http://patriotroom.com/?p=531
EVERY American should watch this video.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
CBS Reports Hillary Lies
http://patriotroom.com/?p=158
"It makes the case for Senator Obama that all this experience she's that been talking about is at least partly her imagination."
Now how about reporting the Obama Lies?
"It makes the case for Senator Obama that all this experience she's that been talking about is at least partly her imagination."
Now how about reporting the Obama Lies?
The War Against the Press
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; 1:19 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090300711.html
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 3 -- I've talked to many political professionals over the years who were mad at the media, or me in particular.
But I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.
He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.
Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt -- a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist -- really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.
That doesn't make his accusations right. But it does suggest to me that a brewing conflict between McCain and his media chroniclers -- one that makes the ol' Straight Talk Express days a distant memory -- has reached the boiling point. And that there are gender and cultural issues swirling around Palin's nomination that would have created conflict even without the added complication of her daughter's pregnancy.
Let's get straight to the news:
Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life.
In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage.
Arguing that the media queries are being fueled by "every rumor and smear" posted on left-wing Web sites, Schmidt said mainstream journalists are giving "closer scrutiny" to McCain's little-known running mate than to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The McCain camp has been unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to hope to persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin. Obama campaign officials have complained to news organizations that their man has been subjected to considerably more investigative reporting than McCain has, but they have done so in more low-key fashion.
By contrast, Schmidt spoke on the record in denouncing as "an absolute work of fiction" a New York Times account of the process by which the McCain campaign vetted Palin. He also charged that Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman was predicting that the governor might have to step down as McCain's vice presidential choice.
Fineman said that he has "never, ever said that," and that he has pointed out positive aspects of Palin's candidacy. "They decided a long time ago that they were going to work the refs," he said.
The lead author of the Times report, Elisabeth Bumiller, said she is "completely confident about the story." As for the campaign's criticism, she said: "This is what they do. It's part of their operation."
McCain also canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Tuesday in retaliation for an interview a day earlier in which prime-time host Campbell Brown repeatedly pressed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds to provide one example of a decision that Palin had made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.
"The interview was totally fair," Brown said. "I was trying to get an answer. I was persistent, but I was respectful. That's my job. Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin."
Schmidt, a former spokesman for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talked openly about his frustrations in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the McCain camp is in the middle of the worst media "feeding frenzy" he has ever seen.
The fact that unsubstantiated allegations appear on the Internet "is not a license for smearing" Palin, he said. "The campaign has been inundated by hundreds and hundreds of calls from some of the most respected reporters and news organizations. Many reporters have called the campaign and have apologized for asking the questions and said, 'Our editors are making us do this, and I am ashamed.' "
The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain's running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.
The site's founder, Markos Moulitsas, said he did not know the contributor's identity but thought that the admittedly "weird" pregnancy questions were a legitimate line of inquiry that he should not suppress.
Some journalists, Schmidt said, have demanded to see Trig's birth certificate, or have asked when Palin went into labor and whether her contractions increased or decreased as she traveled from Texas to an Alaskan hospital in her home town, Wasilla. Others, he said, have asked whether Palin's eldest son, Track, who serves in the Army and is deploying to Iraq, is a drug addict. "Categorically false," Schmidt said, adding: "This is crazy."
News organizations routinely ask questions about allegations in an attempt to determine their veracity, and Schmidt did not contend that they were publishing or broadcasting false information about Palin and her family. But he said the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter than about Obama's real estate deal with fundraiser Tony Rezko, who recently was convicted on corruption charges. Obama has called that transaction a "boneheaded mistake."
Bloggers on the left and right increasingly drive media coverage by turning up the volume on questions until they are difficult to ignore. Sometimes they are right, as when they questioned what CBS's Dan Rather said were National Guard documents in a 2004 report on President Bush's military service that led to Rather's ouster as the network's anchor. And sometimes they are wrong. Last year, the New Republic retracted a soldier's dispatch on petty wartime cruelty in Iraq, and National Review Online acknowledged that two blog postings by a former Marine about military movements in Lebanon were misleading.
Major newspapers, magazines and networks no longer play their traditional gatekeeper role in the digital age, as was evident during the eight-month period when the National Enquirer was charging former senator John Edwards with fathering an out-of-wedlock baby. Most national news outlets did not report the allegations until last month, when Edwards acknowledged an affair with a former campaign aide but denied being her child's father.
Still, traditional media outlets can amplify and legitimize such reports, which might be why the McCain campaign is fighting so hard to keep the Palin allegations confined to the Internet. Denouncing the news media as biased also plays well with many Republican voters.
Palin has been unavailable to the media since she became McCain's surprise choice Friday, adding to the difficulties for news organizations pursuing stories about her life and career. Campaign manager Rick Davis said it would be unrealistic for her to grant interviews as she prepares for "the most important speech of her life," her acceptance address at the convention here. Schmidt said she will be made available for interviews after the convention, a similar timetable followed by Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.).
Perhaps the greatest concern to the McCain campaign is that the constant inquiries, amplified by cable television debates over whether a mother with a pregnant daughter and four other children can effectively function as vice president, will create a perception that her nomination is in trouble. "We are being bombarded by e-mails and phone calls from journalists asking when she will be dropping out of the race," Schmidt said.
One final thought: There is more of a distinction than Schmidt is willing to grant between asking and publishing. I remember Marcia Kramer of New York's WCBS-TV telling me how sheepish she felt calling Eliot Spitzer's office and asking about a tip that the governor had patronized prostitutes. Days later, he was gone. Sometimes you have to ask the question. But we in the media have to be careful that we don't overplay our hand on the Palin situation.
If your media diet hasn't reached the saturation point, check out my piece on a secret meeting of Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and Barack Obama.
The Republican convention is only halfway over, and complaints about the press are rising, as the L.A. Times reports:
"Delegates to the Republican National Convention whirled in their seats en masse and called out from the floor: 'Tell the truth! Tell the truth!' The chants and finger-wagging were directed toward the sky boxes. Their target: the television networks and the rest of the 'liberal mainstream media.'
"It happened 20 years ago, as the GOP gathered in New Orleans, Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak recalled this week. But the scene could have come from the convention floor Tuesday in St. Paul, where the Republican faithful began working out once again on a favorite punching bag. Their goal: to lessen the burden on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, five election cycles after the media were lambasted because it dared to question the credentials of another would-be vice president, Dan Quayle. The GOP deployed its principal spokespeople, elected officials, delegates and cable television surrogates with one essential message: Mess with our gal, Sarah, or her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and we will mess with you."
Politico:
"The culture wars are making a sudden and unexpected encore in American politics, turning more ferocious virtually by the hour as activists on both sides of the ideological divide react to the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket . . .
"The selection of Palin -- a new heroine of social conservatives -- has helped reignite not only abortion but also other flash-point issues in a way few of McCain's other vice presidential options would have done. Conservatives see her as a kindred spirit who lives her anti-abortion words in the most profound way: by giving birth to a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Gun owners see her as authentically one of them: a hunter with a passion for the outdoors and gun freedom.
"Social liberals agree -- and are proving just as ready for combat on issues that many operatives and analysts believed would have less relevance in an Obama-McCain campaign."
Here's more on how teed off the McCain team is, from the Huffington Post:
"In a recent email to the press, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers wrote: 'All: I know that the Obama campaign is pushing around many false attacks on Governor Palin, and wanted to make sure you had the facts. The allegations that Gov. Palin was a member of Alaska Independence Party are false. She's never been a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Gov. Palin has been a registered Republican ever since 1982, as the records attached show. It would be nice if the media outlets covering this garbage actually did their due diligence in reporting, and didn't just push Obama campaign/Daily Kos smears.' "
Uh-oh: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."
The depth of the culture war should be apparent from this New Republic essay by Alan Wolfe:
"Sarah Palin's nomination is a public service. No longer will we hear lectures from the likes of Newt Gingrich telling poor women on welfare how to conduct their sex lives. Focus on the Family will have to focus on a different kind of family. William Bennett has no virtues left to write about. At long last our national nightmare over sexual hypocrisy has come to an end, and we can all thank John McCain for that.
"And that is not all. In rushing to Sarah Palin's defense, the leaders of the Christian right have made it abundantly clear how they define a Christian. We don't care if you sin. We are not bothered if you put your ambition ahead of the needs of your children. If you have lied or broken the law, we will look the other way. It all comes down to your stand on guns and fetuses. Vote the right way, and you have our blessing. If any proof were needed that James Dobson is a political operative rather than a spiritual leader, his jumping on the Palin bandwagon offers it."
While praising Obama and Biden for declaring Palin's kids off-limits, National Review is disgusted with the MSM:
"The New York Times's webpage on Tuesday led with no fewer than three stories about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. CNN has tried to exploit Miss Palin as a laboratory specimen for a high-profile examination of sex-education. MSNBC and the Huffington Post are titillating viewers with exposes on Miss Palin's boyfriend. Slate, owned by the Washington Post, is running a 'Name Bristol Palin's Baby' contest. US Weekly has 'Babies, Lies, and Scandal' on its cover.
"But unsavory as all this is, it can't hold a candle to Andrew Sullivan. Once a respectable journalist, The Atlantic's self-declared champion of respect for privacy and of civil discourse now obsesses over Miss Palin, airing baseless and abhorrent questions about the motherhood of Trig, Gov. Palin's infant son, born this year with Down syndrome. One wonders if David Bradley bought The Atlantic -- a venerable institution that once published Mark Twain and Martin Luther King -- so that he could associate it with the most despicable ravings of the left-wing blogosphere. What price in reputation is Bradley willing to pay for increased unique-visitor numbers from among the fever swamps?
"This shameful but predictable media performance stands in marked contrast to the rigorous 'hands-off' privacy policy dutifully honored by the press throughout the Clinton years for the president's then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. Indeed earlier this year, though Miss Clinton was now well into her twenties and an impressively poised surrogate for her mother's campaign, NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for asserting that Sen. Clinton's campaign was 'pimping' her daughter -- a classless formulation, to be sure. But where's the hyper-sensitivity about a candidate's child now?
"When Al Gore's son was arrested on narcotics and speeding charges in 2007, moreover, the national press was a model of sympathetic restraint. The muted coverage was devoid of calls for a national "teaching moment" on drug abuse or responsible driving. The message was plain and correct: No news here, move along. The Republican base and other people of good will are angry over this grotesque display. It is obvious what the media and Democrats are up to here. They want to define Sarah Palin as a failure before she even has a chance to succeed."
By the way, the McCain camp denies ABC's report that Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, although she did speak at its 2000 convention.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; 1:19 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090300711.html
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 3 -- I've talked to many political professionals over the years who were mad at the media, or me in particular.
But I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.
He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.
Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt -- a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist -- really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.
That doesn't make his accusations right. But it does suggest to me that a brewing conflict between McCain and his media chroniclers -- one that makes the ol' Straight Talk Express days a distant memory -- has reached the boiling point. And that there are gender and cultural issues swirling around Palin's nomination that would have created conflict even without the added complication of her daughter's pregnancy.
Let's get straight to the news:
Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life.
In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage.
Arguing that the media queries are being fueled by "every rumor and smear" posted on left-wing Web sites, Schmidt said mainstream journalists are giving "closer scrutiny" to McCain's little-known running mate than to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The McCain camp has been unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to hope to persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin. Obama campaign officials have complained to news organizations that their man has been subjected to considerably more investigative reporting than McCain has, but they have done so in more low-key fashion.
By contrast, Schmidt spoke on the record in denouncing as "an absolute work of fiction" a New York Times account of the process by which the McCain campaign vetted Palin. He also charged that Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman was predicting that the governor might have to step down as McCain's vice presidential choice.
Fineman said that he has "never, ever said that," and that he has pointed out positive aspects of Palin's candidacy. "They decided a long time ago that they were going to work the refs," he said.
The lead author of the Times report, Elisabeth Bumiller, said she is "completely confident about the story." As for the campaign's criticism, she said: "This is what they do. It's part of their operation."
McCain also canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Tuesday in retaliation for an interview a day earlier in which prime-time host Campbell Brown repeatedly pressed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds to provide one example of a decision that Palin had made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.
"The interview was totally fair," Brown said. "I was trying to get an answer. I was persistent, but I was respectful. That's my job. Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin."
Schmidt, a former spokesman for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talked openly about his frustrations in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the McCain camp is in the middle of the worst media "feeding frenzy" he has ever seen.
The fact that unsubstantiated allegations appear on the Internet "is not a license for smearing" Palin, he said. "The campaign has been inundated by hundreds and hundreds of calls from some of the most respected reporters and news organizations. Many reporters have called the campaign and have apologized for asking the questions and said, 'Our editors are making us do this, and I am ashamed.' "
The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain's running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.
The site's founder, Markos Moulitsas, said he did not know the contributor's identity but thought that the admittedly "weird" pregnancy questions were a legitimate line of inquiry that he should not suppress.
Some journalists, Schmidt said, have demanded to see Trig's birth certificate, or have asked when Palin went into labor and whether her contractions increased or decreased as she traveled from Texas to an Alaskan hospital in her home town, Wasilla. Others, he said, have asked whether Palin's eldest son, Track, who serves in the Army and is deploying to Iraq, is a drug addict. "Categorically false," Schmidt said, adding: "This is crazy."
News organizations routinely ask questions about allegations in an attempt to determine their veracity, and Schmidt did not contend that they were publishing or broadcasting false information about Palin and her family. But he said the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter than about Obama's real estate deal with fundraiser Tony Rezko, who recently was convicted on corruption charges. Obama has called that transaction a "boneheaded mistake."
Bloggers on the left and right increasingly drive media coverage by turning up the volume on questions until they are difficult to ignore. Sometimes they are right, as when they questioned what CBS's Dan Rather said were National Guard documents in a 2004 report on President Bush's military service that led to Rather's ouster as the network's anchor. And sometimes they are wrong. Last year, the New Republic retracted a soldier's dispatch on petty wartime cruelty in Iraq, and National Review Online acknowledged that two blog postings by a former Marine about military movements in Lebanon were misleading.
Major newspapers, magazines and networks no longer play their traditional gatekeeper role in the digital age, as was evident during the eight-month period when the National Enquirer was charging former senator John Edwards with fathering an out-of-wedlock baby. Most national news outlets did not report the allegations until last month, when Edwards acknowledged an affair with a former campaign aide but denied being her child's father.
Still, traditional media outlets can amplify and legitimize such reports, which might be why the McCain campaign is fighting so hard to keep the Palin allegations confined to the Internet. Denouncing the news media as biased also plays well with many Republican voters.
Palin has been unavailable to the media since she became McCain's surprise choice Friday, adding to the difficulties for news organizations pursuing stories about her life and career. Campaign manager Rick Davis said it would be unrealistic for her to grant interviews as she prepares for "the most important speech of her life," her acceptance address at the convention here. Schmidt said she will be made available for interviews after the convention, a similar timetable followed by Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.).
Perhaps the greatest concern to the McCain campaign is that the constant inquiries, amplified by cable television debates over whether a mother with a pregnant daughter and four other children can effectively function as vice president, will create a perception that her nomination is in trouble. "We are being bombarded by e-mails and phone calls from journalists asking when she will be dropping out of the race," Schmidt said.
One final thought: There is more of a distinction than Schmidt is willing to grant between asking and publishing. I remember Marcia Kramer of New York's WCBS-TV telling me how sheepish she felt calling Eliot Spitzer's office and asking about a tip that the governor had patronized prostitutes. Days later, he was gone. Sometimes you have to ask the question. But we in the media have to be careful that we don't overplay our hand on the Palin situation.
If your media diet hasn't reached the saturation point, check out my piece on a secret meeting of Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and Barack Obama.
The Republican convention is only halfway over, and complaints about the press are rising, as the L.A. Times reports:
"Delegates to the Republican National Convention whirled in their seats en masse and called out from the floor: 'Tell the truth! Tell the truth!' The chants and finger-wagging were directed toward the sky boxes. Their target: the television networks and the rest of the 'liberal mainstream media.'
"It happened 20 years ago, as the GOP gathered in New Orleans, Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak recalled this week. But the scene could have come from the convention floor Tuesday in St. Paul, where the Republican faithful began working out once again on a favorite punching bag. Their goal: to lessen the burden on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, five election cycles after the media were lambasted because it dared to question the credentials of another would-be vice president, Dan Quayle. The GOP deployed its principal spokespeople, elected officials, delegates and cable television surrogates with one essential message: Mess with our gal, Sarah, or her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and we will mess with you."
Politico:
"The culture wars are making a sudden and unexpected encore in American politics, turning more ferocious virtually by the hour as activists on both sides of the ideological divide react to the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket . . .
"The selection of Palin -- a new heroine of social conservatives -- has helped reignite not only abortion but also other flash-point issues in a way few of McCain's other vice presidential options would have done. Conservatives see her as a kindred spirit who lives her anti-abortion words in the most profound way: by giving birth to a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Gun owners see her as authentically one of them: a hunter with a passion for the outdoors and gun freedom.
"Social liberals agree -- and are proving just as ready for combat on issues that many operatives and analysts believed would have less relevance in an Obama-McCain campaign."
Here's more on how teed off the McCain team is, from the Huffington Post:
"In a recent email to the press, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers wrote: 'All: I know that the Obama campaign is pushing around many false attacks on Governor Palin, and wanted to make sure you had the facts. The allegations that Gov. Palin was a member of Alaska Independence Party are false. She's never been a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Gov. Palin has been a registered Republican ever since 1982, as the records attached show. It would be nice if the media outlets covering this garbage actually did their due diligence in reporting, and didn't just push Obama campaign/Daily Kos smears.' "
Uh-oh: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."
The depth of the culture war should be apparent from this New Republic essay by Alan Wolfe:
"Sarah Palin's nomination is a public service. No longer will we hear lectures from the likes of Newt Gingrich telling poor women on welfare how to conduct their sex lives. Focus on the Family will have to focus on a different kind of family. William Bennett has no virtues left to write about. At long last our national nightmare over sexual hypocrisy has come to an end, and we can all thank John McCain for that.
"And that is not all. In rushing to Sarah Palin's defense, the leaders of the Christian right have made it abundantly clear how they define a Christian. We don't care if you sin. We are not bothered if you put your ambition ahead of the needs of your children. If you have lied or broken the law, we will look the other way. It all comes down to your stand on guns and fetuses. Vote the right way, and you have our blessing. If any proof were needed that James Dobson is a political operative rather than a spiritual leader, his jumping on the Palin bandwagon offers it."
While praising Obama and Biden for declaring Palin's kids off-limits, National Review is disgusted with the MSM:
"The New York Times's webpage on Tuesday led with no fewer than three stories about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. CNN has tried to exploit Miss Palin as a laboratory specimen for a high-profile examination of sex-education. MSNBC and the Huffington Post are titillating viewers with exposes on Miss Palin's boyfriend. Slate, owned by the Washington Post, is running a 'Name Bristol Palin's Baby' contest. US Weekly has 'Babies, Lies, and Scandal' on its cover.
"But unsavory as all this is, it can't hold a candle to Andrew Sullivan. Once a respectable journalist, The Atlantic's self-declared champion of respect for privacy and of civil discourse now obsesses over Miss Palin, airing baseless and abhorrent questions about the motherhood of Trig, Gov. Palin's infant son, born this year with Down syndrome. One wonders if David Bradley bought The Atlantic -- a venerable institution that once published Mark Twain and Martin Luther King -- so that he could associate it with the most despicable ravings of the left-wing blogosphere. What price in reputation is Bradley willing to pay for increased unique-visitor numbers from among the fever swamps?
"This shameful but predictable media performance stands in marked contrast to the rigorous 'hands-off' privacy policy dutifully honored by the press throughout the Clinton years for the president's then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. Indeed earlier this year, though Miss Clinton was now well into her twenties and an impressively poised surrogate for her mother's campaign, NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for asserting that Sen. Clinton's campaign was 'pimping' her daughter -- a classless formulation, to be sure. But where's the hyper-sensitivity about a candidate's child now?
"When Al Gore's son was arrested on narcotics and speeding charges in 2007, moreover, the national press was a model of sympathetic restraint. The muted coverage was devoid of calls for a national "teaching moment" on drug abuse or responsible driving. The message was plain and correct: No news here, move along. The Republican base and other people of good will are angry over this grotesque display. It is obvious what the media and Democrats are up to here. They want to define Sarah Palin as a failure before she even has a chance to succeed."
By the way, the McCain camp denies ABC's report that Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, although she did speak at its 2000 convention.
McCain Manager SLAMS the New York Times
Listen to the clip at
http://politicalhub.tv/2008/09/22/supporter-at-mccain-townhall-condemns-medias-coverage-of-palin/
IT'S ABOUT TIME someone from the McCain campaign laid into them! Way to go, Steve Schmidt!
Transcript for those who don't want to listen to the clip:
Let me first say we are First Amendment absolutists on this campaign. The press and anybody who wishes to cover this race from a blogosphere perspective or from a media perspective is of course constitutionally protected with regard to writing whatever they want to write.
But let’s be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama. There is no level of public vetting with regard to Sen. Obama’s record, his background, his past statements. There is no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads. This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let’s not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is. Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective, that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate, in this case John McCain, and advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.
http://politicalhub.tv/2008/09/22/supporter-at-mccain-townhall-condemns-medias-coverage-of-palin/
IT'S ABOUT TIME someone from the McCain campaign laid into them! Way to go, Steve Schmidt!
Transcript for those who don't want to listen to the clip:
Let me first say we are First Amendment absolutists on this campaign. The press and anybody who wishes to cover this race from a blogosphere perspective or from a media perspective is of course constitutionally protected with regard to writing whatever they want to write.
But let’s be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama. There is no level of public vetting with regard to Sen. Obama’s record, his background, his past statements. There is no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads. This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let’s not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is. Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective, that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate, in this case John McCain, and advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.
Woman Expresses Outrage Over the Media Hounding of Sarah Palin
You've got to watch this--click play on the CNN Vide0
http://patriotroom.com/?p=2277
http://patriotroom.com/?p=2277
Palin Rips Obama Again
Palin ripped Obama to shreds in media in Pennsylvania, last night.
PALIN: Our opponent, he likes to point the finger of blame, but tell me: Has he ever lifted a finger to help?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: Has he ever reached out a reformer's hand to the other side of the aisle?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: In order to get others to say "yes" to change, has he ever told his own party "no"?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: When it comes to reform, he likes to say, "I will," but has he ever been able to say, "We did?"
AUDIENCE: Noooo!
Barak Obama: More lies for America.
Source: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092308/content/01125111.guest.html
PALIN: Our opponent, he likes to point the finger of blame, but tell me: Has he ever lifted a finger to help?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: Has he ever reached out a reformer's hand to the other side of the aisle?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: In order to get others to say "yes" to change, has he ever told his own party "no"?
AUDIENCE: No!
PALIN: When it comes to reform, he likes to say, "I will," but has he ever been able to say, "We did?"
AUDIENCE: Noooo!
Barak Obama: More lies for America.
Source: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092308/content/01125111.guest.html
Where Democrats Get Their Talking Points
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/where-the-democrats-get-their-talking-points
From Communist Party Of The United States:
Save Main Street Not Wall Street!
Author: CPUSA
First published 09/22/2008
Statement of the Communist Party USA
The Bush Administration has proposed a massive bailout plan of at least $700 billion (maybe as much as $1.7 trillion) to stabilize the financial system amid the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee, and the President are pushing for the U.S. Congress to rapidly pass the plan this week with little debate and no amendments. The rightwing and the banks want a plan that gives a blank check to Wall Street with no oversight.
We join with others who call on Congress to slow down the process to ensure there is no bailout of Wall Street without a bailout of Main Street. The process should include full debate and transparency.
While the full extent of the current crisis and its impact on working people cannot now be fully known, we do know that the crisis is deep and not easily resolved. Furthermore, we must insist that the criteria for any plan to solve the crisis must be what’s good for the working people of this county and the world, not what’s good for the mega-rich and massive monopolies that got us into this mess.
The situation is so dire that some type of dramatic action is needed to avoid disaster for U.S. workers. Organized labor, community groups and others are increasingly angry at the bailout currently on the table. Any plan before Congress must:
1) Protect homeowners faced with foreclosure by restructuring mortgage rates to be in line with family income.
2) Create economic stimulus for working people and small business
3) Provide $100 billion in emergency relief to state and local governments wracked with budget cuts and diminished tax revenue
4) Bar CEO severance packages and cap the pay of executives receiving a bailout
5) Regulate banking and finance with transparent public oversight
6) Maintain public control over monopolies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have a decisive role in the economy
7) Control speculation and increase revenues by taxing large financial transactions
8) Ban predatory lending and cap interest rates on all types of debts
9) End the war in Iraq, which is draining $700 million a day from public coffers
Developments are moving quickly and their full impact has yet to be felt, but let’s make sure that American workers—those who made this country rich—do not further suffer at the expense of the financial elites, those who have created this crisis.
Call Congress today! Tell them no blank check for Wall Street!
National Board
Communist Party USA
From Communist Party Of The United States:
Save Main Street Not Wall Street!
Author: CPUSA
First published 09/22/2008
Statement of the Communist Party USA
The Bush Administration has proposed a massive bailout plan of at least $700 billion (maybe as much as $1.7 trillion) to stabilize the financial system amid the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee, and the President are pushing for the U.S. Congress to rapidly pass the plan this week with little debate and no amendments. The rightwing and the banks want a plan that gives a blank check to Wall Street with no oversight.
We join with others who call on Congress to slow down the process to ensure there is no bailout of Wall Street without a bailout of Main Street. The process should include full debate and transparency.
While the full extent of the current crisis and its impact on working people cannot now be fully known, we do know that the crisis is deep and not easily resolved. Furthermore, we must insist that the criteria for any plan to solve the crisis must be what’s good for the working people of this county and the world, not what’s good for the mega-rich and massive monopolies that got us into this mess.
The situation is so dire that some type of dramatic action is needed to avoid disaster for U.S. workers. Organized labor, community groups and others are increasingly angry at the bailout currently on the table. Any plan before Congress must:
1) Protect homeowners faced with foreclosure by restructuring mortgage rates to be in line with family income.
2) Create economic stimulus for working people and small business
3) Provide $100 billion in emergency relief to state and local governments wracked with budget cuts and diminished tax revenue
4) Bar CEO severance packages and cap the pay of executives receiving a bailout
5) Regulate banking and finance with transparent public oversight
6) Maintain public control over monopolies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have a decisive role in the economy
7) Control speculation and increase revenues by taxing large financial transactions
8) Ban predatory lending and cap interest rates on all types of debts
9) End the war in Iraq, which is draining $700 million a day from public coffers
Developments are moving quickly and their full impact has yet to be felt, but let’s make sure that American workers—those who made this country rich—do not further suffer at the expense of the financial elites, those who have created this crisis.
Call Congress today! Tell them no blank check for Wall Street!
National Board
Communist Party USA
CPUSA And Obama Platforms Are Identical
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/cpusa-and-obama-platforms-are-identical
Forget for the moment about Bill Ayers and Obama’s other Communist friends and mentors of the distant past.
Just behold the current ‘Election 2008′ brochure from the Communist Party Of The United States
Election 2008
Help Make History
Turn Our Country Around
A new day is dawning. Our country is at a turning point. This is a time of great possibility.
Issued as a public service by the Communist Party USA
The choice is clear. Stay with the Bush-McCain race to the bottom or raise up the whole country with a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4.
A new day is dawning. Our country is at a turning point. This is a time of great possibility. Across the land, people are coming together to reshape our nation’s priorities to make government “of, by and for the people” a reality.
From the Midwest to the South, from coast to coast, in big cities and rural communities voters have turned out in record numbers for change.
A landslide vote on November 4 can open the way to recovery from the very deep wounds of the Bush administration and decades of corporate right-wing control.
There is a crisis in every critical area of national life. Profits at the top are record high, but families can’t make ends meet. Trillions are squandered in Iraq, but 45 million are without health care. Billions are spent on tax breaks to the super rich, but working families are losing their homes and young people can’t afford higher education.
Working people want bold new policies to end war restore democratic traditions and create green living wage jobs, affordable housing, healthcare and quality education for everyone.
Republican John McCain, the candidate of the military industrial complex, will continue the Bush agenda. “100 years” in Iraq, Social Security privatization, and tax cuts for the rich. His Republican partners in Congress have blocked, stalled or gutted every bill that benefits working people since they lost majority control in 2006.
Although the ultra-right is weakened and divided, they continue to push fear, division, racism and anti-immigrant bigotry in this year’s elections, aided and abetted by the corporate media. These multi-pronged poisonous tactics can only be overcome with unbreakable unity.
The choice is clear. Stay with the Bush-McCain race to the bottom or raise up the whole country with a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4.
Voters are demanding a new kind of politics to rebuild our country for the common good. A democratic spirit of unity and hope is inspiring millions to get involved.
During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, unemployed workers and their allies marched and organized until public works jobs, Social Security and New Deal programs were won. In the 1960’s the great civil rights movement won the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
In 2008, union members, African Americans, Latinos, youth and women, seniors, environmental and peace voters are forging a powerful new all encompassing movement that makes great changes possible.
Help make history. Talk with co-workers, neighbors, friends and family. Volunteer to knock on doors, make calls, get online to turnout a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4, and keep the movement going.
EMERGENCY PROGRAM TO REPAIR, RENEW AND REBUILD
We offer these proposals as a contribution toward the bold policy changes necessary to meet the immediate needs of working people, eliminate poverty and move our country forward with a new President and Congress. Funding to come from monies now being spent on the Iraq war, military budget and tax breaks to the super rich.
1. Immediate Relief
A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Reset mortgages so payments are affordable. No bail outs for banks.
Extend unemployment compensation, increase payments and eligibility. Increase food stamps, WIC, children’s health insurance, and low income energy assistance.
Assist deficit-ridden state and local governments so they can preserve services and jobs. Fund “ready-to-go” infrastructure projects.
EMERGENCY PROGRAM TO REPAIR, RENEW AND REBUILD
2. A Peacetime, Green Jobs Economy for All
Enact massive public works job creation to make existing buildings energy efficient, construct new schools, hospitals, affordable housing, mass transit and bridges. Priority to areas hurt by loss of manufacturing, loss of family farms and highest unemployment areas including the Katrina-devastated Gulf Coast.
Major clean, affordable energy development project for solar, wind and biomass electricity generation. Immediate program to cut greenhouse gas emissions and for environmental cleanup. Restore Federal energy regulation and encourage public ownership of utilities.
Enact the Employee Free Choice Act to enable workers to form unions without intimidation and win higher wages and benefits, dignity and respect.
Enact HR 676 the US National Health Insurance Act to provide universal health insurance with single-payer financing. Fully fund public education from pre-school through higher education and technical training. No privatization of Social Security or Medicare. Expand and improve benefits.
3. Restore Civil Rights, the Bill of Rights and Separation of Powers
Restore Civil Rights Act enforcement, affirmative action in employment, education, and housing. End the “school to prison” pipeline. Outlaw hate crimes. Preserve Roe v. Wade.
Pass immigration reform with legalization, a path to citizenship, due process, no militarization of the borders, and no exploitative guest worker programs. No human being is illegal.
Repeal Patriot Act. Restore Habeas Corpus rights. No more torture. Investigate and prosecute Bush administration violations of the Constitution.
Expand voting rights. Enact publicly financed elections, same day registration, voting rights for ex-felons, verifiable voting equipment, and instant runoff voting. Restore Fairness Doctrine in media.
4. Strength through Peace
Withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq with no bases or U.S. corporations left behind. Full care for returning veterans. No war on Iran or expansion of troops in Afghanistan. Assistance to Iraqi people to rebuild their country.
Adopt a new foreign policy of diplomacy and respect for all nations, instead of preemptive war for corporate interests. Renew commitment to UN peace role.
End trade policies that enrich corporations while destroying jobs. Ratify Kyoto Treaty and other climate change agreements.
Enforce nuclear non-proliferation, work to abolish nuclear weapons. Cut Pentagon spending in half, close down US bases around the world.
Vote November 4 as if your life, and your future, depend on it!
Defeating the right wing is the first step in the struggle to end exploitation, poverty, racism and war inherent in capitalism.
The Communist Party USA and Young Communist League participate in today’s movements confident that they set the stage for more fundamental change tomorrow.
Throughout our 88-year history we have defended the interests of the working class, fighting for unity and democratic rights. Today we are guided by our motto, “People and Nature Before Profits.”
Our vision is a socialist USA, that opens the way for equality, world peace, real democracy, a society in which people control their own destinies in a sustainable world.
For our full program visit http://www.cpusa.org
We invite you to join us. Issued as a public service by the Communist Party USA
For comments or more information call: 212-989-4994 or e-mail: politicalaction@cpusa.org
Young Communist League http://www.yclusa.org
Peoples Weekly World / Nuestro Mundo http://www.pww.org
Political Affairs http://www.politicalaffairs.net
In case anyone is confused about the ultimate goals of the CPUSA, they have been kind enough to post online their “Program Of The Communist Party USA.”
Maybe we should offer a prize to anyone who can find one scintilla of divergence between what the CPUSA want and what Obama and the rest of the Democrats want.
Forget for the moment about Bill Ayers and Obama’s other Communist friends and mentors of the distant past.
Just behold the current ‘Election 2008′ brochure from the Communist Party Of The United States
Election 2008
Help Make History
Turn Our Country Around
A new day is dawning. Our country is at a turning point. This is a time of great possibility.
Issued as a public service by the Communist Party USA
The choice is clear. Stay with the Bush-McCain race to the bottom or raise up the whole country with a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4.
A new day is dawning. Our country is at a turning point. This is a time of great possibility. Across the land, people are coming together to reshape our nation’s priorities to make government “of, by and for the people” a reality.
From the Midwest to the South, from coast to coast, in big cities and rural communities voters have turned out in record numbers for change.
A landslide vote on November 4 can open the way to recovery from the very deep wounds of the Bush administration and decades of corporate right-wing control.
There is a crisis in every critical area of national life. Profits at the top are record high, but families can’t make ends meet. Trillions are squandered in Iraq, but 45 million are without health care. Billions are spent on tax breaks to the super rich, but working families are losing their homes and young people can’t afford higher education.
Working people want bold new policies to end war restore democratic traditions and create green living wage jobs, affordable housing, healthcare and quality education for everyone.
Republican John McCain, the candidate of the military industrial complex, will continue the Bush agenda. “100 years” in Iraq, Social Security privatization, and tax cuts for the rich. His Republican partners in Congress have blocked, stalled or gutted every bill that benefits working people since they lost majority control in 2006.
Although the ultra-right is weakened and divided, they continue to push fear, division, racism and anti-immigrant bigotry in this year’s elections, aided and abetted by the corporate media. These multi-pronged poisonous tactics can only be overcome with unbreakable unity.
The choice is clear. Stay with the Bush-McCain race to the bottom or raise up the whole country with a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4.
Voters are demanding a new kind of politics to rebuild our country for the common good. A democratic spirit of unity and hope is inspiring millions to get involved.
During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, unemployed workers and their allies marched and organized until public works jobs, Social Security and New Deal programs were won. In the 1960’s the great civil rights movement won the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
In 2008, union members, African Americans, Latinos, youth and women, seniors, environmental and peace voters are forging a powerful new all encompassing movement that makes great changes possible.
Help make history. Talk with co-workers, neighbors, friends and family. Volunteer to knock on doors, make calls, get online to turnout a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right on November 4, and keep the movement going.
EMERGENCY PROGRAM TO REPAIR, RENEW AND REBUILD
We offer these proposals as a contribution toward the bold policy changes necessary to meet the immediate needs of working people, eliminate poverty and move our country forward with a new President and Congress. Funding to come from monies now being spent on the Iraq war, military budget and tax breaks to the super rich.
1. Immediate Relief
A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Reset mortgages so payments are affordable. No bail outs for banks.
Extend unemployment compensation, increase payments and eligibility. Increase food stamps, WIC, children’s health insurance, and low income energy assistance.
Assist deficit-ridden state and local governments so they can preserve services and jobs. Fund “ready-to-go” infrastructure projects.
EMERGENCY PROGRAM TO REPAIR, RENEW AND REBUILD
2. A Peacetime, Green Jobs Economy for All
Enact massive public works job creation to make existing buildings energy efficient, construct new schools, hospitals, affordable housing, mass transit and bridges. Priority to areas hurt by loss of manufacturing, loss of family farms and highest unemployment areas including the Katrina-devastated Gulf Coast.
Major clean, affordable energy development project for solar, wind and biomass electricity generation. Immediate program to cut greenhouse gas emissions and for environmental cleanup. Restore Federal energy regulation and encourage public ownership of utilities.
Enact the Employee Free Choice Act to enable workers to form unions without intimidation and win higher wages and benefits, dignity and respect.
Enact HR 676 the US National Health Insurance Act to provide universal health insurance with single-payer financing. Fully fund public education from pre-school through higher education and technical training. No privatization of Social Security or Medicare. Expand and improve benefits.
3. Restore Civil Rights, the Bill of Rights and Separation of Powers
Restore Civil Rights Act enforcement, affirmative action in employment, education, and housing. End the “school to prison” pipeline. Outlaw hate crimes. Preserve Roe v. Wade.
Pass immigration reform with legalization, a path to citizenship, due process, no militarization of the borders, and no exploitative guest worker programs. No human being is illegal.
Repeal Patriot Act. Restore Habeas Corpus rights. No more torture. Investigate and prosecute Bush administration violations of the Constitution.
Expand voting rights. Enact publicly financed elections, same day registration, voting rights for ex-felons, verifiable voting equipment, and instant runoff voting. Restore Fairness Doctrine in media.
4. Strength through Peace
Withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq with no bases or U.S. corporations left behind. Full care for returning veterans. No war on Iran or expansion of troops in Afghanistan. Assistance to Iraqi people to rebuild their country.
Adopt a new foreign policy of diplomacy and respect for all nations, instead of preemptive war for corporate interests. Renew commitment to UN peace role.
End trade policies that enrich corporations while destroying jobs. Ratify Kyoto Treaty and other climate change agreements.
Enforce nuclear non-proliferation, work to abolish nuclear weapons. Cut Pentagon spending in half, close down US bases around the world.
Vote November 4 as if your life, and your future, depend on it!
Defeating the right wing is the first step in the struggle to end exploitation, poverty, racism and war inherent in capitalism.
The Communist Party USA and Young Communist League participate in today’s movements confident that they set the stage for more fundamental change tomorrow.
Throughout our 88-year history we have defended the interests of the working class, fighting for unity and democratic rights. Today we are guided by our motto, “People and Nature Before Profits.”
Our vision is a socialist USA, that opens the way for equality, world peace, real democracy, a society in which people control their own destinies in a sustainable world.
For our full program visit http://www.cpusa.org
We invite you to join us. Issued as a public service by the Communist Party USA
For comments or more information call: 212-989-4994 or e-mail: politicalaction@cpusa.org
Young Communist League http://www.yclusa.org
Peoples Weekly World / Nuestro Mundo http://www.pww.org
Political Affairs http://www.politicalaffairs.net
In case anyone is confused about the ultimate goals of the CPUSA, they have been kind enough to post online their “Program Of The Communist Party USA.”
Maybe we should offer a prize to anyone who can find one scintilla of divergence between what the CPUSA want and what Obama and the rest of the Democrats want.
Biden Bill to Blame for Foreclosure Crisis
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/biden-bill-to-blame-for-foreclosure-crisis
Should Biden Share Blame for Foreclosure Crisis?
Experts: Many Americans Lost Homes Due to a Bill Championed by Biden
By JUSTIN ROOD
August 28, 2008—Experts say hundreds of thousands of Americans may have lost their homes due to a bill championed by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.
At least two studies have concluded that the United States’ foreclosure crisis was exacerbated by a 2005 law that overhauled the nation’s bankruptcy law. That conclusion is echoed by other experts, although the banking and credit industry disputes it.
Congressional Republicans drove the effort to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005. But Biden who has enjoyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from credit industry executives endorsed the measure early on and worked to gather Democratic support for it.
Biden’s early and vocal support was “essential” to the bill’s passage, said Travis Plunkett of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Consumer Federation, which opposed the measure. Biden “went out of his way to undermine criticism of the legislation,” and his efforts helped convince other Democrats to support the bill.
“Biden was a fairly strong proponent of that bankruptcy bill,” said Philip Corwin, a consultant for the American Bankers Association, which represents banks and lenders. However, Biden was “not in our pocket in any way,” he added.
Biden’s Senate office did not provide comment for this story.
Asked if the Obama/Biden campaign was concerned Biden’s record was a liability when discussing economic security, David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama/Biden campaign, said, “Barack Obama and Joe Biden have real solutions for struggling families in danger of losing their homes because of the Bush economy and abusive lending practices.”
BAPCPA “is directly responsible for the rising foreclosure rate since the end of 2005,” concluded a 2007 study by Credit Suisse. The law “increased foreclosures and the number of homes for sale,” echoed a July 2008 study by U.S. Treasury researcher David Bernstein. That study estimated the law had pushed foreclosures or forced sales on 200,000 homeowners since it went into effect, but noted that was a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation…
The bill was backed by banks and credit card companies including MBNA, which is headquartered in Delaware, Biden’s home state. They wanted the bill because it would make it harder for Americans to use bankruptcy to avoid repaying credit card debt. MBNA executives had been Biden’s single largest source of campaign donations, and MBNA has employed Biden’s son Hunter as a company executive, lobbyist and consultant. The Obama campaign has said Hunter Biden did no work for MBNA on the bankruptcy bill. MBNA has since been bought by Bank of America.
Over the past two years, sub-prime mortgage borrowing and a weakening economy have pushed increasing numbers of Americans into dire financial straits. Under the old rules, many could have declared bankruptcy, shed much of their debt, restructured their mortgages and held onto their homes, according to experts and the two reports.
But the 2005 law Biden championed made it more expensive and more difficult to declare bankruptcy, experts conclude. That forced hundreds of thousands of distressed homeowners to sell their homes, or default on their mortgages, after which the bank would sell their former home, according to the studies. That flood of homes going up for sale in an already-weakening market further depressed home prices, according to the two reports, snowballing into the current crisis.
BAPCPA “increased home foreclosures, increased the dollar value of financial assets in default, and put additional downward price pressure on real estate markets,” concluded the Bernstein report. Bernstein conducted the report as an individual, not as a representative the Treasury Department.
You can bet that this errant report from ABC is the first and last we will ever hear about this.
Should Biden Share Blame for Foreclosure Crisis?
Experts: Many Americans Lost Homes Due to a Bill Championed by Biden
By JUSTIN ROOD
August 28, 2008—Experts say hundreds of thousands of Americans may have lost their homes due to a bill championed by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.
At least two studies have concluded that the United States’ foreclosure crisis was exacerbated by a 2005 law that overhauled the nation’s bankruptcy law. That conclusion is echoed by other experts, although the banking and credit industry disputes it.
Congressional Republicans drove the effort to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005. But Biden who has enjoyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from credit industry executives endorsed the measure early on and worked to gather Democratic support for it.
Biden’s early and vocal support was “essential” to the bill’s passage, said Travis Plunkett of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Consumer Federation, which opposed the measure. Biden “went out of his way to undermine criticism of the legislation,” and his efforts helped convince other Democrats to support the bill.
“Biden was a fairly strong proponent of that bankruptcy bill,” said Philip Corwin, a consultant for the American Bankers Association, which represents banks and lenders. However, Biden was “not in our pocket in any way,” he added.
Biden’s Senate office did not provide comment for this story.
Asked if the Obama/Biden campaign was concerned Biden’s record was a liability when discussing economic security, David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama/Biden campaign, said, “Barack Obama and Joe Biden have real solutions for struggling families in danger of losing their homes because of the Bush economy and abusive lending practices.”
BAPCPA “is directly responsible for the rising foreclosure rate since the end of 2005,” concluded a 2007 study by Credit Suisse. The law “increased foreclosures and the number of homes for sale,” echoed a July 2008 study by U.S. Treasury researcher David Bernstein. That study estimated the law had pushed foreclosures or forced sales on 200,000 homeowners since it went into effect, but noted that was a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation…
The bill was backed by banks and credit card companies including MBNA, which is headquartered in Delaware, Biden’s home state. They wanted the bill because it would make it harder for Americans to use bankruptcy to avoid repaying credit card debt. MBNA executives had been Biden’s single largest source of campaign donations, and MBNA has employed Biden’s son Hunter as a company executive, lobbyist and consultant. The Obama campaign has said Hunter Biden did no work for MBNA on the bankruptcy bill. MBNA has since been bought by Bank of America.
Over the past two years, sub-prime mortgage borrowing and a weakening economy have pushed increasing numbers of Americans into dire financial straits. Under the old rules, many could have declared bankruptcy, shed much of their debt, restructured their mortgages and held onto their homes, according to experts and the two reports.
But the 2005 law Biden championed made it more expensive and more difficult to declare bankruptcy, experts conclude. That forced hundreds of thousands of distressed homeowners to sell their homes, or default on their mortgages, after which the bank would sell their former home, according to the studies. That flood of homes going up for sale in an already-weakening market further depressed home prices, according to the two reports, snowballing into the current crisis.
BAPCPA “increased home foreclosures, increased the dollar value of financial assets in default, and put additional downward price pressure on real estate markets,” concluded the Bernstein report. Bernstein conducted the report as an individual, not as a representative the Treasury Department.
You can bet that this errant report from ABC is the first and last we will ever hear about this.
Hollywood Celebrities For Obama...
If you're not convinced about voting for McCain-Palin, click on this link and see what the intellectual brainpower of Hollywood have to say about this year's election.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/suggested-mccain-ad-question-authority
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/suggested-mccain-ad-question-authority
Obama's Little Red Schoolhouse (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 8)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 11, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303347424914951
Schools: While Obama's children enjoy the best education money can buy, he wants to deny inner-city children the education change we can believe in — school choice. He prefers cradle-to-diploma collectivist education.
When Barack Obama collected the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers, he told the teachers that support for alternatives to the education monopoly amounted to "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."
He recently told an interviewer that he opposes school choice because "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom."
Not being left behind are Obama's daughters, who attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. There, tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When asked about it during last year's YouTube debate, Sen. Obama responded that it was "the best option" for his children. They had a choice Obama would deny others.
Obama has been completely silent about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The D.C. School Choice Act of 2003 established the federally funded voucher program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It lets students attend one of 60 participating nonpublic schools.
But it was funded only through the 2008-09 school year. Democrats such as D.C.'s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, want to kill the successful program, which shows that money is not the root of a good education.
Norton and Obama seem oblivious to the fact that District school spending is at $13,400 per student — third-highest in the nation. Yet in 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems in the U.S., according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Norton is leading the charge to block a mere $18 million in funding for the 2009-10 school year. This demonstration program serves some 1,900 students. A recent Education Department report found that nearly 90% of Opportunity scholarship students had higher reading scores than peers who didn't receive a scholarship.
Not surprisingly, there are five applicants for every opening.
April Cole-Walton's daughter attends St. Peter's Interparish School thanks to an Opportunity Scholarship. "If I could talk to Sen. Obama," she says, "I would say, 'Give me a choice and give my daughter a chance.' "
Fat chance. Obama instead offers support for things like universal preschool, based on the idea that the earlier the government gets its hands on our children, the better off they will be. The nanny state will spend more money and pay for more teachers.
Obama also wants to create something called the American Opportunity Tax Credit to provide a "free" college education by ensuring that the first $4,000 of college tuition is covered for students from lower-income families. Each student will be required to put in 100 hours of "voluntary" national service a year to get the money.
Obama's buddy, former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, has plans for the same captive student audiences Obama wants to keep captive. Now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ayers works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.
One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."
For his course "Urban Education," Ayers writes: "In a truly just society, there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources."
All of this sounds like Obama's plans for "economic justice" and redistribution of the nation's wealth.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the city's public schools. On his Web site, Obama describes Ayers as a "tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a 'respected advisor to Mayor Daley on school reform.' "
And a future secretary of education, perhaps?
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303347424914951
Schools: While Obama's children enjoy the best education money can buy, he wants to deny inner-city children the education change we can believe in — school choice. He prefers cradle-to-diploma collectivist education.
When Barack Obama collected the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers, he told the teachers that support for alternatives to the education monopoly amounted to "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."
He recently told an interviewer that he opposes school choice because "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom."
Not being left behind are Obama's daughters, who attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. There, tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When asked about it during last year's YouTube debate, Sen. Obama responded that it was "the best option" for his children. They had a choice Obama would deny others.
Obama has been completely silent about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The D.C. School Choice Act of 2003 established the federally funded voucher program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It lets students attend one of 60 participating nonpublic schools.
But it was funded only through the 2008-09 school year. Democrats such as D.C.'s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, want to kill the successful program, which shows that money is not the root of a good education.
Norton and Obama seem oblivious to the fact that District school spending is at $13,400 per student — third-highest in the nation. Yet in 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems in the U.S., according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Norton is leading the charge to block a mere $18 million in funding for the 2009-10 school year. This demonstration program serves some 1,900 students. A recent Education Department report found that nearly 90% of Opportunity scholarship students had higher reading scores than peers who didn't receive a scholarship.
Not surprisingly, there are five applicants for every opening.
April Cole-Walton's daughter attends St. Peter's Interparish School thanks to an Opportunity Scholarship. "If I could talk to Sen. Obama," she says, "I would say, 'Give me a choice and give my daughter a chance.' "
Fat chance. Obama instead offers support for things like universal preschool, based on the idea that the earlier the government gets its hands on our children, the better off they will be. The nanny state will spend more money and pay for more teachers.
Obama also wants to create something called the American Opportunity Tax Credit to provide a "free" college education by ensuring that the first $4,000 of college tuition is covered for students from lower-income families. Each student will be required to put in 100 hours of "voluntary" national service a year to get the money.
Obama's buddy, former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, has plans for the same captive student audiences Obama wants to keep captive. Now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ayers works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.
One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."
For his course "Urban Education," Ayers writes: "In a truly just society, there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources."
All of this sounds like Obama's plans for "economic justice" and redistribution of the nation's wealth.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the city's public schools. On his Web site, Obama describes Ayers as a "tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a 'respected advisor to Mayor Daley on school reform.' "
And a future secretary of education, perhaps?
Reparations By Another Name (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 7)
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303088377885894
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 08, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama says Washington shouldn't just offer apologies for slavery, but also "deeds." Don't worry, he says, he's not talking about direct reparations. Relieved? Don't be.
'I consistently believe that when it comes to . . . reparations," Obama recently told a gathering of minority journalists, "the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."
A few days later, he clarified his remarks, saying he's not calling for direct cash payments to descendents of slaves, but rather indirect aid in the form of government programs that will "close the gap" between what he sees as white America and black America.
He says government should offer "universal" programs — such as universal health care, universal mortgage credits, college tuition, job training and even universal 401(k)s — that "disproportionately affect people of color."
In other words, reparations by another name.
Obama knows that if he pushes too hard on reparations, he might scare off white voters. So he couches race-specific welfare as "universal" social programs that appeal to broad-based political coalitions — "even if they disproportionately help minorities," he confides in his book, "Audacity of Hope."
Obama has a name for his scheme: "universal strategies."
"An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn't just good policy," he wrote. "It's also good politics."
Maybe so. But not all his plans for reparations are roundabout. His book and Web site outline a separate plan calling for essentially a government bailout of the inner cities. Among other things, he proposes:
• Doling out faith-based grants "targeting ex-offenders."
• Subsidizing supermarket chains that relocate to the inner city to deliver "fresh produce" to blacks, helping wean them off unhealthy fast food.
• Imposing "goals and timetables for minority hiring" on large corporations whose work forces are deemed too white.
• Continuing to fund the Community Development Block Grant program, Head Start and HUD public housing subsidies.
• Funding Small Business Administration loans for minority businesses who train ex-felons, including gangbangers, for the "green jobs" of the future, such as installing extra insulation in homes.
• Doubling the funding for federal after-school programs such as midnight basketball.
• Subsidizing job training, day care, transportation for inner-city poor, as well as doubling the funding of the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program.
• Expanding the eligibility of the earned income tax credit to include more poor, and indexing it to inflation.
• Adopting entire inner-city neighborhoods as wards of the federal government.
• Spending billions on new inner-city employment programs, including prison-to-work programs.
This is just a down payment on the "economic justice" Obama has promised the NAACP — financed by "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth," he says in his book.
And the indirect aid he's proposing now could quickly turn into cash transfers once Obama is safely ensconced in the White House.
Claiming "blacks were forced into ghettos," Obama is certainly sympathetic to the idea of reparations. His church has actively petitioned for them for decades. And he's strongly suggested there's a legal case to be made for them.
"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."
He assumes the economic gap is a legacy of discrimination and largely unrelated to personal responsibility. He also makes it seem things haven't gotten better for blacks.
In this, Obama is intellectually dishonest. In his book, he cites statistics showing a 70% rise over the past two decades in the number of "Latino families considered middle class," but never cites one stat showing the even more impressive gains of the black middle class. He complains about low black wages, but never mentions the quantum leap in black home-ownership rates.
Why? Such stats would undermine his case for roundabout reparations. Even if it were true, he says, "better isn't good enough."
"The problems of inner-city poverty arise from our failure to face up to an often tragic past," Obama said.
Now it's payback time.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 08, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Election '08: Barack Obama says Washington shouldn't just offer apologies for slavery, but also "deeds." Don't worry, he says, he's not talking about direct reparations. Relieved? Don't be.
'I consistently believe that when it comes to . . . reparations," Obama recently told a gathering of minority journalists, "the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."
A few days later, he clarified his remarks, saying he's not calling for direct cash payments to descendents of slaves, but rather indirect aid in the form of government programs that will "close the gap" between what he sees as white America and black America.
He says government should offer "universal" programs — such as universal health care, universal mortgage credits, college tuition, job training and even universal 401(k)s — that "disproportionately affect people of color."
In other words, reparations by another name.
Obama knows that if he pushes too hard on reparations, he might scare off white voters. So he couches race-specific welfare as "universal" social programs that appeal to broad-based political coalitions — "even if they disproportionately help minorities," he confides in his book, "Audacity of Hope."
Obama has a name for his scheme: "universal strategies."
"An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn't just good policy," he wrote. "It's also good politics."
Maybe so. But not all his plans for reparations are roundabout. His book and Web site outline a separate plan calling for essentially a government bailout of the inner cities. Among other things, he proposes:
• Doling out faith-based grants "targeting ex-offenders."
• Subsidizing supermarket chains that relocate to the inner city to deliver "fresh produce" to blacks, helping wean them off unhealthy fast food.
• Imposing "goals and timetables for minority hiring" on large corporations whose work forces are deemed too white.
• Continuing to fund the Community Development Block Grant program, Head Start and HUD public housing subsidies.
• Funding Small Business Administration loans for minority businesses who train ex-felons, including gangbangers, for the "green jobs" of the future, such as installing extra insulation in homes.
• Doubling the funding for federal after-school programs such as midnight basketball.
• Subsidizing job training, day care, transportation for inner-city poor, as well as doubling the funding of the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program.
• Expanding the eligibility of the earned income tax credit to include more poor, and indexing it to inflation.
• Adopting entire inner-city neighborhoods as wards of the federal government.
• Spending billions on new inner-city employment programs, including prison-to-work programs.
This is just a down payment on the "economic justice" Obama has promised the NAACP — financed by "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth," he says in his book.
And the indirect aid he's proposing now could quickly turn into cash transfers once Obama is safely ensconced in the White House.
Claiming "blacks were forced into ghettos," Obama is certainly sympathetic to the idea of reparations. His church has actively petitioned for them for decades. And he's strongly suggested there's a legal case to be made for them.
"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."
He assumes the economic gap is a legacy of discrimination and largely unrelated to personal responsibility. He also makes it seem things haven't gotten better for blacks.
In this, Obama is intellectually dishonest. In his book, he cites statistics showing a 70% rise over the past two decades in the number of "Latino families considered middle class," but never cites one stat showing the even more impressive gains of the black middle class. He complains about low black wages, but never mentions the quantum leap in black home-ownership rates.
Why? Such stats would undermine his case for roundabout reparations. Even if it were true, he says, "better isn't good enough."
"The problems of inner-city poverty arise from our failure to face up to an often tragic past," Obama said.
Now it's payback time.
Another shameful democratic snub, led by the disgraceful Nancy Pelosi
Palin's Foreign-Policy Chops
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306978458113642
Leadership: If anything shows how Democrats are beneath their office, it's how they snubbed the visiting leader of Colombia on his current trip. Sarah Palin, by contrast, shows respect.
Based on their treatment of President Alvaro Uribe, who is here to plead for a free trade pact, it's almost as if Democrats don't want the U.S. to have allies. Uribe made a rare visit to Washington, and shamefully few Democrats agreed to meet him.
Uribe didn't come asking for much — only that Congress keep its word on an agreement that will drop tariffs on American goods sold in Colombia and help his country develop and prosper as a bulwark of democracy in a battered region.
"We consider that in the coming years if the free-trade agreement were approved . . . the main economic result could be the increase in investments in our country," Uribe told the Brookings Institution.
"And the more we increase legal investments in our country, the less difficult our task to defeat terrorist groups, to defeat illegal drugs."
Uribe also heads a country that last July put its own men in harm's way to free three innocent Americans held hostage by FARC Marxist terrorists. The rescue came off without a hitch or a shot being fired.
For that alone, Uribe should get his trade pact — with maybe a ticker tape parade thrown in for good measure.
But what he's getting from the Washington establishment is a lot less. President Bush did extend a warm welcome on Saturday, and Uribe also met with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and some CEOs in Atlanta.
But Democrats did all they could to slight him, generally hiding and making lame excuses for doing so.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who arbitrarily iced Colombia's free trade deal last April, refused to meet Uribe and didn't acknowledge a White House invitation to an event in his honor. Later, her staff regally complained that Uribe didn't call her.
This is part of a pattern. For years, Pelosi has insulted, slighted, road blocked and now ignored Uribe, the most valuable ally the U.S. has ever had in Latin America. Her motives are constantly shifting.
One minute she's complaining about human rights abuses in Colombia, despite an 86% drop in the murder rate of union activists. Then she says it's all about passing stimulus packages first. The common thread is serving Big Labor special interests at election time.
This is what passes for Democratic leadership these days. Uribe urged nonpartisanship in considering Colombia's case for free trade, but lesser Democrats were just as craven and irresponsible as Pelosi.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama only grudgingly permitted Uribe to talk with him by telephone, afterward disclosing no news about why he still opposes cutting tariffs on American goods to Colombia as the free trade pact provides. Nor did he make any public statements, seemingly to make the call go unnoticed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's fond of junketing to the luxury locales in South America, had no time to repay the hospitality to Uribe. And two Democrats held out as Latin experts, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, couldn't give Uribe the time of day.
Some pro-free-trade Democrats, including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, were notable exceptions and did welcome Uribe. But none of the Democrats billed as foreign-policy heavy hitters could see that the implications of snubbing Colombia send a message to the region that it pays more to be America's enemy than its friend.
Into the vacuum, however, has stepped in Gov. Sarah Palin. The supposedly foreign-policy-challenged vice presidential candidate asked to meet with Uribe on Tuesday in New York to support our ally.
As chief executive of Alaska, Palin knows what it's like to deal with a Congress that dismisses her state as distant, lectures it on ecological virtue and then denies its citizens development. She understands perfectly how it must feel to be Uribe, who's gotten the exact same treatment from a Washington establishment.
Palin's reception of Uribe is a far more serious statement than Obama's visits to the tourist spots of Europe that he chalked up as foreign policy experience.
Palin's meeting with Uribe shows a commitment to American interests over Washington politics. Thank goodness Palin knows how to act when an important leader and true friend comes calling.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306978458113642
Leadership: If anything shows how Democrats are beneath their office, it's how they snubbed the visiting leader of Colombia on his current trip. Sarah Palin, by contrast, shows respect.
Based on their treatment of President Alvaro Uribe, who is here to plead for a free trade pact, it's almost as if Democrats don't want the U.S. to have allies. Uribe made a rare visit to Washington, and shamefully few Democrats agreed to meet him.
Uribe didn't come asking for much — only that Congress keep its word on an agreement that will drop tariffs on American goods sold in Colombia and help his country develop and prosper as a bulwark of democracy in a battered region.
"We consider that in the coming years if the free-trade agreement were approved . . . the main economic result could be the increase in investments in our country," Uribe told the Brookings Institution.
"And the more we increase legal investments in our country, the less difficult our task to defeat terrorist groups, to defeat illegal drugs."
Uribe also heads a country that last July put its own men in harm's way to free three innocent Americans held hostage by FARC Marxist terrorists. The rescue came off without a hitch or a shot being fired.
For that alone, Uribe should get his trade pact — with maybe a ticker tape parade thrown in for good measure.
But what he's getting from the Washington establishment is a lot less. President Bush did extend a warm welcome on Saturday, and Uribe also met with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and some CEOs in Atlanta.
But Democrats did all they could to slight him, generally hiding and making lame excuses for doing so.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who arbitrarily iced Colombia's free trade deal last April, refused to meet Uribe and didn't acknowledge a White House invitation to an event in his honor. Later, her staff regally complained that Uribe didn't call her.
This is part of a pattern. For years, Pelosi has insulted, slighted, road blocked and now ignored Uribe, the most valuable ally the U.S. has ever had in Latin America. Her motives are constantly shifting.
One minute she's complaining about human rights abuses in Colombia, despite an 86% drop in the murder rate of union activists. Then she says it's all about passing stimulus packages first. The common thread is serving Big Labor special interests at election time.
This is what passes for Democratic leadership these days. Uribe urged nonpartisanship in considering Colombia's case for free trade, but lesser Democrats were just as craven and irresponsible as Pelosi.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama only grudgingly permitted Uribe to talk with him by telephone, afterward disclosing no news about why he still opposes cutting tariffs on American goods to Colombia as the free trade pact provides. Nor did he make any public statements, seemingly to make the call go unnoticed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's fond of junketing to the luxury locales in South America, had no time to repay the hospitality to Uribe. And two Democrats held out as Latin experts, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, couldn't give Uribe the time of day.
Some pro-free-trade Democrats, including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, were notable exceptions and did welcome Uribe. But none of the Democrats billed as foreign-policy heavy hitters could see that the implications of snubbing Colombia send a message to the region that it pays more to be America's enemy than its friend.
Into the vacuum, however, has stepped in Gov. Sarah Palin. The supposedly foreign-policy-challenged vice presidential candidate asked to meet with Uribe on Tuesday in New York to support our ally.
As chief executive of Alaska, Palin knows what it's like to deal with a Congress that dismisses her state as distant, lectures it on ecological virtue and then denies its citizens development. She understands perfectly how it must feel to be Uribe, who's gotten the exact same treatment from a Washington establishment.
Palin's reception of Uribe is a far more serious statement than Obama's visits to the tourist spots of Europe that he chalked up as foreign policy experience.
Palin's meeting with Uribe shows a commitment to American interests over Washington politics. Thank goodness Palin knows how to act when an important leader and true friend comes calling.
Barak Obama, his brother's keeper
Are you really sure you want this guy?
George Obama, Start Packing
by Dinesh D'Souza
http://townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/09/22/george_obama,_start_packing
So isn't it interesting that we keep hearing about Sarah Palin's peccadilloes while the major media continues to ignore the George Obama scandal? Here is a guy living in Third World poverty and his half-brother is the leading candidate to become the next president of the United States. Are the networks and major newspapers so exhilarated at the prospect of an African American president that they have become cheerleaders for the Obama campaign? Fortunately the McCain campaign is making the media an issue, and I hope the American people are smart enough to see through the news charade.
Here are the facts about George Obama. He’s in his twenties. He lives in a slum in a hut. He wants to become a mechanic but doesn’t have the money. He reports that he gets by on a dollar a month. He met George Obama in 2006 for a few minutes and said it was like talking to a “total stranger.” He said when people notice he has the same name as Barack Obama, he denies they are related because he is “ashamed.” The Democratic presidential candidate, who made $4 million last year, hasn’t lifted a finger to help his half-brother.
My modest campaign to assist George Obama has been coming nicely. Sean Hannity mentioned it on his show on the Fox News Channel, and I appeared on a handful of radio shows to talk about the idea. Interestingly the George Obama Compassion Fund was reported on by Kenya's leading newspaper "The Nation." So far I have received more than $1,000 in small contributions. With my kickoff contribution of $1,000, that's upwards of $2,000 for George Obama.
This is not a huge sum, but I specifically asked people to send gifts of $5, $10 and $25. The reason is that even a relatively modest sum by American standards is a considerable sum by Kenyan standards. George Obama has said that he is living on a dollar a month. This seems an impossible sum to survive on, so I checked the poverty line in Kenya. According to United Nations estimates, it’s around $100 a year. By this measure, our little fund has provided for George for 20 years. Alternatively, George can move out of his 6 foot-by-10-foot hut and into a more comfortable dwelling. He can also get the training he needs to become a mechanic.
The reporter for "The Nation" thought he had me cornered when he asked, "Are you doing this to embarrass Barack Obama?" To which I answered, "Absolutely. He deserves to be embarrassed." The reporter went on to ask me: since when have you developed this great interest in African poverty? I responded that I had only very little interest in African poverty. I happen to come from a very poor country, India, so my philanthropic work is directed there. I only took up the George Obama cause when I heard what a jerk and a hypocrite Barack Obama is being about his sibling. One Obamoron emailed me to say, "Why don't you use your money to help your own impoverished relatives in India?" The answer is that my relatives don't live in huts!
Here are some donor comments which I'll be forwarding to George along with the funds. "This is for the poor brother long forgotten." “A brother is a terrible thing to waste.” "I wish I had a brother, or even a step-brother. George is not my relative and not my race or religion but I still want to contribute to his welfare." "When Obama said that not taking care of the least of our brothers is our greatest moral failure, who knew that he was talking literally about the least of his brothers?" "I never thought I'd be writing a check to anyone named Obama, but I do want to be a true Christian and help this man in his shameful situation." "I'd send more, but I make $9.10 per hour." "I'm unemployed, but I can spare $5 for the Obama Compassion Fund."
I hear a lot from atheists, but interestingly no self-identified atheist contributed a penny. This seems in keeping with sociologist Arthur Brooks’ data showing that secular people are much less generous, both with money and time, than religious people. As Brooks might have predicted, most of my donations came from self-identified Christians, some of them in difficult circumstances themselves. Thanks to this generosity, Barack Obama's half-brother can look forward to the prospect of a better life. George Obama, start packing!
George Obama, Start Packing
by Dinesh D'Souza
http://townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/09/22/george_obama,_start_packing
So isn't it interesting that we keep hearing about Sarah Palin's peccadilloes while the major media continues to ignore the George Obama scandal? Here is a guy living in Third World poverty and his half-brother is the leading candidate to become the next president of the United States. Are the networks and major newspapers so exhilarated at the prospect of an African American president that they have become cheerleaders for the Obama campaign? Fortunately the McCain campaign is making the media an issue, and I hope the American people are smart enough to see through the news charade.
Here are the facts about George Obama. He’s in his twenties. He lives in a slum in a hut. He wants to become a mechanic but doesn’t have the money. He reports that he gets by on a dollar a month. He met George Obama in 2006 for a few minutes and said it was like talking to a “total stranger.” He said when people notice he has the same name as Barack Obama, he denies they are related because he is “ashamed.” The Democratic presidential candidate, who made $4 million last year, hasn’t lifted a finger to help his half-brother.
My modest campaign to assist George Obama has been coming nicely. Sean Hannity mentioned it on his show on the Fox News Channel, and I appeared on a handful of radio shows to talk about the idea. Interestingly the George Obama Compassion Fund was reported on by Kenya's leading newspaper "The Nation." So far I have received more than $1,000 in small contributions. With my kickoff contribution of $1,000, that's upwards of $2,000 for George Obama.
This is not a huge sum, but I specifically asked people to send gifts of $5, $10 and $25. The reason is that even a relatively modest sum by American standards is a considerable sum by Kenyan standards. George Obama has said that he is living on a dollar a month. This seems an impossible sum to survive on, so I checked the poverty line in Kenya. According to United Nations estimates, it’s around $100 a year. By this measure, our little fund has provided for George for 20 years. Alternatively, George can move out of his 6 foot-by-10-foot hut and into a more comfortable dwelling. He can also get the training he needs to become a mechanic.
The reporter for "The Nation" thought he had me cornered when he asked, "Are you doing this to embarrass Barack Obama?" To which I answered, "Absolutely. He deserves to be embarrassed." The reporter went on to ask me: since when have you developed this great interest in African poverty? I responded that I had only very little interest in African poverty. I happen to come from a very poor country, India, so my philanthropic work is directed there. I only took up the George Obama cause when I heard what a jerk and a hypocrite Barack Obama is being about his sibling. One Obamoron emailed me to say, "Why don't you use your money to help your own impoverished relatives in India?" The answer is that my relatives don't live in huts!
Here are some donor comments which I'll be forwarding to George along with the funds. "This is for the poor brother long forgotten." “A brother is a terrible thing to waste.” "I wish I had a brother, or even a step-brother. George is not my relative and not my race or religion but I still want to contribute to his welfare." "When Obama said that not taking care of the least of our brothers is our greatest moral failure, who knew that he was talking literally about the least of his brothers?" "I never thought I'd be writing a check to anyone named Obama, but I do want to be a true Christian and help this man in his shameful situation." "I'd send more, but I make $9.10 per hour." "I'm unemployed, but I can spare $5 for the Obama Compassion Fund."
I hear a lot from atheists, but interestingly no self-identified atheist contributed a penny. This seems in keeping with sociologist Arthur Brooks’ data showing that secular people are much less generous, both with money and time, than religious people. As Brooks might have predicted, most of my donations came from self-identified Christians, some of them in difficult circumstances themselves. Thanks to this generosity, Barack Obama's half-brother can look forward to the prospect of a better life. George Obama, start packing!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Obama Finds An ACORN (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 6)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 06, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302914868143810
Election '08: The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.
In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.
A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.
When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.
Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.
In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn's radical agenda amounts to "undisguised authoritarian socialism." wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, "Acorn's Nutty Regime for Cities."
Acorn opposed welfare reform and opposes securing American borders to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Acorn was heavily involved a few years back in opposing Rudy Giuliani's efforts to privatize failing New York schools.
Acorn also has been in the lead supporting the "living wage" and opposing efforts by big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart to bring the bounty and benefits of free-market capitalism to inner cities.
Wal-Mart has faced resistance to its plans to expand into urban centers — most notably Chicago and Los Angeles — where unions and liberal orthodoxy remain strong. Opponents there charge that such big-box stores exploit workers, depress wages and drive out community businesses.
Acorn, Obama's former client, supported a big-box living-wage ordinance vetoed by Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley to require stores of at least 90,000 square feet operated by firms with $1 billion or more in annual sales nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $10 an hour plus $3 in benefits.
Critics such as Acorn, who complain that Wal-Mart employees live paycheck to paycheck, forget that many of Wal-Mart's customers also live paycheck to paycheck and seek quality merchandise at decent prices, which is why 100 million people shop there every week.
How can they oppose "low" wages for Wal-Mart employees while in effect supporting higher prices for Wal-Mart customers? They can because they believe the socialist orthodoxy that capitalism is bad, government is good and that the solution to poverty is to make everyone equally poor.
Wal-Mart gives people what they want at a price they can afford. It believes a fair wage is one agreed upon between employee and employer. It is the poster child for roll-up-your-sleeves capitalism. It is efficient, innovative, successful and nonunion — everything government is not — and is opposed for all these reasons.
Advocates of the so-called living wage see their efforts as putting money directly into workers' pockets. But it merely transfers money from one person's pocket to another person's pocket. This is classic socialist income redistribution — not economic justice, but economic extortion.
In the real world, companies that pay workers more than the value of the goods and services they produce go out of business. Workers should be paid what their labor is worth, not what their lifestyle requires.
On his Web site, Obama embraces Acorn's socialist goal, pledging to "raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation and housing."
That money would come from taxpayers and business owners or, as Marx would say, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302914868143810
Election '08: The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.
In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.
A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.
When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.
Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.
In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn's radical agenda amounts to "undisguised authoritarian socialism." wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, "Acorn's Nutty Regime for Cities."
Acorn opposed welfare reform and opposes securing American borders to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Acorn was heavily involved a few years back in opposing Rudy Giuliani's efforts to privatize failing New York schools.
Acorn also has been in the lead supporting the "living wage" and opposing efforts by big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart to bring the bounty and benefits of free-market capitalism to inner cities.
Wal-Mart has faced resistance to its plans to expand into urban centers — most notably Chicago and Los Angeles — where unions and liberal orthodoxy remain strong. Opponents there charge that such big-box stores exploit workers, depress wages and drive out community businesses.
Acorn, Obama's former client, supported a big-box living-wage ordinance vetoed by Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley to require stores of at least 90,000 square feet operated by firms with $1 billion or more in annual sales nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $10 an hour plus $3 in benefits.
Critics such as Acorn, who complain that Wal-Mart employees live paycheck to paycheck, forget that many of Wal-Mart's customers also live paycheck to paycheck and seek quality merchandise at decent prices, which is why 100 million people shop there every week.
How can they oppose "low" wages for Wal-Mart employees while in effect supporting higher prices for Wal-Mart customers? They can because they believe the socialist orthodoxy that capitalism is bad, government is good and that the solution to poverty is to make everyone equally poor.
Wal-Mart gives people what they want at a price they can afford. It believes a fair wage is one agreed upon between employee and employer. It is the poster child for roll-up-your-sleeves capitalism. It is efficient, innovative, successful and nonunion — everything government is not — and is opposed for all these reasons.
Advocates of the so-called living wage see their efforts as putting money directly into workers' pockets. But it merely transfers money from one person's pocket to another person's pocket. This is classic socialist income redistribution — not economic justice, but economic extortion.
In the real world, companies that pay workers more than the value of the goods and services they produce go out of business. Workers should be paid what their labor is worth, not what their lifestyle requires.
On his Web site, Obama embraces Acorn's socialist goal, pledging to "raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation and housing."
That money would come from taxpayers and business owners or, as Marx would say, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Young Obama's Red Mentor (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 5)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 05, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302827467707515
Election '08: The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor. But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background.
As noted in the July 29 curtain-raiser to this series, the seeds of Obama's far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager growing up in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or media profile has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to the age of 18 — a man he refers to only as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
In a belated story on the relationship, the Associated Press describes Davis as "left-leaning."
In fact, Davis was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, according to the 1953 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities of the Territory of Hawaii, which labeled him "a bitter opponent of capitalism." The report was introduced as evidence in the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearings probing the "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States."
"Davis scholars dismiss the idea that he was anti-American," the AP reports. But one of them, ex-University of Hawaii professor Kathryn Takara, acknowledges in a Ph.D. paper on Davis (not quoted by AP) that he'd been fingered as "a Communist."
Davis wrote militant poems as a black writer in Chicago, including one in which he hails the Soviet revolution: "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army." He also attacked traditional Christianity, titling one inflammatory screed, "Christ is a Dixie N*****."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for bitter nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal shots of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
In the eyes of white America, Davis warned Obama: "You may be a well-trained, well-paid n*****, but you're a n***** just the same." He also nurtured anti-white hatred in his young mulatto subject, telling him, "Black people have a reason to hate."
AP conveniently glossed over these quotes.
How much influence did Comrade Davis have on Obama? The Democrat White House hopeful refuses to talk about the relationship now. In the book, he only shares that he was "intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge."
However, Obama followed in Davis' footsteps after college, working as a "community organizer" for the same socialist network in Chicago. He even considered a career in journalism like Davis.
Obama attended socialist conferences, and took a shine to other black Marxist revolutionists. Not long after Davis died in 1987, Obama came under the spell of another black nationalist-socialist, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, like Davis, wore a dashiki and became a father figure.
If the relationship with Davis was as blase as the Associated Press makes it sound, why is Obama mum about it? And why did he try to hide Davis' identity in his first memoir, published in 1995?
"With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures," he wrote in the preface, "the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of privacy." But there was no need to protect Davis' privacy. He had long been dead.
More likely, the cryptic references to his communist mentor were — and still are — designed to protect Obama's background from the scrutiny it deserves.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302827467707515
Election '08: The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor. But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background.
As noted in the July 29 curtain-raiser to this series, the seeds of Obama's far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager growing up in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or media profile has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to the age of 18 — a man he refers to only as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
In a belated story on the relationship, the Associated Press describes Davis as "left-leaning."
In fact, Davis was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, according to the 1953 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities of the Territory of Hawaii, which labeled him "a bitter opponent of capitalism." The report was introduced as evidence in the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearings probing the "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States."
"Davis scholars dismiss the idea that he was anti-American," the AP reports. But one of them, ex-University of Hawaii professor Kathryn Takara, acknowledges in a Ph.D. paper on Davis (not quoted by AP) that he'd been fingered as "a Communist."
Davis wrote militant poems as a black writer in Chicago, including one in which he hails the Soviet revolution: "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army." He also attacked traditional Christianity, titling one inflammatory screed, "Christ is a Dixie N*****."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for bitter nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal shots of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
In the eyes of white America, Davis warned Obama: "You may be a well-trained, well-paid n*****, but you're a n***** just the same." He also nurtured anti-white hatred in his young mulatto subject, telling him, "Black people have a reason to hate."
AP conveniently glossed over these quotes.
How much influence did Comrade Davis have on Obama? The Democrat White House hopeful refuses to talk about the relationship now. In the book, he only shares that he was "intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge."
However, Obama followed in Davis' footsteps after college, working as a "community organizer" for the same socialist network in Chicago. He even considered a career in journalism like Davis.
Obama attended socialist conferences, and took a shine to other black Marxist revolutionists. Not long after Davis died in 1987, Obama came under the spell of another black nationalist-socialist, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, like Davis, wore a dashiki and became a father figure.
If the relationship with Davis was as blase as the Associated Press makes it sound, why is Obama mum about it? And why did he try to hide Davis' identity in his first memoir, published in 1995?
"With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures," he wrote in the preface, "the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of privacy." But there was no need to protect Davis' privacy. He had long been dead.
More likely, the cryptic references to his communist mentor were — and still are — designed to protect Obama's background from the scrutiny it deserves.
Enough is enough
http://townhall.com/blog/g/53e57022-500b-472a-b7d8-4cb249564fa5
Posted by: Michele Bachmann at 4:50 PM
September 19, 2008
Yesterday, I joined several House colleagues to urge the Democrat controlled Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve to act with greater transparency and responsibility for the taxpayer when it comes to the financial markets crisis rattling our nation.
Check out the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch coverage of the press conference here.
Taxpayers must not be left on the hook to the tune of billions of dollars -- possibly in the ballpark of $500 billion -- in government-backed bailouts. If government is propping up Wall Street and taxpayers foot the bill for the government, that makes Americans the last line of insurance in these unstable financial times.
The question becomes: Who will left to bail-out the taxpayer who is already saddled with a debt of about $455,000 per household just for runaway entitlement spending?
The government is embarking on a very dangerous path, and the recent financial takeover of AIG Insurance is an action we must not be quick to replicate. Privatizing reward and socializing risk is essentially rolling the dice with our nation's financial security and it is a surefire recipe for disaster for our economy.
If we bail out one, another lines up for their hand out, then another, and another, and another. If this keeps up, everyone from Starbucks to JC Penney's will see themselves as too big to fail and they too may be knocking on the doors of the Treasury looking for their bail-out.
Posted by: Michele Bachmann at 4:50 PM
September 19, 2008
Yesterday, I joined several House colleagues to urge the Democrat controlled Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve to act with greater transparency and responsibility for the taxpayer when it comes to the financial markets crisis rattling our nation.
Check out the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch coverage of the press conference here.
Taxpayers must not be left on the hook to the tune of billions of dollars -- possibly in the ballpark of $500 billion -- in government-backed bailouts. If government is propping up Wall Street and taxpayers foot the bill for the government, that makes Americans the last line of insurance in these unstable financial times.
The question becomes: Who will left to bail-out the taxpayer who is already saddled with a debt of about $455,000 per household just for runaway entitlement spending?
The government is embarking on a very dangerous path, and the recent financial takeover of AIG Insurance is an action we must not be quick to replicate. Privatizing reward and socializing risk is essentially rolling the dice with our nation's financial security and it is a surefire recipe for disaster for our economy.
If we bail out one, another lines up for their hand out, then another, and another, and another. If this keeps up, everyone from Starbucks to JC Penney's will see themselves as too big to fail and they too may be knocking on the doors of the Treasury looking for their bail-out.
Democrats Lie About Reagan Tax Rates
http://townhall.com/blog/g/eaf7ffd9-ca7f-4a4e-9494-a7893c413356
Posted by: Michael Medved at 9:19 PM, Sept 18, 2008
While telling ABC news that higher taxes were “patriotic,” Senator Joe Biden also repeated the Democratic claim that Obama’s proposed tax hikes meant wealthy people are “still going to pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.” This profoundly misleading claim is based on the worst kind of fuzzy math. At the end of President Reagan’s term twenty years ago, the top marginal tax rate was 28%. Today, it’s 35%. Under Obama and Biden, it would rise to 39.6%. How does a 39.6% rate amount to “less taxes” than a 28% rate? Obviously, it doesn’t. When the Democrats talk about taxes paid “under Reagan” they cite the first months of his term—before the Gipper (and the great tax slasher) succeeded in radically lowering the top tax rate. He inherited a top marginal rate of 70%, then cut it several times to produce the booming economy of the ‘80’s. The tax rates that Obama and Biden favor shouldn’t be associated with Reagan – who cut taxes far below those levels – but rather with Carter who passed on to his GOP successor a staggering, dysfunctional economy even worse than the troubled situation of today. The dishonest Democratic reference to Reagan’s tax rates dishonors the memory of a great president, and demonstrates their own shameless mendacity.
Posted by: Michael Medved at 9:19 PM, Sept 18, 2008
While telling ABC news that higher taxes were “patriotic,” Senator Joe Biden also repeated the Democratic claim that Obama’s proposed tax hikes meant wealthy people are “still going to pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.” This profoundly misleading claim is based on the worst kind of fuzzy math. At the end of President Reagan’s term twenty years ago, the top marginal tax rate was 28%. Today, it’s 35%. Under Obama and Biden, it would rise to 39.6%. How does a 39.6% rate amount to “less taxes” than a 28% rate? Obviously, it doesn’t. When the Democrats talk about taxes paid “under Reagan” they cite the first months of his term—before the Gipper (and the great tax slasher) succeeded in radically lowering the top tax rate. He inherited a top marginal rate of 70%, then cut it several times to produce the booming economy of the ‘80’s. The tax rates that Obama and Biden favor shouldn’t be associated with Reagan – who cut taxes far below those levels – but rather with Carter who passed on to his GOP successor a staggering, dysfunctional economy even worse than the troubled situation of today. The dishonest Democratic reference to Reagan’s tax rates dishonors the memory of a great president, and demonstrates their own shameless mendacity.
Obamanomics Flunks The Test (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 4)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302484020165482
Election '08: Barack Obama the lawyer-organizer could use a crash course in economics. His economic plan's assumptions, based on long-discredited Marxist theories, are wildly wrongheaded.
In arguing for a heavier mix of government, he assumes that capitalism unfairly favors the rich, almost exclusively so, and fails to spread prosperity.
"The rich in America have little to complain about," he carps. "The distribution of wealth is skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age."
Obama cites data showing a yawning gap between the income of the average worker and the wealthiest 1%. He thinks it's government's job to step in and close it — "for purposes of fairness" — by soaking the rich, among other leftist nostrums.
"Between 1971 and 2001," he complains, "while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500%."
But such a snapshot comparison would be meaningful only if America were a caste society, in which the people making up one income group remained static over time.
Of course that's not the case. The composition of the rich and poor in this country is in constant flux, as the income distribution changes dramatically over relatively short periods. Few are "stuck" in poverty, or have a "lock" on wealth.
Obama would discover this if only he'd put down his class-warfare manuals and look closely at the IRS' own data.
Take those megarich he vilifies — the top hundredth of a percent. According to a recent Treasury study, three-fourths of them in 1996 fell out of the group by 2005.
Meanwhile, more than half of those in the bottom income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005, with more than 5% leapfrogging to the richest quintile.
(It's no fluke: The same high degree of income mobility is seen in prior comparable periods, as well.)
Some poor moved up through personal effort, while many rode an expanding economy. Real median incomes of all taxpayers rose 24%, but the poor registered the biggest gains of all.
President Kennedy understood that a growing economy is like a rising tide that "lifts all boats." Obama, on the other hand, thinks some are lifted and others lowered, as if the economy were a system of locks operated by a cabal of evil capitalists.
He also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won't "curb incentives to work or invest." Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better.
During a primary debate, the ABC host took Obama to task for proposing a doubling in the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues.
Obama just didn't get it. "Well, Charlie," he argued, "what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
Forget growth and revenues. Let's just punish those "greedy" investors. It's the same Marxist reasoning behind his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts: The rich must be made to pay their "fair" share, Obama asserts.
Never mind that the top 1% of taxpayers already pay 38% of the total tax burden, according to recent IRS data, while the bottom 50% bear just 3% of the load.
Obama's economic plan also calls for mandating a "living wage." He plans to saddle retailers with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with a mandate to provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers.
Obama assumes business owners will just eat the added costs.
But restaurants, the nation's second-largest private-sector employer, already operate on razor-thin profit margins. Faced with such mandatory paid benefits, they'll have no choice but to cut staff.
In fact, the last major minimum-wage increase cost the restaurant industry more than 146,000 jobs, the National Restaurant Association says, while restaurant owners put off plans to hire an additional 106,000 employees.
So Obama would get his wage-and-benefits mandate, but lose jobs in an industry that employs the very minorities Obama claims he's trying to help.
"If restaurateurs had their way, every lawmaker would run a small business before starting to legislate," the industry opined in a recent press release.
Lawmakers aren't the only ones. Leftist presidential candidates also could benefit from such a mandate.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302484020165482
Election '08: Barack Obama the lawyer-organizer could use a crash course in economics. His economic plan's assumptions, based on long-discredited Marxist theories, are wildly wrongheaded.
In arguing for a heavier mix of government, he assumes that capitalism unfairly favors the rich, almost exclusively so, and fails to spread prosperity.
"The rich in America have little to complain about," he carps. "The distribution of wealth is skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age."
Obama cites data showing a yawning gap between the income of the average worker and the wealthiest 1%. He thinks it's government's job to step in and close it — "for purposes of fairness" — by soaking the rich, among other leftist nostrums.
"Between 1971 and 2001," he complains, "while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500%."
But such a snapshot comparison would be meaningful only if America were a caste society, in which the people making up one income group remained static over time.
Of course that's not the case. The composition of the rich and poor in this country is in constant flux, as the income distribution changes dramatically over relatively short periods. Few are "stuck" in poverty, or have a "lock" on wealth.
Obama would discover this if only he'd put down his class-warfare manuals and look closely at the IRS' own data.
Take those megarich he vilifies — the top hundredth of a percent. According to a recent Treasury study, three-fourths of them in 1996 fell out of the group by 2005.
Meanwhile, more than half of those in the bottom income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005, with more than 5% leapfrogging to the richest quintile.
(It's no fluke: The same high degree of income mobility is seen in prior comparable periods, as well.)
Some poor moved up through personal effort, while many rode an expanding economy. Real median incomes of all taxpayers rose 24%, but the poor registered the biggest gains of all.
President Kennedy understood that a growing economy is like a rising tide that "lifts all boats." Obama, on the other hand, thinks some are lifted and others lowered, as if the economy were a system of locks operated by a cabal of evil capitalists.
He also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won't "curb incentives to work or invest." Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better.
During a primary debate, the ABC host took Obama to task for proposing a doubling in the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues.
Obama just didn't get it. "Well, Charlie," he argued, "what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
Forget growth and revenues. Let's just punish those "greedy" investors. It's the same Marxist reasoning behind his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts: The rich must be made to pay their "fair" share, Obama asserts.
Never mind that the top 1% of taxpayers already pay 38% of the total tax burden, according to recent IRS data, while the bottom 50% bear just 3% of the load.
Obama's economic plan also calls for mandating a "living wage." He plans to saddle retailers with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with a mandate to provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers.
Obama assumes business owners will just eat the added costs.
But restaurants, the nation's second-largest private-sector employer, already operate on razor-thin profit margins. Faced with such mandatory paid benefits, they'll have no choice but to cut staff.
In fact, the last major minimum-wage increase cost the restaurant industry more than 146,000 jobs, the National Restaurant Association says, while restaurant owners put off plans to hire an additional 106,000 employees.
So Obama would get his wage-and-benefits mandate, but lose jobs in an industry that employs the very minorities Obama claims he's trying to help.
"If restaurateurs had their way, every lawmaker would run a small business before starting to legislate," the industry opined in a recent press release.
Lawmakers aren't the only ones. Leftist presidential candidates also could benefit from such a mandate.
Obama Wants You (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 3)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302396723240343
Election '08: Barack Obama calls it "Universal Voluntary Public Service." We call it a plan for national involuntary servitude. Kennedy asked us what we could do for our country. Obama has ways to make us volunteer.
Sen. Obama's call to public service is quite different from JFK's. JFK knew America was already a nation of givers and volunteers, perhaps the most charitable and altruistic nation on Earth. Entities such as the Peace Corps would give Americans an outlet for their kindness and generosity, an opportunity to share what the freest nation on Earth had given them. Obama will force you to share.
Obama's Orwellian use of the words "universal" and "voluntary" together is an indicator of an antithesis to capitalist society deeply rooted in his socialist associations, education and training. Indeed, in 1996, when he ran for an Illinois state Senate seat, one of his first endorsements was from the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.
On the surface, his plan looks just like typical bureaucratic program growth. He wants to expand Americorps to 250,000 slots and double the size of the Peace Corps. He'll create a Clean Energy Corps to plant trees and otherwise save the Earth. It's how Obama plans to fill those slots that's worrisome.
Announcing his plan July 2 at the University of Colorado, he said: "We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges." He will make us an offer we can't refuse.
Obama says that as president he will "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year." What he doesn't say is that he'll make such voluntarism compulsory by attaching strings to federal education dollars. The schools will make the kids volunteer. It's called plausible deniability.
In a commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Obama advised graduates not to pursue the American dream of success, but to serve others.
"You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should," he told the graduates. "But I hope you don't."
Don't be another Bill Gates and amass a fortune making people more productive and successful in their daily lives and giving your countrymen a standard of living the world will envy. Exchange your cap and gown for sackcloth and ashes. Leave your possessions behind and come and follow Obama.
"Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs betrays a poverty of ambition," he opined. Shame on us for being selfish and buying that SUV built by an autoworker trying to fulfill his family's immediate wants and needs.
"Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation," Obama said. "Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."
We already have a Salvation Army that is truly a volunteer organization. Collective service and salvation is not a classic definition of voluntarism. What Obama has in mind is to turn America into a socialist version of the old Soviet collectives.
And if your idea of service is to join the military and keep others alive and free, forget about it. And never mind about ROTC on campus.
Obama has no place for those who are willing to abandon fame and fortune to lay down their lives for their friends and ours. "At a time of war," Obama says, "we need you to work for peace."
"We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do," Obama's wife, Michelle, told a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio, during the primaries. "Don't go into corporate America. . . . Become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers we need, and we're encouraging people to do just that."
Don't be the engineers who will figure out better ways to extract shale oil from the porous rock that holds it. Figure out how to extract more money from taxpayers' wallets.
But the Obamas are doing more than "encouraging" or "asking." In a speech in California, Michelle, who has made a small fortune in the "helping industry," said: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. . . . Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed."
But America is not a nation of selfish, self-serving people. Social demographer Arthur Brooks once calculated that Americans volunteered 32% more than Obama's beloved Germans. We also donate seven times more money to charities and causes than the Germans who gathered in Berlin.
In talking about his national service, Obama, the man who seems to be running for "community organizer in chief," also made this startling statement:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
This is an idea worthy of Hugo Chavez.
Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has estimated that this civilian national security force alone would cost somewhere between $100 billion and $500 billion, or between 10% and 50% of all federal tax receipts. And that doesn't include the cost of the brown shirts.
Adults are not exempt from all this, even adults who've already served in the U.S. military. "People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve," Obama says. Will they be asked, or drafted?
"The future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson," he concedes. "But it (also) depends on the teacher in East L.A., the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans . . ." So drop down and give Sgt. Obama 50 hours.
Require. Demand. Never allow. Obama's version of "voluntary" service is more appropriate for Havana than middle America. He wants to turn America's students, and even adults, into clones of Elian Gonzalez, compelled to serve the state in ways Obama "will direct."
Correction: In the first installment of this series on Tuesday, the Luo ethnic group in Kenya was identified as "communist." The father of the Luo leader cited, Oginga Odinga, did espouse the post-colonial African version of communism in the 1970s and '80s, and his son, Raila Odinga, calls himself a social democrat. But communism as an ideology did not characterize the entire tribe.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302396723240343
Election '08: Barack Obama calls it "Universal Voluntary Public Service." We call it a plan for national involuntary servitude. Kennedy asked us what we could do for our country. Obama has ways to make us volunteer.
Sen. Obama's call to public service is quite different from JFK's. JFK knew America was already a nation of givers and volunteers, perhaps the most charitable and altruistic nation on Earth. Entities such as the Peace Corps would give Americans an outlet for their kindness and generosity, an opportunity to share what the freest nation on Earth had given them. Obama will force you to share.
Obama's Orwellian use of the words "universal" and "voluntary" together is an indicator of an antithesis to capitalist society deeply rooted in his socialist associations, education and training. Indeed, in 1996, when he ran for an Illinois state Senate seat, one of his first endorsements was from the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.
On the surface, his plan looks just like typical bureaucratic program growth. He wants to expand Americorps to 250,000 slots and double the size of the Peace Corps. He'll create a Clean Energy Corps to plant trees and otherwise save the Earth. It's how Obama plans to fill those slots that's worrisome.
Announcing his plan July 2 at the University of Colorado, he said: "We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges." He will make us an offer we can't refuse.
Obama says that as president he will "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year." What he doesn't say is that he'll make such voluntarism compulsory by attaching strings to federal education dollars. The schools will make the kids volunteer. It's called plausible deniability.
In a commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Obama advised graduates not to pursue the American dream of success, but to serve others.
"You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should," he told the graduates. "But I hope you don't."
Don't be another Bill Gates and amass a fortune making people more productive and successful in their daily lives and giving your countrymen a standard of living the world will envy. Exchange your cap and gown for sackcloth and ashes. Leave your possessions behind and come and follow Obama.
"Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs betrays a poverty of ambition," he opined. Shame on us for being selfish and buying that SUV built by an autoworker trying to fulfill his family's immediate wants and needs.
"Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation," Obama said. "Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."
We already have a Salvation Army that is truly a volunteer organization. Collective service and salvation is not a classic definition of voluntarism. What Obama has in mind is to turn America into a socialist version of the old Soviet collectives.
And if your idea of service is to join the military and keep others alive and free, forget about it. And never mind about ROTC on campus.
Obama has no place for those who are willing to abandon fame and fortune to lay down their lives for their friends and ours. "At a time of war," Obama says, "we need you to work for peace."
"We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do," Obama's wife, Michelle, told a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio, during the primaries. "Don't go into corporate America. . . . Become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers we need, and we're encouraging people to do just that."
Don't be the engineers who will figure out better ways to extract shale oil from the porous rock that holds it. Figure out how to extract more money from taxpayers' wallets.
But the Obamas are doing more than "encouraging" or "asking." In a speech in California, Michelle, who has made a small fortune in the "helping industry," said: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. . . . Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed."
But America is not a nation of selfish, self-serving people. Social demographer Arthur Brooks once calculated that Americans volunteered 32% more than Obama's beloved Germans. We also donate seven times more money to charities and causes than the Germans who gathered in Berlin.
In talking about his national service, Obama, the man who seems to be running for "community organizer in chief," also made this startling statement:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
This is an idea worthy of Hugo Chavez.
Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has estimated that this civilian national security force alone would cost somewhere between $100 billion and $500 billion, or between 10% and 50% of all federal tax receipts. And that doesn't include the cost of the brown shirts.
Adults are not exempt from all this, even adults who've already served in the U.S. military. "People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve," Obama says. Will they be asked, or drafted?
"The future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson," he concedes. "But it (also) depends on the teacher in East L.A., the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans . . ." So drop down and give Sgt. Obama 50 hours.
Require. Demand. Never allow. Obama's version of "voluntary" service is more appropriate for Havana than middle America. He wants to turn America's students, and even adults, into clones of Elian Gonzalez, compelled to serve the state in ways Obama "will direct."
Correction: In the first installment of this series on Tuesday, the Luo ethnic group in Kenya was identified as "communist." The father of the Luo leader cited, Oginga Odinga, did espouse the post-colonial African version of communism in the 1970s and '80s, and his son, Raila Odinga, calls himself a social democrat. But communism as an ideology did not characterize the entire tribe.
Obama's Global Tax (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 2)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302222641317480
The Audacity of Socialism, Part 2
Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.
Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."
What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.
Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."
Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.
A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."
These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.
His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.
It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.
It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.
We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.
Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.
During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.
If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.
The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."
Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.
Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?
In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302222641317480
The Audacity of Socialism, Part 2
Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.
Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."
What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.
Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."
Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.
A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."
These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.
His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.
It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.
It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.
We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.
Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.
During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.
If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.
The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."
Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.
Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?
In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism (The Audacity of Socialism, Part 1)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302137342405551
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and
moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.
The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.
After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" —on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.
(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."
Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.
(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."
He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."
He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.
Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.
The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302137342405551
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and
moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.
The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.
After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" —on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.
(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."
Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.
(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."
He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."
He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.
Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.
The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
Sarah Palin's email hacked
Barak Obama is a lawyer and a constitutional scholar, so
* Will he call for an investigation?
* Will he commit to holding the criminals who broke into her email accountable?
OR
* Will he use this incident to try to smear Governor Palin?
* Will he call for an investigation?
* Will he commit to holding the criminals who broke into her email accountable?
OR
* Will he use this incident to try to smear Governor Palin?
More questionable associations
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, William Ayers; now also Jimmy Johnson and Franklin Raines.
Barak Obama: Questionable associations, questionable judgment. Not good for America, not ready to lead.
Barak Obama: Questionable associations, questionable judgment. Not good for America, not ready to lead.
Comments Barak's response to protesters
Barak Obama to protesters in Coral Gables, Florida:
"Hold on, guys, hold on. . . . Hold on, hold on, hold on, everyone. . . . Come on, guys. . ."
AMAZING, isn't it, that we are suppose to believe that this is the guy who the world leaders will look to for advice and get in line after he speaks, and yet he can't even control a few dozen protesters at one of his rallies?
"Hold on, guys, hold on. . . . Hold on, hold on, hold on, everyone. . . . Come on, guys. . ."
AMAZING, isn't it, that we are suppose to believe that this is the guy who the world leaders will look to for advice and get in line after he speaks, and yet he can't even control a few dozen protesters at one of his rallies?
Joe Biden questioning Barak Obama's patriotism?
IF Joe Biden says that the it is the patriotic duty of Americans to pay more taxes (and he does)
AND Barak Obama says that he is going to reduce the taxes 95% of Americans (a miracle that will be greater than his ability to heal the planet and roll back the waters of the seas)
THEN EITHER
1. Joe Biden considers Barak Obama a poor example of patriotism, or
2. Joe Biden is giving us a hint that inspite of Barak's pledges to the contrary, Barak will step up to the plate and show himself to be a true patriot by raising taxes on the masses once again.
EITHER WAY, if democrats win, not only will taxes go up, but so will uncontrolled wasteful spending.
Barak Obama: Wrong choices for America, wrong choices for your family.
AND Barak Obama says that he is going to reduce the taxes 95% of Americans (a miracle that will be greater than his ability to heal the planet and roll back the waters of the seas)
THEN EITHER
1. Joe Biden considers Barak Obama a poor example of patriotism, or
2. Joe Biden is giving us a hint that inspite of Barak's pledges to the contrary, Barak will step up to the plate and show himself to be a true patriot by raising taxes on the masses once again.
EITHER WAY, if democrats win, not only will taxes go up, but so will uncontrolled wasteful spending.
Barak Obama: Wrong choices for America, wrong choices for your family.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Sarah Palin on Joe Biden's definition of patriotism
"Our opponents, they have some strange ideas about raising taxes. To them, raising taxes, and Joe Biden said it again today, raising taxes is about patriotism. To the rest of America, that's not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse. This isn't about anyone's patriotism. It's about Barack Obama's poor judgment.
"He wants to raise income tax and raise payroll taxes and raise investment income taxes and raise the death tax and raise business taxes. He wants to raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars, and at a time like this, that will make today's bad economy seem like the good old days."
"He wants to raise income tax and raise payroll taxes and raise investment income taxes and raise the death tax and raise business taxes. He wants to raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars, and at a time like this, that will make today's bad economy seem like the good old days."
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Lieberman on Obama--again
Senator Barack Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But, my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record (cheering) not in these tough times for America.
... I want to speak directly to my fellow Democrats and independents who are watching or listening tonight. I want to speak directly to you out there. I know many of you are angry and frustrated by our government and our politics today, and for good reason. You may be thinking of voting for John McCain, but you're not sure yet. Some of you may never have voted for a Republican before -- and, frankly, in an ordinary election, you probably never would. But I want you to believe with me that this is no ordinary election.
And it's no ordinary election because these are not ordinary times. And trust me: John McCain is no ordinary candidate.
... I want to speak directly to my fellow Democrats and independents who are watching or listening tonight. I want to speak directly to you out there. I know many of you are angry and frustrated by our government and our politics today, and for good reason. You may be thinking of voting for John McCain, but you're not sure yet. Some of you may never have voted for a Republican before -- and, frankly, in an ordinary election, you probably never would. But I want you to believe with me that this is no ordinary election.
And it's no ordinary election because these are not ordinary times. And trust me: John McCain is no ordinary candidate.
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