Obama's Church

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afrocentric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And additional disturbing information has come to light.

At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own.

In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.

The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of "competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them "captive" to white culture.

In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher — who married Obama and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser — is militantly Afrocentric. "We are an African people," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminds his flock, "and remain true to our native land, the mother continent."

Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala, Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who's fond of calling whites "blue-eyed devils," for lifetime achievement.

It comes as little surprise then that Wright would think Israel a "racist" occupier of Palestinians, while describing the 9/11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America" for ignoring the concerns of "people of color." Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his presidential run.

The candidate already has heeded his church's "nonnegotiable commitment to Africa," spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis, for one. Obama has close family ties to Kenya, and even founded a school in his ancestral village — the Senator Obama School.

In the bloody conflict there, which already has claimed some 700 lives, Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga, head of the same Luo tribe to which Obama's late Muslim father belonged.

Obama's older brother still lives there. Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urges his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.

Beyond family politics, these ties have potential foreign policy, even national security, implications. Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country. He has also vowed to ban booze and pork and impose Muslim dress codes on women — moves favored by Obama's brother.

With al-Qaida strengthening its beachheads in Africa — from Algeria to Sudan to Somalia — the last thing the West needs is for pro-Western Kenya to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

Yet Obama interrupted his New Hampshire campaigning to speak by phone with Odinga, who claims to be his cousin. He did not speak with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki.

Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?

It's a valid question, and one voters deserve to have debated regardless of the racial and religious sensitivities. Thanks to a media blackout of these issues, the electorate has yet to benefit from a thorough vetting of Obama.

We have to wonder how much of the national agenda Africa would consume under an Obama administration. Of the six "world threats" Obama lists in stump speeches, at least half of them concern that chronically troubled Third World continent.

Yes, some of his African priorities are noble, such as fighting AIDS and genocide. But how much U.S. aid, resources and presidential time would he devote to them? How much is enough? If Bill Clinton was America's "first black president," would Barack Hussein Obama be our first president for Africa?

Then there is the issue of his Muslim past. Obama, 47, was raised by two Muslim fathers and attended Islamic classes in Indonesia. He denies being Muslim, however, and says he "embraced Christ" while answering the altar call 20 years ago at Trinity. (Contrary to anonymous e-mail rumors circulating, Obama never took the oath of office on the Quran. He used a Bible, and Vice President Dick Cheney swore him in during his Senate ceremony.) This merely raises another concern, beyond that of the controversial church he chose to baptize him. If Obama were ever Muslim, even as a youth, he would now be viewed as an apostate, which in radical Islam is punishable by death. As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes has noted, a President Obama could be the target of a fatwah.

Still, his Muslim heritage is not the signal issue before the electorate.

It's his Afrocentric church, which preaches black socialism and black nativism, and his family ties to an African tribe that's fanning the flames of Marxism and militant Islam in a country once considered strongly democratic and a friend of the U.S.

"I believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," Obama has asserted. He also says his faith has led him to question "the idolatry of the free market." If a President Obama's foreign and domestic policies are anything like the Afrocentric doctrine he's pledged to uphold, Americans will pay a hefty price, including those among the growing black middle class.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=285292746454291

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq

Note: Following is a speech given by Barack Obama in Oct 2002 while a member of the IL Legislature about the Iraq war while speaking to an anti-war rally and now this same person wants to be President? BTW, this speech is on his website so you could say he approved this message!

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq

October 2, 2002

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.


http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.php
Note: My bold and highlighted

First Lady Of Gaffes

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, February 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT

After revealing she had never been "really proud of my country," Michelle Obama damns business as "the money-making industry." By contrast, she says, the Obamas are in "the helping industry." Bad omen.

Visiting a day-care center in Zanesville, Ohio, America's would-be first lady advised the assembled women not to "go into corporate America."

"Become teachers," she counseled. "Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we're encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond."

No disrespect to teachers and nurses, but there are problems with those remarks.

First, when she says "move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry," she speaks volumes. Apparently, well-paid people in all kinds of profitable fields are, in the Obama worldview, just idle, scheming splinter-collectors who help only themselves.

On the other hand, the social workers who make sure the cash flows from the various elements of the massive government bureaucracy are the great and noble helpers.
However, the oil CEO who invests billions of dollars of his firm's profits in the research and development of new technologies that bring hitherto unreachable deposits of fuel to the cars and homes of millions of Americans is very much in "the helping industry."

So is the pharmaceutical executive who uses her business skills and scientific knowledge to decide to spend billions on R&D for new drugs that lengthen the lives of millions.

The real, productive jobs in the private sector help people in ways government can't. A president who does not understand these things will kill the geese who lay the golden eggs — kill them with high taxes and onerous regulations and ultimately adverse economic conditions.

Second, did the Obamas really make a tough choice to give up high-paying jobs to work in community service? The University of Chicago Medical Center reportedly pays Michelle more than $300,000 a year for her services as "vice president of community and external affairs."

Her husband made a big splash last year with a bill to curtail lavish executive compensation. If he could incorporate that concept into his health care plan and stop hospitals from overpaying their public liaisons, it might go a long way toward cutting health costs.

We doubt, however, that Michelle would find that very "helpful."

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=289181858454205

Obama's Sub-Prime Conflict

consortiumnews.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708a.html

By Dennis Bernstein
February 28, 2008

I remember my first piggy bank: a little pink piggy, made of plastic, with a little slot at the top. The slot was big enough, perhaps, to fit a half dollar, a great deal of money to me at the time.

“A penny earned is a penny saved,” my father told me, as we dropped the first few coins into the opening, and I heard them hit bottom and bounce. And I can’t tell you how excited I was when we broke it open, after a year or so, and I couldn’t fit another penny into the slot.

I tallied up my stash—close to five dollars, I recall— and decided what I would do with my small fortune. I bought a kite, and my imagination soared even higher than my beautiful Chinese box-kite as to what I would save up for next.
My pop gave me a powerful push in the right direction, when it came to savings: A penny saved really was a penny earned.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for the 1,406 people who lost much of their life savings when Superior Bank of Chicago went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior's owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages. As part of a settlement, the owners paid $100 million and agreed to pay another $335 million over 15 years at no interest.

The uninsured depositors were dealt another blow recently when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision to put any recovered money toward the debt that the bank owners owe the federal government before the depositors get anything.

But this seven-year-old bank failure has relevance in another way today, since the chair of Superior’s board for five years was Penny Pritzker, a member of one of America’s richest families and the current Finance Chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the same candidate who has lashed out against predatory lending.

During a recent campaign stop in south Texas, Obama met with San Antonio-area residents who had been particularly hard hit by the sub-prime meltdown. He expressed dismay over how lobbyists for the sub-prime lending industry had spent more than $185 million in the last several years for their cause.

“To give you a sense of what that kind of lobbying gets you,” Obama said, a “CEO of the largest sub-prime lender was promised a $100-million severance package at a time when more than two million Americans were facing foreclosure, including nearly 14,000 right here in San Antonio.”

Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.

“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.

“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”

In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.

One Failure to the Next

Superior was founded at the tail end of 1988 in the wake of the failed Lyons Savings Bank. The Feds were trying to keep a lid on the magnitude of the S&L post-deregulation crisis and were selling failed or failing thrifts for a song, along with a lucrative package of special benefits.

Chicago’s billionaire Pritzker family and their partners bought Lyons Savings for a quite reasonable $42.5 million, but were also given $645 million in tax credits. The kicker was that the buyers only had to come up with $1 million in cash, and got access to the $645 million, and all the bank’s deposits insured by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC).

The Pritzker family’s Superior Bank “started life with enormous tax benefits and a substantial amount of FSLIC-guaranteed assets under a FSLIC assistance agreement,” said financial consultant Bert Ely in a Oct. 16, 2001, statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Ely stated, “Superior’s trick, or business plan” under Penny Pritzker’s leadership was apparently “to concentrate on sub-prime lending, principally on home mortgages, but for a while in sub-prime auto lending, too.” In December 1992, the Pritzkers acquired Alliance Funding, a wholesale mortgage organization.

In a 2002 article in In These Times about Superior Bank’s collapse, business writer David Moberg reported that the bank’s operations were “tainted with the hallmarks of a mini-Enron scandal…And yet the bank’s owners, members of one of America’s wealthiest families, ultimately could end up profiting from the bank’s collapse, while many of Superior’s borrowers and depositors suffer financial losses.”

Moberg wrote that “the Superior story has a familiar ring. … Using a variety of shell companies and complex financial gimmicks, Superior’s managers and owners exaggerated the profits and financial soundness of the bank. While the company actually lost money throughout most of the ’90s, publicly it appeared to be growing remarkably fast and making unusually large profits. Under that cover, the floundering enterprise paid its owners huge dividends and provided them favorable loans and other financial deals deemed illegal by federal investigators.

Superior’s outside auditor, which doubled as a financial consultant, engaged in dubious accounting practices that kept feckless regulators at bay. Many individuals—disproportionately low-income and minority borrowers with spotty credit records—had apparently been exploited through predatory-lending techniques, including exorbitant fees, inadequate disclosure and high interest rates.”

When it collapsed in 2001, Superior Bank represented the largest failure of a U.S.-insured depository institution for a decade.

“The failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to the Bank’s Board of Directors and executives ignoring sound risk management principles,” said FDIC Inspector General Gaston Gianni Jr. in a Feb. 7, 2002, report.

Banking whistleblower Anderson noted that “Superior failed at a time of historically low interest rates, high employment, a strong economy, and a growing housing market. … There was no reason for it to fail unless you consider gross negligence, a flawed business plan, and a conspiracy to deceive the regulators who were clearly asleep and were negligent themselves in their duties of protecting the class of underinsured depositors.”

Pioneering WorkAnderson said the bank owners and board members used Superior for their pioneering work in sub-prime lending, developing the financial instruments that helped set the stage for the current sub-prime meltdown.

“The Pritzkers like to say they did sub-prime lending to help the disadvantaged get into the home equity business, [but] it would be more accurate to state they ran a very large nation-wide predatory lending operation,” Anderson said, citing criticism of Superior’s lending practices in a letter written to the Office of Thrift Supervision on July 3, 2002, by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an association of more than 600 community-based organizations that promote access to basic banking services.

As an owner and board chair of Superior, Penny Pritzker also was named in a RICO class action suit on behalf of the more than 1,400 depositors at Superior, who initially lost over $50 million of their life savings.

"This is a story of two Americas with two sets of laws, one for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us,” said Clint Krislov, the depositors’ attorney, in a recent interview. “My clients will all be dead, before they get back their money, given the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the lower court, which put the predatory owners on the front of the line, if any money is recovered.”

The Pritzkers arrayed a powerful and well-connected legal team including former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer Lanny Davis, two ex-comptrollers of the currency, and two former General Counsels to the FDIC, the American Banker Magazine reported.

Given the political sensitivity of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Anderson said he believes Penny Pritzker should resign her post as Obama’s Finance Chair, the person who oversees the campaign’s fundraising.

Otherwise, Anderson said, Pritzker’s presence could undercut Obama’s credibility on the issue of predatory lending and create a possible conflict of interest if Obama is elected President and tries to crack down on sub-prime abuses.

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor had no comment about the controversy surrounding Pritzker, but added: "Barack Obama has already made it very clear that he's going to crack down on fraudulent brokers and lenders."

One might wonder why Hillary Clinton’s campaign hasn’t jumped on this issue. Maybe it’s because Penny’s little brother, J.B. Pritzker, is a mover and shaker in the Clinton campaign.

In May of 2007, Jay Robert, aka, (J.B.) Pritzker, threw his support behind Hillary Clinton, representing a coup for her campaign by wresting the billionaire out of Obama’s home town of Chicago, and better still, the brother of Obama’s Campaign Finance Chair.

J.B. Pritzker announced he would head a new grassroots organization called Citizens for Hillary Clinton. Pritzker told reporters at the time, the new organization would go into states "where we haven't fully organized" and seek out campaign supporters as well as raise funds.

Apparently the Pritzkers will be sitting at the head table at the Inaugural Ball if either Democrat wins.

Dennis Bernstein is an award-winning investigative reporter and public radio producer. He is co-host and executive producer of the daily radio news magazine, Flashpoints, on Pacifica Radio, and a contributing editor to the Pacific News Service.

(Note: My bold and highlight)

Obama once visited '60s radicals

Ben Smith, Politico
February 22, 2008 01:26 PM EST

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement. (Note: See link for details on Ayers and Dohrn, Weather Underground Terrorists at Front Page Magazine)

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from a man in the Hyde Park left to one closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been previously reported.

Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation.

But Obama’s relationship with Ayers is an especially vivid milepost on his rise, in record time, from a local official who unabashedly reflected a very liberal district to the leader of national movement based largely on the claim that he can transcend ideological divides.

In one sense, Obama’s journey toward the cultural and political center is not unusual among national politicians. But its velocity is.

Politicians of an earlier generation had their own relationships with figures now far to their left. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, interned at a radical San Francisco law firm while in law school.

On the other side of the political spectrum, many in the generation before hers shifted dramatically on civil rights. John McCain voted against creating a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and later called that a mistake.

The relationship with Ayers gives context to his recent past in Hyde Park politics. It’s milieu in which a former violent radical was a stalwart of the local scene, not especially controversial.

It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features — while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best — provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance. This contrast between past and present — not least the Ayers connection — is virtually certain to be a subject Republican operatives will warm to if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

The tension between the present and recent Chicago past is also evident in some of his positions on major national issues. Many national politicians, including Clinton, have moved toward the center over time. But Obama’s transitions are still quite fresh.

A questionnaire from his 1996 campaign indicated more blanket opposition to the death penalty, and support of abortion rights, than he currently espouses. He spoke in support of single-payer health care as recently as 2003.

Like many of the most extreme figures from the 1960s Ayers and Dohrn are ambiguous figures in American life.

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

But — unlike some other fringe figures of the era — they’re also flatly unrepentant about the bombings they committed in the name of ending the war, defending them on the grounds that they killed no one, except, accidentally, their own members.

Dohrn, however, was jailed for less than a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members’ robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed.

“I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.

And their rehabilitation in establishment circles, even in Hyde Park, has its limits. Though he is a respected figure in liberal educational circles, Ayers wrote recently about how in 2006 he was informed he was persona non grata at a progressive educators’ conference in the summer of 2006. “We cannot risk a simplistic and dubious association between progressive education and the violent aspects of your past,” he quoted the conference organizers, whom he described as friends, as writing to him.

But the couple has been embraced, by and large, in the liberal circles dominating Hyde Park politics. “Bill Ayers is one of my heroes in life,” said Sam Ackerman, a longtime local activist. “I knew Tony Rezko, and he ain’t no Rezko.” But others in Hyde Park, whose intellectual and political life revolves around the University of Chicago, view the couple with ambivalence.

“I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now — so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community,” said Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who has known Obama since the early 1990s and supports his campaign. “Not only is Obama the opposite pole from radicals like Ayers and Dohrn at least as one point were, he’s not a conventional left liberal by any means,” he said. Others are less inclined to even consider forgiveness. “Ayers was a terrorist. Bernardine Dohrn was a terrorist.

Ayers has never offered one word of apology — he glories in it, thinks it’s terrific. And that to me is not what I would call acceptable or mainstream behavior,” said Dan Polsby, a former law professor at Northwestern who is now dean of George Mason University Law School.

Click on link for complete article: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html

Note: Bold and highlight are mine not the author's

Lynn Sweet: Obama tells Ellen DeGeneres being president "is really cool."

Feb 28, 2008
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/02/sweet_obama_tells_ellen_degene.html

AUSTIN, TEXAS--Barack Obama told Ellen DeGeneres that his poll numbers went up after he danced on her show....Day One as president would be "really cool" and chewing on the stop-smoking Nicorette "tastes like you’re chewing on ground pepper – but it does help."

from the Obama campaign...

Barack Obama did an interview with Ellen DeGeneres today. Below is the press release with excerpts sent out by Time Warner.

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres continues talking politics with the 2008 Presidential candidates when she chats with Senator Barack Obama during a live interview via satellite during an event at Duncanville High School in Duncanville, TX. This interview will air on Thursday, February 28, 2008 (check your local listings). Senator Obama discusses dancing, quitting smoking and what his first day in office would be like if he were to be elected. Ellen also asks about running a clean campaign and why he thinks people should vote for him.

On dancing

Ellen: …Hello, and the next question is: any new dance moves since I’ve been with you last?

Barack: I just want to say that we were kind of in a slump until I was dancing on the show – my poll numbers skyrocketed after that.

Everybody saw me bust a move on Ellen – that’s all it took.

On quitting smoking

Ellen: Alright, here’s the big question: Have you been able to not smoke when there’s so much pressure and so much stress – to try to do such a –it’s such a horrible, hard habit to break, and I know ‘cause I’ve struggled with it myself. Have you been able to stop?

Barack: I’ve been able to do it. I’ve been chewing on this Nicorette, which tastes like you’re chewing on ground pepper – but it does help.

And this was a deal-breaker for Michelle. I had been sneaking three cigarettes, four cigarettes a day for awhile, and she said if you’re going to do this you’ve got to stop – precisely because the stress was going increase, and it’ll just get worse. So that’s an example of my wife making me a better man once again.

On what his first day would be like if elected

Ellen: Wow, that’s great, that’s great. Now questions about politics. Hilary says that she is ready on day one. And you say you are ready on day one as well. So my question is, number one: are you ready? What is day one like? Do you wake up at eight? Do you get breakfast.? What’s your day one?

Barack: Well, first of all I think I’ll just go into the Oval Office and sit at the desk and say,”Wow, this is really cool.” Actually, the first day after I’m sworn in and I don’t know whether that counts as day one or not, I think the day after the inauguration if I were lucky enough to serve it would be to call in the joint chiefs of staff to really start talking about how do we get our troops out of Iraq in an honorable, careful, responsible way..I am a strong believer that we need to bring this war to an end.

On running a clean campaign

Ellen: Yes, I agree with that. Alright, and now everyone is saying this has been a clean campaign, as campaigns go, it’s been pretty clean…but let’s talk about the fliers in Ohio that Hillary says didn’t represent her properly. They misrepresent her. Did they? And, what do you say about that?

Barack: Well, obviously I think that they represented her position properly which is that she supported in the past NAFTA, which has been pretty hard on Ohio, and we’ve had an ongoing discussion about healthcare. Both of us want to provide healthcare to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy healthcare. She’d have the government force that every individual buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it. I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s (Hillary) tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy healthcare that I’m not insuring everybody. If things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t. But this is a philosophical disagreement that we have and it’s one that we’re going to continue to talk about. Overall though, as you said (Ellen), this has been a relatively clean campaign. I have enormous respect for Senator Clinton and I’m looking forward to working with her to make sure that Democrats win in November.

On why should people vote for Senator Obama

Ellen: Now here’s the thing. And, I’m sure you hear this. I really like you. I really like Hillary. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. I think that sometimes it’s a very clear-cut thing when you have two people running, you go, “I am absolutely for this person.” But I think a lot of people like both of you. So when you have people that like both of you, and are saying, “Look I’d be happy if either one of them won,” why vote for you?

Barack: Well, I think that we’re at a moment in history where, in order to solve big problems, to provide healthcare to people who really need it, to make college more affordable, to help families save a little bit of money for retirement…we’ve got to bring the country together. And I think I have a better chance at getting Democrats and Independents and Republicans to come together and put aside some partisan bickering that has been going on for a long time now that the Clintons were involved in.

Ellen: Well Senator Obama this has been a pleasure talking to you. I know you’re busy and you took time out and I appreciate it so very much. We’re going to play some music. I’m going to dance. If you hear the music, I hope you’re going to boogie a tiny bit. You said it helps.

(Music plays; Ellen and Barack dance)

Obama Deceived Debate Viewers on NAFTA Plans, Canada TV Says

By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
February 28, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - Did Sen. Barack Obama say one thing privately to the Canadian government about NAFTA -- and something very different during Tuesday night's debate? The answer is yes, according to CTV, a Canadian television network.

The network reported Wednesday night that a "senior member" of the Obama campaign called Michael Wilson, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., "within the last month," warning Wilson that Obama would "take some heavy swings" at the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as part of his campaign.

CTV video

The Obama insider reportedly told the ambassador, "Don't worry -- it's just campaign rhetoric, it's not serious," CTV reported.

CTV reported that the Obama campaign's message to Wilson was taken as "completely authentic" by the Canadian government.

At Tuesday's debate in Cleveland, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that as president she would opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement in six months, if she couldn't renegotiate the agreement with Canada and Mexico to her satisfaction.

"I will make sure we renegotiate," Obama agreed. "I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced."

Democrats count labor unions among their biggest supporters, and labor unions blame NAFTA for eliminating jobs.

On Wednesday, Canada's Trade Minister David Emerson said NAFTA is at risk, given Clinton and Obama's threats to end it, the Bloomberg News Service reported.

"The rhetoric of protectionism has been creeping up and getting more strident," Emerson was quoted as saying. "It's not just the heat of the presidential campaign," he said -- there's a grassroots movement against it as well.

Emerson said Mexico, Canada and the United States all benefit from the 1994 trade deal, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration. "The dismantling of trade barriers and the opening of markets has led to economic growth and rising prosperity in all three countries," the U.S. Commerce Department says on its Web site.

Canada is the USA's biggest trading partner.

Bloomberg also quoted Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as saying that it will be "very important" for the eventual U.S. presidential nominee to talk with "those who are very knowledgeable about" NAFTA.

Obama has not directly responded to questions about his differing private and public stands on NAFTA. A spokesperson for the Obama campaign told CTV that the Obama staffer's conversation with Ambassador Wilson sounded implausible. But the spokesperson did not deny that the Obama campaign had contacted Wilson.

"Senator Obama does not make promises he doesn't intend to keep," the spokesperson told CTV.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200802/POL20080228a.html

Soros Family donates $60,000 to Obama Senate race

Did George Soros find his puppet for the 2008 Presidential race in IL in 2004 when he donated $60,000 to Barack Obama for his IL Senate race? You can bet if the Soros' Family donated $60,000 that is reported, Soros donations through other groups is bound to be even higher. What did Soros see in Obama?

The facts will speak for themselves in the weeks ahead and by November expect the Democrat Party to have buyer's remorse with their candidate who for lack of better words is an empty suit. Obama didn't vote in the IL Legislature 166 times because issues were controversial but he wants to be President?

Was Obama the perfect candidate for George Soros because his (Obama) views can be molded to suit his (Soros) agenda which is making America a 2nd rate Country as he (Soros) levels the playing field through his vast fortune? Will Obama give a voice to the countries whose leaders support terrorism and want to kill us? Obama has already played the 'negotiation' card without hesitation even though it is a long standing policy that the United States does not negotiate with terrorist.

When Soros met with Obama in 2004 (see article below), one has to wonder what was discussed and what made Soros jump on the Obama bandwagon back then which led to Soros financial backing of Moveon.org which has openly endorsed Obama for President.

Soros money in the Obama campaign = Soros access to the White House and a voice in US foreign policy by Soros who wants to see Israel destroyed and the US relegated to the trash pile of history as no longer being a super power.

Where there is smoke, there is fire and the new media has only begun to unravel the puzzle of Soros influence in the Obama campaign since the mainstream media cannot be bothered by such trivial investigations.

Unlike Kerry, Barack Obama Covets George Soros’ Support
By Robert B. Bluey
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
July 27, 2004

[excerpt] Obama, however, is different from most Democrats because of his willingness to embrace the controversial Soros. Shortly after Soros equated the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama joined him for a New York fund-raiser June 7.

…Not only did George Soros donate to Obama’s campaign, but four other family members - Jennifer, sons Jonathan and Robert and wife Susan - did as well.

Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge.

Remember, George $oro$ has called the U.S. under George Bush a menace to world peace while blaming Israel for causing anti-Semitism. If Soros is for Obama, we are against Obama.

Obama is one of only a handful of candidates to get a personal contribution from George Soros. The others include Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean

"Why did George support Obama?" his spokesman, Michael Vachon, asked rhetorically. "Because when they met in Chicago a couple of months ago, it was apparent that Barack Obama was an emerging national leader, and he would be an important addition to the Senate."

Vachon said Obama is the only candidate this election cycle Soros has met personally, with the first powwow in March. [end excerpt]

For complete article: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200407%5CNAT20040727a.html

Obama Praises Rev Sharpton for his National Action Network

Senator Barack Obama (Ill): “Reverend Sharpton is a voice for the voiceless, and a voice for the dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.”



Why did Obama embrace Rev Sharpton? Does this mean Rev Al is now supporting Obama? Where does Sharpton get his money? Is it by shakedowns? Enquiring minds want to know if some of this alleged shakedown money will be used to support Obama. Some background on Rev Sharpton:

Wall Street Journal (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3784561315774230886&postID=7652043883823031343):

[excerpt] The press has been appropriately vigilant in examining Mr. Bush's willingness to pander to Southern white identity politics. It would have taken no great effort for the reporters covering the Apollo debate to have walked across 125th Street from the theater to visit Freddy's Fashion Mart, where in 1995 eight people died in a murderous rampage inspired by Mr. Sharpton.

Mr. Sharpton is best-known for the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which he insisted that a 15-year-old black girl had been abducted and raped by a band of white men practicing Irish Republican Army rituals. In fact she had made up the story to protect herself from her violent stepfather.

But at Freddy's, Mr. Sharpton was even more malevolent. He turned a landlord-tenant dispute between the Jewish owner of Freddy's and a black subtenant into a theater of hatred. Picketers from Mr. Sharpton's National Action Network, sometimes joined by "the Rev." himself, marched daily outside the store, screaming about "bloodsucking Jews" and "Jew bastards" and threatening to burn the building down.

After weeks of increasingly violent rhetoric, one of the protesters, Roland Smith, took Mr. Sharpton's words about ousting the "white interloper" to heart. He ran into the store shouting, "It's on!" He shot and wounded three whites and a Pakistani, whom he apparently mistook for a Jew. Then he set the fire, which killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and one African-American--a security guard whom protesters had taunted as a "cracker lover." Smith then fatally shot himself.

Eight people died, and so evidently did the conscience of liberal Democrats. It was Al Sharpton who had the honor of asking the first question at last week's debate, held within hailing distance of the Freddy's massacre.

Messrs. Gore and Bradley both have excoriated Mr. Bush for being "morally blind" to white racism. At the Apollo, they asked white Americans to look deep in their hearts for racial insensitivity. Yet both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bradley are willfully blind to Mr. Sharpton's form of racism. Last August Mr. Bradley spoke before Sharpton's National Action Network. "This is where justice lies," Mr. Bradley said of the organization that had incited the murders at Freddy's. Then he repeated Mr. Sharpton's slogan: "No justice, no peace."

Meanwhile, just outside the headquarters, Khalid Muhammad, a man so extreme he had been expelled from Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, was threatening to kill New York City Councilman Bill Perkins, who is black. Mr. Perkins's crime? He failed to support the Million Youth March, Mr. Muhammad's annual Harlem hate fest. Mr. Sharpton was the only leading black politician to attend the march.

In the wake of last week's verdict in the accidental shooting of Amadou Diallo, Mr. Sharpton has moved into his statesman act. This will be the fifth or sixth time Mr. Sharpton, almost always dubbed a "civil rights leader" by the mainstream press, has repackaged himself to a credulous media. [end excerpt]

******

From the Philadelphia Enquirer (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/12529201.html):

[excerpt] Videotape shows Sharpton cutting a deal
By John Shiffman

With a hidden FBI camera rolling inside a New York hotel suite in 2003, an unsuspecting Rev. Al Sharpton, Democratic candidate for president, spoke candidly.

Sharpton offered to help Philadelphia fund-raiser Ronald A. White win a multimillion-dollar business deal, if White helped him raise $50,000 for politics.

White offered $25,000. "If you bring my guys up on this hedge fund, and I have the right conversation," White said, "I'll give you what you need."

"Cool," Sharpton said.

The Inquirer obtained an account of the May 9, 2003, conversation, which was recorded as part of the Philadelphia City Hall corruption case. The tape helped spark a separate inquiry into Sharpton's 2004 campaign and his civil-rights organization, the National Action Network. The FBI-IRS probe resurfaced publicly Wednesday, when Sharpton aides received subpoenas.

In an interview yesterday, Sharpton said there is "absolutely nothing illegal" about tying business deals to fund-raising because he is not a public official.

"The tapes vindicate me," Sharpton said. "They show that I did not talk about bribing a public official or paying money under the table."

The video was recorded by an FBI camera hidden in a lamp inside Suite 34A at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan. Sharpton and White were introduced by La-Van Hawkins, a Detroit businessman.

At the time, FBI agents were investigating White and Hawkins, suspecting that they were involved in pay-to-play in Philadelphia - raising campaign funds for Mayor Street and others in order to win municipal contracts for favored donors. Later FBI agents in the case infamously placed a bug in Street's office, but it was discovered before it recorded anything.

FBI agents tapping White's phones in 2003 recorded more than 20 conversations between White and Sharpton, most of them related to fund-raising for the presidential campaign and an effort to secure a $40 million pension-fund deal in New York.

About a year later, White, Hawkins and a dozen others, including former City Treasurer Corey Kemp, were indicted in Philadelphia on federal pay-to-play corruption charges. [end excerpt]

*****

National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/20Mar00/nordlinger032000.html):

[excerpt] There was more, of course-always more. In the spring of 1989, the Central Park “wilding” occurred. That was the monstrous rape and beating of a young white woman, known to most of the world as “the jogger.” The hatred heaped on her by Sharpton and his claque is almost impossible to fathom, and wrenching to review. ...Outside the courthouse, they [Sharpton and his entourage] chanted, “The boyfriend did it! The boyfriend did it!” They denounced the victim as “Whore!” They screamed her name, over and over (because most publications refused to print it, though several black-owned ones did). Sharpton brought Tawana Brawley to the trial one day, to show her, he said, the difference between white justice and black justice. He arranged for her to meet the jogger’s attackers, whom she greeted with comradely warmth. In another of his publicity stunts, he appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim. “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist,” he said, generously. He added: “We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl — if there was this damage.” ...But the torching, so to speak, continued. In 1995-four years into the putative New Sharpton-there was another, fatal case in which Sharpton had a guilty hand: Freddy’s Fashion Mart. In Harlem, a white store owner — no, worse: a Jewish one — was accused of driving a black store owner out of business. At one of the many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away Sharpton charged that “there is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear . . . that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Sharpton’s colleague, Morris Powell, said of the Jewish owner — Sharpton’s “white interloper” — “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it.” [end excerpt]

Obama Reads the Paper for Iraq News?

Feb 28, 2008

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain mocked Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday for saying he would take action as president "if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq."

"When you examine that statement, it's pretty remarkable," McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas.

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called `al-Qaida in Iraq,'" McCain said, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. Sen McCain, Tyler, Texas, Feb 28

AND the latest answer from Obama:

"McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying ,'Well let me give you some news Barack, al Qaeda is in Iraq,' like I wasn't reading the papers, like I didn't know what was going on." Barack Obama, Feb 27, 2008

******

Why is a US Senator getting his information on the war from newspapers? Doesn't he have better intel than that available to him? I would hate to think that Obama would base his decisions as president on what he reads in the NY Times or the Chicago Tribune.

Islamic Links on Obama Web Site Stir Criticism

By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 25, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - A page for Muslim supporters of Sen. Barack Obama -- hosted on Obama's presidential campaign Web site -- promotes events sponsored by controversial Islamic groups.

Muslim Americans for Obama '08, found on Obama's main campaign site, allows users to create their own page through a "My Obama" option. The Muslim Americans for Obama page also links to a Web site that features lectures by people who have expressed radical Islamic views in the past.

A portion of the "Muslim Americans for Obama" page lists proposals to establish a Muslim American advisory group on U.S. foreign policy; provide prayer areas in public places such as malls, airports, universities and government buildings; institute a law to allow Muslim employees to take time from their work day for prayer; and institute a law against harassment of Muslim women in public areas.

The Obama campaign's press office did not respond to numerous phone calls and e-mail messages from Cybercast News Service on this matter.

Throughout the campaign, Obama has professed his Christian faith, although his father is a Muslim.

Late last year, former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a supporter of Obama's Democratic rival New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, caused a stir in Iowa when he said, "It's probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim."

"Muslim Americans for Obama '08 is a grassroots initiative to support the presidential campaign for Barack Obama 2008," the Web page says. "Our sincere intention is to serve as a resource for Muslim and non-Muslim Americans to get involved and learn more about the political process and Barack Obama as a person and presidential candidate."

Other "My Obama" pages on the campaign's Web site include "Jews for Obama," "Christians for Obama" and "Gay Christians for Obama."

But it is a link and a list of events on the Muslim Americans for Obama page that has prompted critics that consider themselves watchdogs of Islamist groups to take notice.

The list of events on the Muslim Americans for Obama page includes voter registration drives at conventions sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), held last April and August in Rosemont, Ill., and the convention co-sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

These groups routinely inject themselves into political causes, said M. Zhudi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He thinks all political candidates should stay clear of mixing religion and politics, saying the root of terror is political Islam.

"Any candidate that engaged American Islamist organizations without any ideological litmus test about their stances regarding the transnational goals of Islamism, I think that is going to be a major liability," Jasser, a Muslim, told Cybercast News Service.

"I wouldn't specifically say Obama. I would say any candidate that doesn't identify that Muslim organizations should be leading the effort against political Islam and its impact on the ends of that terrorists seek. I think it will be a liability," he said.

The MAS has faced intense scrutiny in recent years.

In the appeal of Sabri Benkhala, a man convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice last year after being acquitted of trying to help the Taliban, the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia filed a brief that referenced to MAS as an "overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood for the United States."

The Muslim Brotherhood is a militant Islamic group in Egypt. The government has not brought any charges against MAS.

"We are an American Muslim organization, and we don't take orders from anybody oversees," MAS Executive Director Mahdi Bray told Cybercast News Service. "We were established in America, and we are not an overt or covert arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."

In 2004, after the Israeli military killed Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin, the MAS Freedom Foundation announced it would push Congress to enforce provisions of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act against Israel, which forbids the use of U.S. weapons from being used against civilian targets.

Bray said other human rights organizations and the United Nations also opposed the action by Israel.

In 2006, the Minnesota chapter of MAS issued a fatwa, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, proclaiming that "Islamic jurisprudence" would prohibit Muslim taxi cab drivers from transporting anyone carrying alcohol "because it involves cooperating with sin, according to Islam."

The group tried and failed to get the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to create a two-tier system for Muslim and non-Muslim cab drivers. In this case, Bray said, the state chapter was "out of line" and not acting on behalf of the national organization.

As for the Obama candidacy, Bray anticipates his Muslim heritage could be smeared.

"After the tragedy of 9/11, Republicans might politically exploit this for fear and smear," Bray said. "He's a Christian, but the right-wing bloggers are already talking about his name Obama Hussein.

"Can you believe we live in such a bigoted country that people would denounce him for his name? It wouldn't matter if he were a Christian or a Mormon or Jewish. It's unfair to denounce someone because of their name and connect that to their Muslim heritage," he added.

Bray stressed there is no monolithic support for any single candidate among Muslim voters.

ICNA and MAS, which co-sponsor conventions, are non-profit religious organizations and thus do not endorse any candidates, said Azeem Khan, assistant secretary general for ICNA.

"We don't have a problem with people having tables" at our conventions, Khan told Cybercast News Service. "In '04, Kerry had a table. In 2000, the ISNA convention had a table of Muslims for Bush."

Khan has his doubts about the electoral impact the Muslim community can have in the presidential race.

"Muslims are less than 2 percent of the population in the U.S. and are not a category weighed heavily," Khan said. "Muslims are naturally close to the Republican Party on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The difference comes on foreign policy and other issues."

Khan said President George W. Bush, a Republican, won overwhelmingly among Muslim voters in 2000, but the pendulum swung to the Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.

ISNA promotes itself as a civil rights group seeking interfaith dialogue, but the group has had to weather controversy in past years.

ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in a case, declared a mistrial, against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation. The government accused the Holy Land Foundation but did not convict it of raising more than $12 million for individuals and groups linked the terrorist group Hamas.

J. Michael Waller, an Annenberg professor of international communication at the Institute of World Politics, told a Senate panel in 2003 that ISNA provides training for Wahhabi-trained imams. Wahhabiism is a form of Sunni Islam that includes radical adherents.

An ISNA spokesperson could not be reached for comment for this story.

Jasser was also concerned that the Muslim Americans for Obama site contained a "Qaran (Audio) English Translation." Clicking on that brings a user to the Web site "The Sounds of Islam." At this site users can listen to numerous lectures regarding Islam, including those from people who have expressed radical views in the past.

One of the more controversial lecturers on the site is the Islamic preacher Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who has advocated suicide bombings.

"Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do," the BBC quoted him as saying.

The "Sounds of Islam" site also includes lectures by Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, the chief cleric of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, who has used inflammatory rhetoric against people of different faiths.

The BBC quoted him as saying, "The worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those ... whom he ... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers ... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism .... How can we talk sweetly when the Hindus and the idol worshippers indulge in their overwhelming hatred against our brothers."

Jasser said it's not a stretch to show concern about such a link on the pro-Obama site.

"That's the problem with Islamism," he said. "It's an insinuating, permeating, political ideology that utilizes this political activism to bring forth the political agenda of Islamists. Unless you deal with organizations that separate religion and politics, you're going to find yourself one or two steps away from the international Muslim Brotherhood."

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200802/NAT20080225a.html

George Soros and the Alchemy of 'Regime Change'

February 27, 2008
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

What does a very aged multi-billionaire do after he spends $25 million dollars to force a presidential election his way, and still falls flat on his face? Well, of course, he tries and tries again.

When George Soros failed to obtain the election of his candidate, John Kerry, in 2004, he brooded for a while, even said he might get out of politics altogether, but he just couldn't stop himself. He has stated publicly that he wishes to burst the "bubble of American supremacy," because he says our preeminence in the world is a detriment to global "equilibrium." So far, he has failed, but he keeps on trying.

And Mr. Soros has made no secret either of the fact that he sees the shortest way to effect political shake-ups, what he terms "regime changes," is through very difficult economic conditions.

America has not yet felt the full force of Soros style economic shock treatment. But others have.

Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England. He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically in comparative worth almost overnight.

When the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 threatened to spread globally, George Soros was right in the thick of it. Soros was accused by the Malaysian Prime Minister of causing the collapse with his monetary machinations, and he was branded in Thailand as an "economic war criminal" who "sucks the blood from the people." Right in the middle of this crisis, Soros dashed off his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, which demanded a "third way" toward economic stability.

Coincidentally, or not, during the height of the fears of worldwide recession, then President Clinton told the New York Times that he was proposing a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately for Soros, U.S. markets rebounded quickly, his predicted catastrophe was forestalled, and his brave new global economic plans receded for a bit.

This may have been to Soros' own good, though, because he was by 1998 up to his neck in the collapse of the Russian ruble, and buying up valuable East European resources at fire-sale prices.

And why not?

He had already been widely proclaiming that it was his own machinations that brought down the Soviet Empire. When asked about his sphere of influence in the Soviets' demise for a New Republic interview in 1994, Mr. Soros humbly replied that the author ought to report that "the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire."

When our House Banking Committee investigated the Russia-gate scandal in 1999, trying to determine just how $100 billion had been diverted out of Russia, forcing the collapse of its currency and the default of its enormous loans from the International Monetary Fund, Soros was even called to testify. He denied involvement of course, but finally admitted that he had used insider access in a deal that was barred to foreign investors to acquire a huge chunk of Sidanko Oil.

The Russia scandal was labeled by Rep. Jim Leach, then head of the House Banking Committee to be "one of the greatest social robberies in human history." (Shadow Party; David Horowitz and Richard Poe; p. 96)

Of course, Russia-gate was quickly hushed up and pushed aside in the public's lurid, and quite insatiable, interest in Monica-gate.

Then, George Soros did some more shady economic fooling around in France. And he actually got caught and charged with illegal insider trading in his attempt to takeover the Societe Generale bank. He was convicted and the conviction was upheld in 2 separate appeals, the last in June of 2006. They let him off, however, with a piddling $2.9 million fine.

Mere chicken feed to a multi-billionaire.

Of course, since George Soros is a naturalized American citizen, it is difficult to imagine just why he would intentionally want to bring about our own economic collapse.

But from all appearances, that might be exactly what he has on his mind.

By 2003, Soros was already predicting the downfall of the dollar. In a CNBC interview, amid a slump in the dollar's value against the Euro, Soros added fuel to that fire by stating that he was already selling dollars. His statement, in turn, caused a further decline in the international worth of the dollar.

When George Soros speaks, hedge fund managers and world financiers listen.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to bring about the "October Surprise" U.S. economic downturn in time for the 2004 election. Our economy proved too resilient for him then.

But he hasn't stopped predicting that yearned-for recession that would spoil things for his political foes, the Republicans.

Just after he failed in 2004 to bring about Bush's demise, he went right on trying to force a conclusion to his self-fulfilling prophecy of doom for the U.S. And this year, it appears as though he may have finally hit pay dirt in the sub-prime meltdown which threatens to actually bring on that long hoped-for recession.

In Davos this year, at the World Economic Forum, Soros even went so far as to say that the current housing "bust" would signal the end of the dollar as the world's default currency. "The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom," Soros said. "It's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency."

Being that Mr. Soros' stated goal for more than a decade has been to burst the "bubble of American supremacy," it stands to reason that the financial gloom he is predicting for us would be precisely his own little cup of tea.

And if the economic picture is bleak in this election year, who stands to benefit? Why, the Democrats, of course, the beneficiaries of Soros' 527 largesse.

And Mr. Soros, along with his "progressive" friends may stand at the ready to issue in their vision of America by strategically re-writing the Constitution.

In April 2005, Soros' Open Society Institute was the primary sponsor of a conference at Yale Law School, called, "The Constitution in 2020." The conference's task was to produce "a progressive vision of what the Constitution ought to be." (Emphasis mine.) When one sees references in progressive speak about the "evolutionary character of constitutional law," they are talking about changing the Constitution to formally enshrine their policy preferences so they can avoid the messy necessity of having to win elections. (Shadow Party; Horowitz and Poe; p. 71)

It would seem, then, that progressives stand at the threshold of fulfilling their wildest dreams right here on American shores. With a Republican Party in disarray, the economy seemingly poised on the brink of recession, one candidate with the charisma of a snake charmer and another master schemer as backup, and a new Constitution already being planned, what will stand in their way?

These folks have designs not only on a reinvention of America, but on the whole world. Both Democrat candidates for the presidency have plans for an American cure for global poverty that make our current, quite generous, foreign aid look like a tiny Band-Aid.

Hillary's utopian plan is of a global village, where the role of America is that of supreme benefactor, with herself as our beneficent queen. Hillary's plans for the redistribution of American wealth extend benefits not just to other Americans, but to every other country in need.

Obama, too, sees global poverty as the root cause of all evil in the world, including crime, war and terrorism. His single piece of signature legislation in the Senate is a bill that would authorize an additional $845 billion from American tax payers to eradicate global poverty, and legislate a demand on future presidents to bring America in line with UN mandates on percentage of national GDP given to fight global poverty.

These plans are in perfect sync with Soros' own support for the Tobin Tax, a global tax on currency transactions. This taxation would be forced on sovereign nations by an international body, coercing capitalist economies into sharing their wealth with poor nations for the eradication of poverty and the myriad problems associated with it.

So, that which we and our ancestors have sacrificed to build and maintain will be stolen from us and our offspring and given away by the new Robin Hoods, George Soros and the Democratic Party, who seem to envision global perfection at last, with every single soul living happily ever after in absolute peace and harmony, together singing kumbaya in the same language...the language of love.

And only God knows what can save America from being the sacrificial fodder for their grand, megalomaniacal delusion.

Saner heads prevailing, perhaps?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/george_soros_and_the_alchemy_o.html

NY Times Book review of "Dreams from my Father" by Obama

Obama’s Foursquare Politics, With a Dab of Dijon

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: October 17, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/books/17kaku.html

His 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” written before Mr. Obama entered politics, provided a revealing, introspective account of his efforts to trace his family’s tangled roots and his attempts to come to terms with his absent father, who left home when he was still a toddler. That book did an evocative job of conjuring the author’s multicultural childhood: his father was from Kenya, his mother was from Kansas, and the young Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.

And it was equally candid about his youthful struggles: pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” he wrote, could “push questions of who I was out of my mind,” flatten “out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.”

IRS Investigates Obama's Denomination

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

(02-26) 16:36 PST New York (AP) --

The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a speech Barack Obama gave to its national meeting last year after he became a candidate for president.

Obama is a member of the church.

A spokesman for the denomination says it received notice of the inquiry on Monday.

The IRS says there is reason to believe the speech violated restrictions on political activity for nonprofit groups. The denomination denies any wrongdoing.

Church officials say they had consulted with lawyers before the Democrat's June 2007 speech and made clear before Obama's address that he was speaking as a church member, not a political candidate.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/26/politics/p163622S12.DTL

Obama's Chicago-style Politics (FEC fiasco)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Posted by: Patrick Ruffini at 3:53 PM

Howard Dean is upset that John McCain wants out from public matching funds for the primary. So much so that's he's filed a complaint with the FEC.

Very well. If that's how he really feels about it, he'll tell Senate Democrats to give up their extraordinary block against the President's FEC nominees -- a block that is preventing the FEC from holding a pro-forma vote to allow McCain out of the system.

And who put the hold on Hans Von Spakovsky, one of the FEC nominees in limbo?

Barack Obama.

(In fact, this left-wing blogger asserts that Obama is THE key reason there is no working FEC right now.)

This is extraordinary. Obama is using his Senate office to limit his likely November opponent's spending to $9 million between now and the convention. Incidentally, Obama's actions would have been responsible for cutting John Edwards off at the knees had he stayed in the race and required an infusion of federal funds.

The FEC must vote to approve any such transfers, and partly because of the Obama-led block, it can't. That also means John McCain hasn't seen any Federal money yet. I don't see how you can be in a federal matching funds system and not receive any matching funds.

Is this "change we can believe in" or just Chicago-style politics?

Military fears 'unknown quantity'

February 26, 2008
By Rowan Scarborough -

Members of Washington's military and defense establishment are expressing trepidation about Sen. Barack Obama, as the Illinois senator comes closer to winning the Democratic presidential nomination and leads in national polls to become commander in chief.

But his backers, including a former Air Force chief of staff, say the rookie senator believes in a strong military, and with it, a larger Army and Marine Corps. "

Any military person who concludes he's a left-wing, hair-on-fire, Kumbaya child of the '60s has sadly misunderestimated him, to use George Bush's term," said retired Gen. Merrill McPeak. (See comments below about Gen McPeak and his time as AF Chief of Staff - Sam)

Still, the mostly conservative retired officers, industry executives and current defense officials interviewed by The Washington Times cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security. They also point to his determination to pull American combat units from Iraq at a time when a troop surge has reduced violence, damaged al Qaeda and allowed the Iraqi government to progress toward Sunni-Shia-Kurd reconciliation.

"We're very concerned about his apparent lack of understanding on the threat of radical Islam to the United States," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who is pro-Iraq war and a Fox News analyst. "A lot of retired senior officers feel the same way."

Mr. Obama also has stirred concern in national security circles by pledging to talk to the leaders of rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, without preconditions.

His urging of the Bush administration to conduct air strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan without its approval is privately derided inside the Pentagon as the way to ruin relations with a good ally. Pakistan will not allow U.S. combat troops to operate on its soil. Questions about Mr. Obama's commander-in-chief qualifications have reached the campaign trail.

[snip]

No other Obama proposal brings more military criticism than his plan to bring home one to two combat brigades per month from Iraq — meaning all such units would be out by the end of 2009, his first year in office.

A senior Pentagon official said an Obama swearing-in "will give the Arab street the final victory, the best optics, and the ultimate in bragging rights.

They win. We lose." Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an architect of the Iraq troop surge, worries that talk of a U.S. pullout makes reconciliation more difficult. Gen. Keane has not endorsed any presidential candidate. "

Anyone who is advocating a precipitous pullout of U.S. forces, believing this will be a catalyst for political progress, does not understand the realities of Iraq and the minds of the key political leaders," Gen. Keane told The Washington Times. "The U.S. military presence is the glue that is holding things together in Iraq and is the fundamental reason for the recent political progress. If you remove this presence, the political leaders in Iraq will believe they are on their own and will fall prey to their own fears and paranoia. ... They will bunker down and the political progress will come to a dead stop."

Mr. Korb said Mr. Obama has a "technically sound" proposal for withdrawing troops. He said that the candidate realized before the war, unlike many politicians in Washington, that things would go wrong in Iraq.

"If you go back and you look at the speech he gave on Iraq before the war, I think that it was very well reasoned and well argued," the adviser said. As a state senator in 2002, Mr. Obama said, "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

Gen. McPeak, who is an Obama campaign co-chairman, said the senator's intelligence will dazzle the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[snip]

Defense industry executives worry that Mr. Obama will end six years of defense budget increases and, as he has repeatedly said on the campaign trail and in debates, tap into war and military funds to support his plan for universal health care. "We've got some trepidation.

There is no track record," said an industry executive of the first-term senator. "He's an unknown quantity and that scares us a little bit."

The National Journal ranked Mr. Obama as the Senate's most liberal member in 2007, based partly on his string of votes in favor of amendments that mandated a combat troop pullout from Iraq.

Mr. Obama does, however, acknowledge that America is in a war against extremists.

"The terrorists are at war with us," he said in "The War We Need to Win," a major policy speech. "They seek to create a repressive caliphate.

To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for." One of his five pillars for winning is, "getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The Obama campaign has assembled a team of national security advisers, most of whom worked in the Clinton administration, including former national security adviser Anthony Lake. To date, Mr. Obama has attracted few retired admirals and generals as supporters.

[snip]

For complete article see: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080226/NATION/476716884/1001&template=printart

Note: Bold is from blog owner

Mansion 'mistake' piles the pressure on Obama

From The Times
February 26, 2008

James Bone in New York and Dominic Kennedy in London

The key players Timeline: Barack and the billionaire

A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.

The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.

A company related to Mr Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr Obama's bagman Antoin "Tony" Rezko on May 23 2005. Mr Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.

Three weeks later, Mr Obama bought a house on the city's South Side while Mr Rezko's wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15.

Mr Obama says he never used Mrs Rezko's still-empty lot, which could only be accessed through his property. But he admits he paid his gardener to mow the lawn.

Mrs Rezko, whose husband was widely known to be under investigation at the time, went on to sell a 10-foot strip of her property to Mr Obama seven months later so he could enjoy a bigger garden.
Mr Obama now admits his involvement in this land deal was a “boneheaded mistake”.

Mrs Rezko’s purchase and sale of the land to Mr Obama raises many unanswered questions.

It is unclear how Mrs Rezko could have afforded the downpayment of $125,000 and a $500,000 mortgage for the original $625,000 purchase of the garden plot at 5050 South Greenwood Ave.
In a sworn statement a year later, Mrs Rezko said she got by on a salary of $37,000 and had $35,000 assets. Mr Rezko told a court he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets, no unencumbered assets [and] is significantly in arrears on many of his obligations."

Mrs Rezko, whose husband goes on trial on unrelated corruption charges in Chicago on March 3, refused to answer questions about the case when she spoke by telephone to The Times.

Asked if she used money from her husband to buy the land next to Mr Obama's house, she said: "I can't answer these questions, I'm sorry."

Asked how long she and her husband had known Mr Auchi, she replied: "I will not be able to answer this question."

Mr Auchi's lawyer, asked whether the Fintrade Services loan was used to buy the land which became Mr Obama's garden, stated: "No, not as far as my client is aware."

Mr Auchi's links with Mr Rezko are a new political headache for Mr Obama, the charismatic Illinois senator vying to become America’s first African-American president.

Hillary Clinton has sought to make Mr Rezko, who has bankrolled Mr Obama's political career since his first run for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s, into an election issue by calling him a "slum landlord" in a televised debate. She has repeatedly suggested that Mr Obama has effectively not been "vetted" by media scrutiny and will not withstand "the Republican attack machine".

See the London Times for complete article at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3433485.ece?token=null&offset=24

ABC News Discovers Obama Liberal Who Loves Raising Taxes

ABC News sent Terry Moran to Springfield, the capital of Illinois, to explore Barack Obama's record as a state Senator and, deep in his Monday story on World News, Moran acknowledged a reality rarely mentioned in network campaign coverage: "Obama was...considered a reliable liberal Democratic vote in Illinois, voting for most gun control measures, opposing efforts to ban so-called 'partial birth abortions,' and supporting hundreds of tax increases." Moran then showed a soundbite of Republican State Senator Kirk Dillard, who declared: "Senator Obama certainly is a liberal."

Earlier in the story, without applying any liberal label, Moran trumpeted how "before he left for Washington, Obama did rack up some accomplishments -- a major overhaul of the state's death penalty system, an ethics reform bill, expanded health care for the state's children."

[This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Tuesday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

Moran's recognition of Obama's liberal ideology aired just a day after Cokie Roberts, in the roundtable on Sunday's This Week on ABC, pegged Obama as "squarely on the left of the Democratic Party" and contended that the Illinois Senator, "oddly enough given the rhetoric, has not reached across the aisle and worked with people in the other party to get things done, which she [Hillary Clinton] has done." See Brad Wilmouth's NewsBusters item: newsbusters.org

A longer version of Moran's World News story led Monday's Nightline with an added portion about Obama's "sweetheart" real estate deal with Tony Rezko.

A transcript of the February 25 World News story:

CHARLES GIBSON: Well Barack Obama during his campaign has made much of his ability to bring people together, to accomplish compromise, to change the tone of Washington. The bulk of his political career was as a state senator in the Illinois legislature. Was he able to bring people together there? Terry Moran went to Springfield, Illinois to look at the Obama record.

TERRY MORAN: Before there was this [crowds cheering Obama] -- there was this, the workaday legislative world of young Illinois state Senator Barack Obama. Obama was 35 years old when he began serving in Springfield in 1997. And even Republican colleagues say he stood out from the start. SENATOR KIRK DILLARD (R): From the minute I met Senator Obama, I knew he was on to bigger and better things.

MORAN: He was clearly ambitious. Just after Illinois Democrats took over the state senate in 2002, Obama approached party leader Emil Jones, who's now running the chamber. EMIL JONES, JR.: And he said to me, he said, "you're the Senate President, now with that you have a lot of power. I said, "Barack, what kind of power do you think I have?" He said, "you have the power to make a United States Senator."

MORAN: But before he left for Washington, Obama did rack up some accomplishments -- a major overhaul of the state's death penalty system, an ethics reform bill, expanded health care for the state's children. OBAMA: I did all these things by getting Democrats and Republicans to work together.

MORAN: But his former colleagues say the picture is more mixed. For instance, Obama voted not for or against but "present" on 129 bills, including a bill to ban sex shops and strip clubs near schools, churches, and day-care centers, and a bill to allow juveniles who committed a crime with a gun near a school to be tried as adults. Voting present is a common tactic in the Illinois legislature. The Obama campaign says he was trying to avoid burdening local authorities on the sex shop measure and did not think the other bill would reduce crime.. But others say his votes should be an issue. SENATOR DAN CRONIN (R): Whatever it is, he didn't want to stick his neck out. He didn't want to risk alienating some group.

MORAN: And Obama was also considered a reliable liberal Democratic vote in Illinois, voting for most gun control measures, opposing efforts to ban so-called "partial birth abortions," and supporting hundreds of tax increases. Republican State Senator Kirk Dillard worked closely with Obama on some issues. DILLARD: Senator Obama certainly is a liberal. I guess what I show is that you can respect somebody like Senator Obama, work with him, like him, but you don't necessarily have to vote for him for President.

MORAN: Now the Obama campaign responded to our story in a statement tonight, saying "distorting a few votes out of a thousands is the kind of old politics that the American people are tired of and we believe voters care about Senator Obama's record of bipartisan leadership," unquote. One thing everyone agrees on: Obama's record in Illinois is bound to increasing scrutiny from here on in.

http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2008/cyb20080226.asp#1

Obama changed my mind about McCain

JR Dieckmann
February 24, 2008

On Tuesday night, Feb. 19, 2008, Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag for the first time, when he gave a 45 minute, off the cuff speech after his victory in Wisconsin. For the first time in his campaign, he talked to some extent on substance, rather than in just empty platitudes and feel good rhetoric. For the first time he talked of more than just "hope for change" and "change for hope" and leave the rest to the fantasies of his supporters' imaginations.

What he was proposing was pure socialism, correction — communism, straight out of the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Karl Marx. It all centered around government control over everything from the energy industry, to home mortgages subsidized with our tax money, to government run healthcare. Some will say it was just extreme left wing liberalism but I call it what it is — communism. Take money from the rich and give it to the poor, not only within America but internationally, all in the interest of global equality, paid for by the American taxpayers.

Clinton's speech wasn't much different but she was cut off when Obama took the stage. Americans need to realize that what these two charlatans are trying to do is to lead America straight into communism. And they are no longer being subtle about it. Whenever questioned about it, they dance around it and divert the subject to something else, never answering the question, or giving two completely opposite answers in the same statement. Only liberal politicians being interviewed by the liberal media can get away with this. It's like having a conversation with an automated phone tree.

The communist threat to America has been brewing for decades right here in our own country and now it's coming to a head. It is now trying to take over the highest office in the land. It's time we started calling it exactly what it is and stop this political correctness that has us referring to communism as simply "progressive" or harmless "liberalism." Some call it American socialism but it has it's roots in pure communism.

Clinton and Obama don't have a clue what America is all about. Their idea of America is everyone living on welfare with their lives supervised by government social workers, and all business regulated by a government that can't even regulate itself in compliance with the Constitution. They see big government as the solution to America's problems when, in fact, in most cases the government is the cause of them. When has the government ever solved a problem without creating three more? Or solving a problem for one group by taking away the rights of another?

[snip]

For the first time in my life I realized that as much as I dislike John McCain, I will have to vote for him in November. There has been much discussion between myself and my fellow writers and publishers over this as I contended that a vote for McCain would violate my principles and values, and validate the left turn of the Republican party. But the platforms of both Obama and Clinton make McCain almost look like a conservative. They are even worse than I had thought, once you get past the platitudes and rhetoric. Not that I would ever have considered voting for either one of them, but neither would I have considered voting for McCain.

Tuesday night I realized that nothing, not even McCain, could be as harmful to our country as those two "Democrats" still in the race for president, and perhaps even worse, their respective spouses. I use the term "Democrats" loosely for they are Democrats only in party registration. Philosophically, they are both communists. Obama is a "Chicago Union Mafia" communist while Clinton is a Soviet Marxist communist. Both would destroy American liberty and the free enterprise system, and laugh about it.

When have either of these two candidates ever spoken favorably about the free market, entrepreneurship, or American business and industry? When have they ever paid due respect to the U.S. Constitution, or praised it? To them, these institutions are evil and must be eradicated. All we ever hear from them is how poor Americans really are and how much they need government assistance from Democrats. Aren't we all getting a little sick of hearing these isolated stories of the misery of the downtrodden, of how Americans are living hand to mouth and unable to pay for both food and medicine, and how they're losing their homes (that they couldn't afford to buy in the first place)?

Do you know anyone who fits these descriptions? I don't. They attempt to create a false picture of America, then offer their socialist solutions for it. It's the same old propaganda game of creating a false premise, then a solution to fix it. The only people who relate to this hysteria are the people who show up at Obama and Clinton rallies simply because they have no place better to be, like at a job. In the case of Obama, he seems to be advocating for only the poor black community without actually saying so, but that is where you find the conditions he describes. His solution to the problem is to keep them dependent on big government with the taxpayers' money and somehow, that will lead them to the American dream.

[snip]

On National Defense, Obama proposes the immediate withdrawal of troops from the "war on terror" (which is also improperly named due to political correctness — is actually the "war against Islamic aggression" or the "war on Islamofascism"). He would replace the fight against Islamic terrorist organizations and their sponsors in Iran with "negotiations" and "diplomacy." He is so ignorant on foreign policy and affairs that he doesn't even understand that the enemy we face today has no interest in, and nothing to gain from, negotiating with the U.S. other than the forestallment of their own demise.

Negotiations will produce no advantage for the U.S. but only give the enemy more time to conquer us which is their only real interest and objective in this war. What is there to negotiate over? Will Obama offer them one million detached heads instead of 300 million? Will he approve of Iran building nuclear weapons in exchange for their word not to use them on us? Will he sell out Iraq to al Qaeda in exchange for no more threatening videos from bin Laden?

I do not make the decision to poke the hole (or "pull the lever" in some states) next to McCain's name lightly. I would rather poke him in the eye. At least McCain is not a communist, and fighting this war against communism in America is just as important as fighting the war against Islamofascism.

For complete article, please visit:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/dieckmann/080224