Facts and Spins

Obama AZ speech - theme from 2008 campaign site

2011-01-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

If those who received a memorial t-shirt will look at the bottom, they will see a "tag" from the DNC: "Rocking America and Rocking the Vote" ..... more evidence that what many suspected to be more like a campaign speech than a memorial and tribute to those who were either heroic, wounded and killed in Tucson last week.

Instead -- we get "Together We Thrive" text and themes from a post at Obama's 2008 Campaign site "Organizing for America" at this 2008 site.

While the site may now be difficult to load (it is occasionally "jumbled" -- which may be intentional), I and others have screen shots.

The first screen shot is HERE.

Here is also the investigative report by CFP's Judi McCleod:

The “Together We Thrive” T-shirts that starred at Wednesday’s Arizona
`Memorial’ originated from Organizing for America (here), a sad fact unearthed by The Drumbeat of Liberty Preservation of Freedom editor and Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Robert
Rohlfing.

In the controversy of the pep rally/rock concert style Memorial for those
who lost their lives in Saturday’s Arizona tragedy, the mainstream media
reported that the “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America” T-shirt given to
mourners as they entered McKate Center was the idea of University of Arizona
brass, not the Obama administration.

Yet the “Together We Thrive” slogan dates back to a post to Obama’s own
Organizing for America in a Feb. 11, 2008 post by self-described “globalist”
John Berry IV.

More than passing strange that the Obama campaign message of civility was
the same on Feb. 11, 2008 as it was in his Wednesday Memorial speech, and the
same one, too carried by the mainstream media in coverage of the
Memorial. 

“For too long Americans have been set one against the other. It
is a side affect of a free market society,” Berry IV posted. “How can
profits be maximized, how can I get the work down for the lowest possible
costs. This continually sets one group against the other, especially in
the blue collar sectors of America. It has become part of the American
Business model, whether it was indentured servants, slaves picking cotton,
sharecroppers, the industrious people that built the railroads or today’s
migrant workers. As long as we remain divided, fighting for the scraps
that America has to offer it will be one group against the other.

“What I see in Obama is a chance for revolution. (Italics CFP’s). A
chance for every group to be heard; A chance to live the American dream that has
been denied to so many…

“In a previous career, I was the global leader of Diversity for a global
fortune 500 corporation. I have studied the affects of diverse groups
working together and the results can not be denied. Together we
Thrive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

University of Arizona brass did not originate the “Together We Thrive”
T-shirt. They merely recycled it for Obama—and recycled it in time for
what should have been a dignified Memorial for the dead.

If you were a mourner who took home a “Together We Thrive” T-shirt have a
look at the bottom of your shirt. “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote”
is a common theme of the DNC, and it’s right there on your Memorial
T-shirt memento.

Welcome to the era of Obama, where cheering and standing ovations, for the
first time in history, became part of the Requiem for the Dead.

Not referenced in the article above were the boos which greeted the current AZ Governor when she spoke or the "WE LOVE YOU, OBAMA" chants that disrupted speakers. Where else BUT a campaign setting would you hear boos and chants???? Certainly not at a memorial service or a tribute to survivors.

Just a reminder: don't forget Obama's tactics ....

2010-11-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

-- From American Thinker, 2008:

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

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

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

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

Why?

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

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

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

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

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

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

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

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

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

The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

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

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

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.

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

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

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.

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

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

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

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

Voting

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

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

1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.

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

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

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

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.

Illegal Immigration

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

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

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

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

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

Mortgage Crisis

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

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

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

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

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

As a New York Post article describes it:

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

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

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

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

Investor's Business Daily added:

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.)

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

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

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

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

Enter Barack Obama

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

(See chart at original site)

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

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

Saul Alinsky

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

Bill Ayers

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

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

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

Carl Davidson and the New Party

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

George Soros

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

ACORN

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

I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More hidden taxes in ObamaCare

2010-10-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

"During the ObamaCare debate when the Senate Finance Committee was scouring for more money, it put a “fee” on medical devices, The Wall Street Journal wrote that “the device makers made a ‘strategic mistake’ by not offering Mr. Baucus
(D-Mont and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) more protection money,” (in other words, political contributions). Baucus’s committee wrote the final Senate version of ObamaCare."

Check the reactions and realities to Obama's hidden taxes in this article.

Oh that foreign funny money trail continues ...

2010-10-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

Way to go, Michelle!!!!

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/10/11/dems-and-foreign-funny-money/

ACORN to do concensus? Out of Afghanistan?

2009-02-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

from Over the Hill Oracles:

The answer to the census question may be decided by the Supreme Court, but watch Obama’s clandestine maneuvers to assign “responsibility” for the census from the Secretary of Commerce to the White House.

Here’s the law:

The Congress, by law directed that:

“The Secretary [of Commerce] shall perform the functions and duties imposed upon him by this title, may issue such rules and regulations as he deems necessary to carry out such functions and duties, and may delegate the performance of such functions and duties and the authority to issue such rules and regulations to such officers and employees of the Department of Commerce as he may designate.”

Credit those folks over at Samizdata ….

As I read it, the Director of the Census must, by law, be within the Department of Commerce and under the direction of the (Senate approved) Secretary of Commerce who then reports to the president. Am I missing something?
Correction: From reading through Title 13, Chapter 1 it appears obvious to me that the POTUS has no role in the census whatsoever beyond, with Senate approval, selecting the Secretary of Commerce and, also with Senate approval, selecting the Director of the Census who ” shall perform such duties as may be imposed upon him by law, regulations, or orders of the Secretary.” Hhmmm… No president mentioned.

The Secretary of Commerce is the only authority the law recognizes. Since as commenter Laird points out, the Constitution did not place the census function in Article II - the Executive branch but in Article I - the Legislative branch, it is not at all within the President’s reach unless the legislature places it there.

And watch for Obama to still try and put ACORN in charge of the census ….

Any question about WHY there are so many Obama-watch sites on the web???

More blurbs from the blogs:

– Stimulus Plan (Porkarama) updates are here ….

Biden: Ignore the voters

HERE’S a good question: why doesn’t Obama tell us specifically HOW this money will resolve his “now or never” crisis? We won’t see any jobs outta this political payback package for years.

– Obama has again voted “present” on this bogus stimulus plan. How to hype a crisis in two steps …. So where exactly is the change we (?) hoped for??? Forget it. It’s the same ole way with a Chicago twist ….

– BREAKING: Obama tells Gates to “stand down” on the troop surge in Afghanistan …..

Is he looking for ‘out‘ in Afghanistan???

– World opinion on Obama is fading ….

From London to America: What have you done?

Pakistan to the US: Show us the money!!!

Russia forms Alliance with six central Asian nations: Take THAT, America.

Ecuador expels US Embassy official: South America rejects the “Chicago way” …

– USS Cole mom is disgusted with Obama …. article and video

Pending: More and more parents and (retired) naval personnel are speaking out about the way the killers of their loved ones are being released ….

more pending …..

Obama's Questionable Values

2008-10-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Don't believe the hype and audacity of a man who would "buy" the Presidency of the United States. Don't believe his lies about social security and health care benefits reductions. Don't fall for the fallacies in his campaign rhetoric.

Vote your conscience and your values. Vote John McCain and Sarah Palin for theirs.

Vote for your future and that of your children's children.

"A few years ago, after it became clear that some infants who were born alive in the course of an attempted induced [late term] abortion at Christ Hospital in Chicago and elsewhere were being left to die without even comfort care, Republicans and Democrats around the country united in an effort to make the practice illegal and declare that any child outside the womb, even if she was an abortion survivor whose prospects for long-term survival might be in doubt, was entitled to basic medical care. Even the most ardent advocates of the pro-choice position agreed that a child born alive, even after an attempted abortion, deserves humane treatment."

Only one person spoke against "Live Birth" legislation in Illinois in 2002. That person was state Senator Barack Obama.
In the last presidential debate, Barack Obama lied about his reasons for speaking against that legislation -- as he has lied about other policies and aspects of his life.

Only John McCain and Sarah Palin have stood before America and demonstrated (not simply talked about) their universal support of the values of life, faith and family -- the traditional values, the very tenets of our culture and heritage. Please vote for them on November 4 (or in an early ballot). Our nation needs their integrity, their demonstrated leadership and their resolve to lead us forward.

Links of interest:

Comprehensive Argument Against Obama (commentary and videos)
Over-the-Hill Oracles
Pogo Pundits
Obama's REAL Tax Plan
Obama's Military Cuts (video)
Supported by Terrorists (video)
ACORN and Voter Fraud

OBAMA: 9/11 was a "failure of empathy"

2008-09-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

Eight days after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Obama -- the man who would be Commander in Chief -- blamed the terrorist attacks on "a failure of empathy."

The July 20 issue of the New Yorker magazine got a lot of attention for its cover, which carried a "satirical" cartoon depicting Michelle and Barack Obama that Obama supporters found tasteless and offensive. Buried inside that issue's feature story, however, was a reaction by Obama to 9/11 that all voters should find even more tasteless and offensive.

The article reprised a piece published in Chicago's Hyde Park Herald on Sept. 19, 2001, and written by a then-unknown and otherwise undistinguished state senator from Illinois. The senator, a former community organizer, wrote that after tightening security at our airports and repairing our intelligence networks, we "must also engage . . . in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness."

According to Barack Obama, the madness that drove terrorists to turn passenger jets into manned cruise missiles aimed at our centers of finance, government and military power "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

As if the answer to the attacks should have been food stamps for al-Qaida.

Sen. Obama advised caution and warned of overreacting. "We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad," he wrote. "We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent."

We should also be just as concerned, he felt, with American anger and bigotry as we were about al-Qaida.

In an opinion piece in Commentary magazine, writer Abe Greenwald commented on Obama's belief that the 9/11 attacks were rooted in poverty and despair. "Strange," he called it, "considering our attackers were wealthy and educated, connected and ecstatic."

As Greenwald put it, Obama "could have asked (terrorist and colleague) Bill Ayers, 'Bill, did your 'failure of empathy' stem from your impoverished upbringing as the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison?" Did poverty and despair also cause the Weather Underground member and host of Obama's first fundraiser to bomb government buildings?

Fact is, the roster of terrorists and their handlers reads like a list of of Ivy Leaguers:

Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, architect of 9/11 and other major attacks, has a degree in mechanical engineering. Mohammed Atta, who flew a jet into the World Trade Center, is the son of a lawyer and earned a master's degree in urban planning at Hamburg University. Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon. Seven doctors were involved in the London-Glasgow bomb plots.

You get the idea, even if Barack Obama doesn't.

In a speech before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush pointed out the real reasons Islamofascists hate us: "They hate what they see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Bush aptly called the 9/11 terrorists and their ilk "the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century."

"By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism," he said.

Knowing the nature of your enemy is the key to victory. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, we should all thank President Bush for keeping America safe. Along the way, he brought freedom and democracy to the Middle East, draining the terrorist swamp.

Bush gets it. So does John McCain. This is one thing we shouldn't want to change.

I have no idea how Obama's comments have failed to resonate with the American people. Hopefully, those words will resonate before it's too late.

credit: Gull

Obama: "I was before I wasn't ... uhhh...."

2008-09-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

Freudian slip? Not good timing, Ohblahma. Not good timing ....

Uh huh.

Next question: "What were your favorite courses in college?"

"well ... uhhhh ... you see ... I was .... wait a minute ... uhh .... errrr .... "

.

Romney: Leader for Tomorrow

2008-01-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

We need Mitt Romney today --

Fact: America needs Mitt Romney.

Felons Removed From Clinton Team

2007-12-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

Making this announcement during the holiday may be an excuse for MSM to "ignore" this revelation, but for most who read it, it will be nothing unusual for the Clinton campaign.

What will Hillary do about the other questionable team members and supporters?

The spin may be as interesting as the actual story!

.

The Phelps Family: A Stain on America

2007-10-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

They are the group that protests at funerals of fallen soldiers. They associate national calamity and distress as God's wrath against homosexuality.

This is the family that isolates itself from reality, yet attempts to interject its distorted perceptions into mainstream life. Like an oozing sore -- a stain on the fabric of society.

The Most Hated Family in America

History: The anti-Phelps Underground

The DC Protest Spin

2007-09-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

THIS is the message (and photo) you won't see in the MSM.

It's the message hired protesters wanted to convey this weekend in Washington.

Message received.

Now, take your Soros-funded anti-America protest-for-hire money and return to the rock you crawled out from under.

God bless our troops and their families.

Thanks to the thousands of Eagles and GOE III participants who confronted the clowns and cowards in Washington this weekend.

EAGLES UP!!!!

hat tip to Gull.

A Day of Destruction -- 79 A.D.

2007-08-24T01:04:00.000-07:00

It was on this day in 79 A.D. that the one of the most destructive volcano eruptions in recorded human history occurred when the volcano Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman city of Pompeii. Pompeii was a resort town for citizens of Rome at the time, located on the Bay of Naples. People there probably didn't even know Mt. Vesuvius was a volcano. There hadn't been a major eruption in 800 years. But there were frequent earthquakes, and in the two weeks leading up to the eruption, there had been thin clouds of volcanic ash drifting down from the mountain, which people had been sweeping off the streets.

Then, on the morning of this day in 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius exploded with a force 100,000 times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion sent a cloud of ash 12 miles into the air, completely blacking out the sun. The mountain was almost five miles away, so some of the people in the city didn't evacuate right away. They thought they would have time to flee if necessary. What they didn't know was that the volcano had spewed toxic gasses along with molten rock. Birds began to fall dead from the sky, and then the city was blanketed with volcanic rock and ash, at the rate of six inches an hour. By the end of the day, not a single living thing remained in Pompeii. The city was buried under more than 20 feet of debris.

The molten rock that covered the city kept it preserved for more than 1,750 years, until the mid-1800s, when stories began to circulate in the area that you could dig around in the dirt and find treasures. After years of pillaging, an archeologist was finally hired in 1860 to perform an official excavation of Pompeii. It turned out to be one of the most important sites in the history of archeology.

Most of the city was preserved exactly as it had been at the moment of destruction. Archeologists could examine what pictures ordinary people had painted on their walls, what cutlery and cookware they kept in their kitchens. They found graffiti written on bathroom walls and legal documents written on wax tablets. Most of what historians know about everyday life in Ancient Rome is based on what archeologists found in the perfectly preserved city of Pompeii.
And archaeologists also found the bodies of the people who died in the eruption. The volcanic ash had molded to the bodies of the victims, leaving a perfect imprint before the bodies decayed. Archaeologists poured plaster into these molds, and the result was detailed replicas of the victims at the moment of death, down to the wrinkles in their clothing and the expressions on their faces. On the floor in a house they found a father and son. The young boy was on his back, looking up at his father, and they were holding hands. They found adults with their arms outstretched trying to protect children, a family of eight rushing toward the sea, and dogs straining against their leashes.

.
-- From Garrison Keillor

.

So Where WERE Those Republican "Front-Runners"??

2007-08-12T10:33:00.001-07:00

If you knew YOU were going to lose a race, would you even lace up your track shoes?

Didn't think so.

And that's what Rudy, John and the undeclared candidate Fred! didn't do in Iowa. They were no-show's before the straw vote that Mitt Romney handily won yesterday. As predicted.

Ohhhhh, but they are all going to Iowa this week. Not sure what good it will do to enhance their standing with Iowans, but we'll see ....

You'll understand their unwillingness to put THEIR campaigns on the line when you hear Mitt's Iowa speech. Here.

And no -- contrary to how folks want to spin what happened in Iowa yesterday, the Republican nomination is not simply "given" to someone. Candidates still have to earn that nomination. And that nomination begins in Iowa.

Way to go, TEAM MITT!!

Nixon's Resignation: 30 YRS Ago Today

2007-08-08T07:54:00.000-07:00

It was on this day in 1974 that Richard M. Nixon resigned the office of the presidency, the first American president in history to do so.

His policies as president had been rather liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. He eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs and tried to create a national health insurance system.

He won re-election in 1972 in a landslide, but in that same year a group of men broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and in that break-in were the seeds of his downfall.

More background on this historic event is at NPR.

.

When is a TX Corridor a China Connection?

2007-07-29T07:35:00.001-07:00

Answer: When uninspected vehicles with unknown contents are transported by truck, rail or superhighway through the US from Mexico and Canada without official government sanction or scrutiny.

The oft denied "superhighway" that will connect China's "super-ports" (being constructed in Mexican waters) to run literally un-monitored from Mexico through the US to Canada is a reality.

Texas may be the first "leg" of the highway, but other portions of the Mexico to Canada freeway (literally) are not far behind .... Including the presence of un-regulated Mexican trucks and drivers -- with access to any and all US highways including direct rail connections across Mexican and Canadian borders.

Meanwhile, international companies continue to purchase US highways and accesses.

Here's a prime source of information: eagleforum and here's a map of the proposed North American Union superhighway connections

I don't endorse all policies and beliefs espoused by the EagleForum staff, but they are on-target with their concerns about the push toward a North American Union and the loss of American identity -- not to mention our security and welfare.

Visit the links at EagleForum, especially these: The SuperHighway and The China Connection -- follow those with the KC-China connection and be very afraid. Very afraid.

While this clandestine push toward integrating the US with Mexico and Canada is being funded primarily by corporate and international dollars -- our government (at the state and federal levels) are feigning ignorance while allowing agencies to approve construction projects and the buying and selling of America's infrastructure .... state by state and mile by mile -- by land and sea.

Why Would Thompson Lie?

2007-07-21T09:02:00.001-07:00

Beats me.

Why would a popular non-declared contender for the Presidency lie about his affiliation with an abortion-support group?

Beats me.

Flip-flopping (as it's called when done by others) is a constant source of contention among opponents.

But lying?

Not a good sign, Mr. Thompson.

Unless of course, you want to offer your own version of what "is" as opposed to what "was" and how it's not really a lie when you categorically deny what you did 16 years ago, qualifying it as totally unrelated to what now "is" -- especially when you subtract 16 from the number of times you haven't lied and then multiply that product by the number of times you have supposedly supported anti-abortion legislation, while factoring to the 3rd power the number of things you were paid to do as a lobbyist-lawyer as opposed to things you actually believe. Unlike what you might do as President, of course.

Makes sense to me. Uh huh.

Read the article: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-thompson7jul07,0,54260.story?coll=la-home-center

Nero was a Lyre. And so was history.

2007-07-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Today, the 18th of July, is believed to be the anniversary of the fire that burned Rome in 64 AD, while the emperor Nero supposedly played his fiddle. In fact, he wasn't in Rome. He was away at his holiday villa on the coast, and when he heard about the fire, he rushed back to the capital and took charge of the operations.

The rumors about his playing his fiddle probably came from people in the Roman military who did not approve of Nero's artistic leanings. He'd come to power at the age of 16. He was the youngest ruler in the history of Rome. He was more interested in music and poetry than in battling the barbarians. And he didn't play the fiddle; he did play the lyre. But his real passion was singing. He was also known to be a transvestite, which did not endear him to the soldiers.

One of the rumors being spread at the time was that Nero had himself started the fire because he was disgusted by the architecture in Rome and wanted to rebuild the city. And to bolster his own image against these rumors, Nero decided that the fire needed to be blamed on someone else, and he picked out the Christians who were generally loathed by Romans.

The religion of Christianity was only a few decades old when Nero singled it out. Nero rounded up Christians; they were covered in the skins of wild animals, torn to death by dogs, crucified, or they were burned at the stake.

Most Romans at the time despised Christians, but Nero's program of persecution went further than the people wanted. It had the unintended effect of making people sympathize with Christians. And a little more than 200 years later, the emperor of the Roman Empire himself converted to Christianity, and it became the dominant religion of Europe.

-- from G. Keillor
.
.

Celebrating July 4

2007-07-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, our beloved America.

An "Over-the-Hill" Coalition Tribute -- July 4, 2007

Immigration Bill is a Fraud

2007-06-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

Of course, with the current democrat leadership in charge of the re-writes, you already knew this.

I wouldn't presume to speak for the millions of Americans who oppose this bill, but it's because I'm an immigrant myself that I object to the most patent absurdity peddled by the pro-amnesty crowd. The bill is fundamentally a fraud. Its ''comprehensive solution'' to illegal immigration is simply to flip all the illegals overnight into the legal category. Voila! Problem solved! There can be no more illegal immigrants because the Senate has simply abolished the category. Ingenious! For their next bipartisan trick, Congress will reduce the murder rate by recategorizing murderers as jaywalkers.

Read the rest of Mark Steyn at this link.

Hat tip to Gull.

Paying for Grades Can Be Costly

2007-06-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Paying students for good grades can be costly in terms of funding and learning. Will motivating students to achieve a grade ensure learning? Better study the research, Mayor.

Mayor Bloomberg defended a controversial proposal to pay kids for high test
scores yesterday, but said there are no specific plans to make it happen."As one
of the new approaches to try to tackle the intractable problem of poverty, we
have said that we would raise ... $50 million privately to encourage people,
using economic incentives," Bloomberg said. Money for test scores is "one of the
possibilities."The Daily News reported exclusively yesterday on a plan to pay
fourth-graders as much as $25 and seventh-graders as much as $50 for high scores
on so-called interim assessments, which, beginning in September, will be
administered in all city schools. The tests will help teachers determine what
kids know and what they still need to learn.The mayor's Opportunity NYC plan
also would give poor families cash rewards for actions like taking their kids to
doctors' appointments and attending job training.

I'm not convinced that paying students to achieve higher scores will work in the long run ....

Not every child is capable of earning an "A." Someone has to fall below the norm to establish a standardized scale .... How the heck do you think scores are averaged???? Will the Mayor offer a sliding monetary reward scale based on actual scores? And at which percentile rank will scores be rewarded?

Talk about depression and loss of esteem. Try to convince the child who scores below the mean or below the average that he's "worth" something. Go ahead. Try. You'll pay much more in rehabilitating him.

Murtha: Clean Up on 5th Floor!

2007-06-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

Oh, my. Jack's got himself boxed in on a 5th floor boondoggle -- for sure!

Jack Murtha: the Dems' poster boy for ethics!

Spinning 'n Weaving

2007-05-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

I like the idea of blogging about facts and how folks sping them, weaving in and out around the facts. Reminds me of a favorite song from the 60's. Sing along if you remember the words.

What goes up must come down

spinning wheel got to go around

talkin' 'bout your troubles

it's a cryin' sin

ride a painted pony

let the spinning wheel spin
You got no money

you got no home

spinning wheel all a lone

talkin' 'bout your troubles

you never learn

Ride a painted pony

let the spinning wheel turn

Someone's waiting

just for you

spinning wheel, spinning true

Drop all your troubles by the riverside

ride a painted pony

let the spinning wheel fly

Takes us back to the time when everyone rode a painted pony, right? .... Wait a minute.

Dropping your troubles by the riverside is one thing, but it's about time for the spinning wheel to stop flying! And that's what this blog will be about -- facts, spin AND those who spin the facts!!