.
McCain’s wife’s family owns a share of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, and McCain is a season ticket holder for the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals.
Among McCain’s major backers, New York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson has raised more than $500,000 for McCain, and Thomas Hicks, owner of the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League and baseball’s Texas Rangers, has raised or donated as much as $309,000 for McCain, according to Politico.
Bob Johnson, owner of basketball’s Charlotte Bobcats and founder of Black Entertainment Television, is a former Hillary Clinton backer who now supports Obama. He told Politico he has raised about $200,000 for Obama, although he acknowledged that sports owners have predominantly given to McCain.
“I don’t think there’s any correlation between being a sports owner and supporting John McCain,” he said, adding, “I think there’s a correlation between being a businessman and supporting John McCain.”
Editor's Note:
Doctor: Your Iodine Problem Could Be Killing You
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Leno Move to ABC Could Doom ‘Nightline’
Speculation is rife that Jay Leno might end up at ABC after he leaves NBC’s nighttime lineup next year — and that move could spell the end of ABC’s “Nightline” after nearly three decades on the air.
Leno will step down from “The Tonight Show” in May after 17 years, and Conan O’Brien will replace him as host.
“But at 58, Leno isn’t ready to retire, and most TV executives believe he will seek a new berth,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Rival networks ABC and Fox are already mulling over the prospect of recruiting Leno, whose show earns about $50 million a year in profit for NBC.”
And a Leno move into the “Nightline” time slot would likely push the news show — which launched in 1979 during the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran — into oblivion.
This year, “Nightline” has been narrowing the viewer gap against CBS’ “Late Night with David Letterman,” thanks to a series of high-profile scoops — including interviews with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and John Edwards.
But Shari Anne Brill, director of programming for the ad-buying company Carat, told the Times that replacing the news show with a talk show hosted by Leno “would be so much more lucrative,” in large part because “Nightline” draws “a more narrow audience and a more narrow group of advertisers.”
There are several roadblocks to Leno’s transition to ABC, however. His NBC contract bars him from appearing on TV until 2010, meaning O’Brien would have a seven-month head start, and that could make it difficult for Leno to recapture his audience.
Also, Leno would be 60 by the time a new show got on the air, and it’s not certain how many more years he would want to remain the host.
ABC News President David Westin would say only, “The company will make the decision based on what’s best for the company.”
Editor's Note:
Doctor Warns that Hidden Cancers Lurk in Your Body
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Fox Denies Huckabee Starring in Variety Show
A published report asserting that former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has taped a pilot for a show on Fox is erroneous, according to Fox News.
The New York Post claimed Huckabee taped a weekend variety show, basing its reporting on an interview Huckabee gave the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last weekend.
Huckabee told the paper: “I can say [the show is] going to be unlike anything else that’s on Fox and maybe on cable.” When asked if it’s a talk show, Huckabee said: “Yes and no. Not a talk show like you’ve seen. We’ll have a live studio audience and some very innovative features.”
Fox News gave Politico this statement: “Contrary to what was reported . . . Mike Huckabee has not shot a pilot for Fox News Channel. We are in discussion about developing a show with him in the future, but remain in the early planning stages.”
Editor's Note:
Mike Huckabee Lost 100 Pounds the Old Fashioned Way
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance Boosts Democrats’ Fundraising
Democratic politicians see a major increase in campaign contributions after appearing on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” a new study reveals.
Political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego found that Democrats receive a 40 percent increase in donations in the month after they appear on the fake-news program, compared to colleagues who don’t appear, The Hill newspaper reports.
But Republicans “essentially gain nothing” from such an appearance, according to a release from Fowler.
He pointed to the fundraising of House members who have appeared on “The Colbert Report,” including Reps. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.
The Hill notes that Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida sparked controversy in July 2006 when Colbert cajoled him into saying he enjoyed cocaine and the company of prostitutes.
Editor's Note:
Special: High Blood Pressure Drugs Can Be More Dangerous Than Cure
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. We Heard . . .
THAT Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, and not her husband Bill, will introduce Hillary at the Democratic National Convention.
It was Hillary’s idea to have Chelsea introduce her, and party insiders say Barack Obama has agreed to the proposal, the New York Daily News reported.
Hillary will deliver an address in prime time on Aug. 26 at the convention in Denver.
An official close to the Obama and Clinton camps told the News that Obama “has a problem with Hillary’s more fanatical women supporters, and this is a way to help with that.”
THAT Jesse Jackson’s streak of speaking at Democratic conventions is likely to end this year.
Jackson has spoken at every Democratic convention since 1984. But his widely publicized remarks about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama have probably eliminated him as a speaker at the convention, The Hill reports.
A microphone last month recorded what Jackson thought was a private conversation in which he criticized Obama, using a racially charged remark and voicing a desire to remove a part of Obama’s male anatomy.
Ronald Walters, a former Jackson aide who is now the director of the African American Leadership Center at the University of Maryland, said about Jackson, “I think he should speak, but he won’t.”
THAT presidential historian Doug Wead will be among the speakers at a gathering of libertarian Republicans who support Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty.
The gathering, Rally for the Republic, is being billed as “the convention of the constitutional wing of the Republican Party,” and will be held beginning Aug. 31 across the street from the GOP convention in Minneapolis.
Wead, a New York Times best-selling author and former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush, has been credited with coining the phrase “compassionate conservative.”
Other speakers will include political pundit Tucker Carlson, and former congressman Barry Goldwater Jr.
According to its Web site, the mission of the Campaign for Liberty “is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.”
THAT Ron Paul has other concerns — his wife Carol was admitted to a Houston hospital on Monday and underwent three surgeries.
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton would not specify why she had entered the hospital, except to say that “she has had several abdominal surgeries,” The Associated Press reported.
Benton said on Thursday, “She has given us some big scares over the past 48 hours, but things appear to be improving and there is room for cautious optimism.”
Editor's
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