Democrats launch a desperate August healthcare defense
House Democrats have started to pick up the pieces on healthcare reform, but they face a difficult month at home defending their legislation to skeptical constituents.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday laid the groundwork for their defense. She blamed the health insurance industry and urged her members to do the same during their four-week break.
The August recess gives normal Americans their best opportunity to communicate their opposition to the Democrat schemes – loss of quality, socialized medicine, and leaving seniors (literally) out in the cold. Democrats demand federal funding of abortions as well…victimizing the youngest and the oldest in the population.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-launch-august-defense-2009-07-30.html
Wall Street rebels at new pay rules
But Capitol Hill is poised to stick it to Wall Street on executive pay.
The House is expected to pass legislation intended to curb Wall Street compensation practices and discourage “excessive” risk-taking of the sort that contributed to the financial crisis.
But it’s the heavy hand of the feds in this bill that bothers Wall Street. Government involvement in business operations should scare everyone – business and government are natural enemies.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25640.html
Democrat memo plots message-war on insurers
Desperate to pass their health care legislation, Democrats identify a designated “enemy of the people” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading the way in the distraction’s implementation.
House Democrat leaders have developed a coordinated strategy for attacking insurance companies to ward off attacks from opponents of their health care overhaul during the August break, according to a strategy memo obtained by The Hill.
“Our message is simple. It is now being echoed by the White House,” said the memo sent to all Democratic members. “And it counters the Republican ‘government takeover’ message.” Democrats are desperate to hide their schemes that lead to socialized medicine.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dem-memo-plots-message-war-on-insurers-2009-07-30.html
Opinion:
The August recess – America’s best (and maybe last) opportunity to make its voice heard by liberal politicians and those who are the tools of liberal politicians.
Congress – both House and Senate – will be coming home after this week end. Usually, such a recess would provide time for R&R for legislators who have had a ton of business on their plates since they took their seats in late January.
However, this recess may not be one bringing quiet time – quite the opposite.
This recess, Capitol Hill is embroiled in several measures more controversial than usual. Healthcare reform is at the top, of course, but the Democrat Cap and Trade tax scheme will be on the Senate agenda when it returns.
Cap and Trade passed the House by only a few votes – needing 8 Republican Congressmen to betray their party and, by extension, the American people.
Of course, there may be some people who have no problem having to cough up a few thousand extra dollars each and every year – plus absorb Cap and Trade’s additional costs to businesses. The price of gas at the pump would soar, for instance, as would many power bills.
So intense is the Cap and Trade debate, and so hyper-sensitive liberal Democrats have become to the issue, Democrat Franking officials are banning GOP members from being able to honestly communicate with the folks back home. The GOP reference to Cap and Trade as “Cap and Tax” is rejected by Democrats in charge. Even more outrageous, Democrats insist Republicans use “Pelosi-speak” jargon in their postage-free letters to constituents.
For example, “government-run healthcare” cannot be used. Instead, say Democrats, “public option healthcare” must be the term used in describing Democrat plans that have the urgent – even desperate – backing of the Obama White House.
This language despotism does have its draw backs. In days in which recording devices are ubiquitous, the truth finds a way of escaping, no matter how much Democrats want to hide it.
Its a case of “government-run” versus “public option” – a rhetorical debate. In an unguarded moment, infamous Democrat Congressman Barney Frank let slip a fact: “public option” healthcare is really a pathway to Canadian-style “single payer: healthcare. In plain language – Franks is admitting “Public option” healthcare is socialized medicine in misleading language.
Of course, by any terms, the Democrat healthcare plan won’t pass muster. It means loss of quality, restriction of access, and such provisions as federal funding of abortions. Democrats also call for Senior citizens to recognize an obligation to “just die and get out of the way”. “End of life” planning scams being pushed by Democrats is a conspiracy through which seniors would be forced to come to grips with government reducing their access to healthcare.
Funding abortion, and denying access to senior citizens are Democrat-sponsored plans assaulting the youngest Americans and the oldest.
There are probably some people reading this who presume such comments are purely partisan political attacks ... claims without foundation.
They are not. If you doubt what I am saying, take a few minutes and go to Google and see for yourself.
(One caution – don’t use “Snopes” as a measure of accuracy – Snopes often hedges its advice and claims with a distinct liberal Democrat bias.)
Cap and Trade faces a Senate vote shortly after the recess. Healthcare reform – under whatever label Democrats choose – will face the House and Senate.
Pressures can be brought by normal America – pressures that can affect voting.
Recently, Panama City, Florida tea party protesters ambushed Blue Dog Democrat Allen Boyd for his vote for the Cap and Trade tax bill. Boyd had to sneak out a back door to escape angry voters. The ambush has garnered public attention, and its clear Boyd has been deeply wounded.
In short, tea party-like demonstrations, ambushes of returning members of Congress who are wavering in their decisions, and other members, can be effective – very effective.
It would be irresponsible to fail to mention tea party-like demonstrations of support for those members of either House who vote in support of normal America – opposing the Cap and Trade scam, and demanding any healthcare reform not violate basic humanity. With rare exception, such members will be Republican.
As the year progresses, it’s obvious the politics leading to the 2010 elections will be very partisan – a clear case of Republicans versus Democrats – one along party lines as strict as those seen in Capitol Hill voting these days. Having more “R”s on the Hill, is the only way normal Americans can effectively oppose the Democrat juggernaut and save the country from left wing extremism.
We will have three weeks. Three weeks that stand as our best shot at saving the nation and its future.
Buddy
A necessary EXTRA:
REFORM SCHOOL
Confused by health care reform? Republican Rep. Tom Price of Georgia has a little prescription for the Obamacare-challenged among us.
"Thanks to confusing media coverage and the ways of the White House, Americans are no longer looking at the particulars of legislation. The public is trusting those folks who have been entrusted to actually read the particulars. And they're not reading them," the Georgia Republican tells the blog “Inside the Beltway”.
Indeed, just 101 lawmakers have pledged to read the 1,018-page legislation so far, according to the conservative grass-roots group Let Freedom Ring, which is tracking the trend.
Mr. Price is both a physician and chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, which introduced "The Empower Patients First Act" on Thursday. It equates increased patient control over personal health decisions with better care.
"We're in a system now where we find ourselves adopting laws that no one has bothered to vet - like the stimulus bill, for example. I hope that health care reform does not join the list," Mr. Price said.
His suggestions on how to become enlightened?
"The public has to decide what is acceptable and what is not. What about access, availability, quality of care, responsiveness and innovation? What about choices? This is a practical way to frame all this information, to manage it. Does the legislation meet these principles? That's the bottom line," Mr. Price continues. "And if you ask me, the Democratic bill meets none of these criteria."
Don’t forget the recess and the opportunities it offers -- Buddy.
1.
Jihad, USA
Oliver North
GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- They don't look like al-Qaida terrorists. Their photos in the local newspaper look menacing enough -- but more like a crew that might knock over a convenience store or an ATM at a gas station. Their apprehension this week by FBI agents in Raleigh, N.C., has their neighbors here talking about "homegrown jihadis" and has prompted the O-Team Department of Homeland Security to warn about "American extremists" once again.
The seven men were arrested Monday, the same day President Barack Obama tendered his much-acclaimed invitation to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to sit down over a beer and talk about the serious problem of racism in America. The president, who claimed that the police behaved "stupidly" in detaining the professor, apparently considers "racism" to be a more serious problem than Americans being recruited to commit acts of terror.
Our nation's chief executive, consumed with preparations for his "beer summit," was as mute about the "North Carolina Seven" -- all charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists overseas -- as he was about the fraudulent elections in Iran. Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to alarm the public about a real and present danger -- or because he was involved so personally in choosing just the right brews for himself and his guests. For those who care, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says that POTUS prefers Bud Light; professor Gates is a fan of Jamaican Red Stripe; and Sgt. Crowley tips back with Blue Moon. One can only ponder what this revelation will mean for sales of these suds.
What is certain is that Daniel Patrick Boyd -- the alleged ringleader of the Raleigh terror cell -- and his fellow "jihadis" are unlikely to be tippling anytime soon, even if they want to. In the 14-page federal indictment unsealed Monday, Boyd and his six "colleagues" are charged with plotting to murder, kidnap and maim individuals overseas. Prosecutors maintain that Boyd -- who goes by the name "Saifullah," meaning "sword of Allah" -- is a "veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan" and that he recruited his sons and other U.S. citizens to travel overseas for waging "violent jihad." An eighth conspirator is being sought in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The seven-count indictment details a conspiracy that commenced in 2006 and continued until just before the arrests. It alleges that the defendants trained for battle in the U.S., planned to die as "martyrs," and raised funds to support their training and recruit others to their cause overseas. It also accuses Boyd of taking one of his sons to Gaza in March 2006 to introduce the young man to individuals who "believed that violent jihad was a religious obligation." A year later, Boyd and several of the other defendants apparently went to Israel in an unsuccessful effort to wage jihad.
U.S. Attorney George Holding, in arguing that the men be held without bond pending trial, said, "These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some faraway land but can grow and fester right here at home." FBI Special Agent Owen D. Harris said that the arrests "show there are people living among us, in our communities ... around the U.S. that are honing their skills to carry out acts of murder and mayhem."
The importance of all this appeared to be lost on members of the O-Team as they scurried around preparing for their mini-Oktoberfest.
(NOTE: Face it, Obama and his cohorts are intimidated in any effort against domestic radicals or terrorists. After all, one of Obama’s closest friends – someone who may have actually written the books Obama claims – is a certified domestic terrorist who makes no secret of his continued radicalism. If Obama gets too far out front in opposing domestic terror – does he face throwing Bill Ayers under the bus?)
Unfortunately, the arrests in North Carolina are but the most recent case in a growing phenomenon of "homegrown" terror. Since the attacks of 9/11, law enforcement officials have unearthed more than a dozen terror plots by American citizens and other individuals living in the United States and professing radical Islamic beliefs. And it's getting worse.
Last month, the federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., disclosed that Bryant Neal Vinas, a 26-year-old New York native, had admitted to launching a rocket attack against a U.S. base in Afghanistan, trying to kill American military personnel and providing detailed information on the Long Island Rail Road to al-Qaida leaders for an attack on the transportation system. He faces life in prison when sentenced.
On June 1, a Tennessee man, Abdulhakim Muhammad, was apprehended. He is suspected of shooting two soldiers outside a U.S. Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark. One of the soldiers, Pvt. William Long, was killed. Muhammad is charged with capital murder.
In May, four New York men were arrested for plotting to blow up two Jewish community centers in the Bronx. That same month, Oussama Kassir was convicted of plotting to set up a weapons training camp in Bly, Ore., to teach al-Qaida followers to make bombs and poisons and to commit murder.
And in February, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse and Salah Osman Ahmed were indicted. They are suspected of recruiting Somali refugees in Minnesota to fight with Islamic groups in their homeland. An estimated 20 men from the Twin Cities are suspected of going to Somalia to fight in the Islamist al-Shabab insurgency.
Given the silence from the Obama White House, it is uncertain what our current head of state thinks about these crimes.
Now that the "beer summit" is over, perhaps our commander in chief can move on to more important but less tractable issues, such as protecting us from radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill us.
http://townhall.com/columnists/OliverNorth/2009/07/31/jihad,_usa?page=full
2.
Dodd and Obama: Corrupt Birds of a Feather
Michelle Malkin
Everything you need to know about false Hope and Change can be found in one picture: the image of President Obama embracing embattled Sen. Chris Dodd.
The troubled Democrat is in deep over his sweetheart Countrywide home-loan deals, corporate bailout cash and crony associations. New revelations by Countrywide whistleblower Robert Feinberg confirm what more and more of Dodd's constituents in Connecticut are coming to realize: He's a lying weasel.
Dodd denied knowledge of the special treatment the subprime mortgage company had given him and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad on home loans. (Dodd's were worth more than $800,000.) Feinberg flatly contradicted him in secret testimony on the Hill this week.
Connecticut voters are not smiling about Dodd's hypocritical bashing of lobbyists on the airwaves while he parties with them behind closed doors. And as they scrimp through the recession, they haven't forgotten about Dodd's dozy Irish cottage deal with convicted insider trader Edward Downe Jr. (who received a Clinton pardon with Dodd's generous help). Sandra Harris, an unaffiliated voter from West Hartford, Conn., told the Hartford Courant: "I've lost respect for him. … It's time for a change." A Quinnipiac poll now shows that 60 percent of key independent voters disapprove of Dodd.
(NOTE: Dodd is a long time chum of Teddy Kennedy – they even vacationed together on St George’s Cay in Belize – taking with them two women who were no doubt needed to handle correspondence and other Senatorial chores. Dodd and Kennedy have also enjoyed a constituency on whom they could depend. They seemed invulnerable and unbeatable – so they could get by with most anything.)
But Dodd's cratering numbers and mounting ethics scandal aren't just about Dodd. Damaged birds of a feather flock together. Even before these latest disclosures, Dodd's approval ratings had dropped to their lowest levels ever. Yet, Obama -- agent of the "new politics," erstwhile Breath of Fresh Air, guarantor of all that is good and clean in Washington -- declared his support for Dodd's 2010 re-election campaign bid.
"I can't say it any clearer: I will be helping Chris Dodd because he deserves the help," Obama announced in April. "He just has an extraordinary record of accomplishment, and I think the people of Connecticut will come to recognize that."
Obama 'progressives' should cringe at their president's bear hug of one of the most ethically compromised politicians on Capitol Hill.
The Beltway swamp is teeming with Democratic corruption scandals -- Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha's earmark factory and tax-subsidized airports and radars to nowhere; New York Rep. Charlie Rangel's rent-controlled apartment scams and tax scandals; California Rep. Maxine Waters' business ties to a minority-owned bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances, for starters. But Dodd's career epitomizes the most fetid aspects of Washington's culture of corruption.
It's a textbook case of nepotism, self-dealing, back scratching, corporate lobbying, government favors and entrenched incumbency.
When he launched his presidential bid in February 2007, Obama inspired millions and rallied the world with his pledge to "build a more hopeful America." He told a cheering crowd in Springfield, Ill., land of Lincoln, that he recognized "that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. I know that I have not spent a long time learning the ways of Washington, but I have been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington have to change."
Two years later, Obama declared his support for an entrenched U.S. senator drowning in the decrepit old politics of pay-for-play.
Two years later, at a "historic" and "unprecedented" record pace, Obama presided over a heap of botched nominations, crony appointments, lobbyist paybacks, union and left-wing activist payoffs, and abandoned promises to make government more transparent and accountable to ordinary Americans.
"Washington is broken," Obama lamented on the campaign trail. Yet, under President Obama, the business of Washington is booming. The collapse of the Era of HopeNChangeyness demonstrates the first and last law of political physics:
As government grows, corruption flows. Massive new federal spending plus tens of thousands of pages of new regulations plus unprecedented new powers over taxpayers and the economy ensure limitless new opportunities for sleaze, favor trading, deal cutting and influence peddling.
The president's dwindling blind faithful may still cling to the belief that he can work miracles. But no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/07/31/dodd_and_obama_corrupt_birds_of_a_feather?page=full
3.
Suborned in the U.S.A.
The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Hussein Obama claimed it was a “smear” to refer to him as “Barack Hussein Obama.” The candidate had initially rhapsodized over how his middle name, the name of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, would signal a new beginning in American relations with the Muslim world. But when the nomination fight intensified, Obama decided that Islamic heritage was a net negative. So, with a media reliably uncurious about political biographies outside metropolitan Wasilla, Obama did what Obama always does: He airbrushed his personal history on the fly.
Suddenly, it was “just making stuff up,” as Obama put it, for questioners “to say that, you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections.” “The only connection I’ve had to Islam,” the candidate insisted, “is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.” Forget about “Hussein”; the mere mention of Obama’s middle initial — “H” — riled the famously thin-skinned senator. Supporters charged that “shadowy attackers” were “lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim.” The Obamedia division at USA Today, in a report subtly titled “Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths,’” went so far as to claim that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is a Christian — even though a year earlier, when Obama’s “flaunt Muslim ties” script was still operative, the New York Times had described the same woman, 85-year-old Sara Hussein Obama, as a “lifelong Muslim” who proclaimed, “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith.”
Such was the ardor of Obama’s denials that jaws dropped when, once safely elected, he reversed course (again) and embraced his Islamic heritage. “The president himself experienced Islam on three continents,” an administration spokesman announced. “You know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father . . .” The “Muslim father” theme was an interesting touch: During the campaign, when the question of Barack Hussein Obama Sr.’s Islamic faith reared its head, the candidate curtly denied it with an air of what’s-that-got-to-do-with-me? finality: “My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t know him.” And, it turns out, the spokesman’s fleeting bit about “growing up in Indonesia” wasn’t the half of it: Obama had actually been raised as a Muslim in Indonesia — or, at least that’s what his parents told his schools (more on that in due course).
These twists and turns in the Obama narrative rush to mind when we consider National Review’s leap into the Obama-birth-certificate fray with Tuesday’s editorial, “Born in the U.S.A.”
The editorial desire to put to rest the “Obama was born in Kenya” canard is justifiable. The overwhelming evidence is that Obama was born an American citizen on Aug. 4, 1961, which almost certainly makes him constitutionally eligible to hold his office. I say “almost certainly” because Obama, as we shall see, presents complex dual-citizenship issues. For now, let’s just stick with what’s indisputable: He was also born a Kenyan citizen. In theory, that could raise a question about whether he qualifies as a “natural born” American — an uncharted constitutional concept.
The mission of National Review has always included keeping the Right honest, which includes debunking crackpot conspiracy theories. The theory that Obama was born in Kenya, that he was smuggled into the U.S., and that his parents somehow hoodwinked Hawaiian authorities into falsely certifying his birth in Oahu, is crazy stuff. Even Obama’s dual Kenyan citizenship is of dubious materiality: It is a function of foreign law, involving no action on his part (to think otherwise, you’d have to conclude that if Yemen passed a law tomorrow saying, “All Americans — except, of course, Jews — are hereby awarded Yemeni citizenship,” only Jewish Americans could henceforth run for president). In any event, even if you were of a mind to indulge the Kenyan-birth fantasy, stop, count to ten, and think: Hillary Clinton. Is there any chance on God’s green earth that, if Obama were not qualified to be president, the Clinton machine would have failed to get that information out?
(NOTE: Interesting premise, but it overlooks political aspects of such a question that make It a total non-sequitur. Hillary didn’t take Obama seriously until waking up the day after “Super Tuesday” and finding herself in a serious struggle against an opponent she anticipated being able to blow away. Hillary’s campaign had failed to plan beyond Super Tuesday. By the time they realized the Obama threat was real, it was too late for them to question the birth certificate matter without risking serious political damage…the same sort of intimidation that has made sure “the fix” remains in and prevents honestly addressing the matter at all.)
CERTIFICATE AND CERTIFICATION
So, end of story, right? Well, no. The relevance of information related to the birth of our 44th president is not limited to his eligibility to be our 44th president. On this issue, NRO’s editorial has come in for some blistering criticism. The editorial argues:
The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.
On reflection, I think this was an ill-considered assertion. (I should add that I saw a draft of the editorial before its publication, was invited to comment, and lodged no objection to this part.) The folly is made starkly clear in the photos that accompany this angry (at NRO) post from Dave Jeffers, who runs a blog called “Salt and Light.”
To summarize: What Obama has made available is a Hawaiian “certification of live birth” (emphasis added), not a birth certificate (or what the state calls a “certificate of live birth”). The certification form provides a short, very general attestation of a few facts about the person’s birth: name and sex of the newborn; date and time of birth; city or town of birth, along with the name of the Hawaiian island and the county; the mother’s maiden name and race; the father’s name and race; and the date the certification was filed. This certification is not the same thing as the certificate, which is what I believe we were referring to in the editorial as “the state records that are used to generate birth certificates [sic] when they are requested.”
To the contrary, “the state records” are the certificate. They are used to generate the more limited birth certifications on request. As the Jeffers post shows, these state records are far more detailed.
They include, for example, the name of the hospital, institution, or street address where the birth occurred; the full name, age, birthplace, race, and occupation of each parent; the mother’s residential address (and whether that address is within the city or town of birth); the signature of at least one parent (or “informant”) attesting to the accuracy of the information provided; the identity and signature of an attending physician (or other “attendant”) who certifies the occurrence of a live birth at the time and place specified; and the identity and signature of the local registrar who filed the birth record.
Plainly, this is different (additional) information from what is included in the certification. Yet, our editorial says that “several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate [by which we clearly meant ‘certification’],” and that the “director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate [i.e., certification] is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy.” (Italics mine.)
That misses the point. The information in the certification may be identical as far as it goes to what’s in the complete state records, but there are evidently many more details in the state records than are set f orth in the certification. Contrary to the editors’ description, those who want to see the full state record — the certificate or the so-called “vault copy” — are not on a wild-goose chase for a “secondary document cloaked in darkness.” That confuses their motives (which vary) with what they’ve actually requested (which is entirely reasonable). Regardless of why people may want to see the vault copy, what’s been requested is a primary document that is materially more detailed than what Obama has thus far provided.
Now, let’s address motives for a moment. Are some of those demanding the full state records engaged in a futile quest to prove Obama is not a U.S. citizen? Are they on what the editors call “the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of [Obama’s] election and presidency disappear”? Sure they are. But not everyone who wants to see the full state records falls into that category. I, for one, have very different reasons for being curious.
WHO IS THIS GUY?
Before January 20 of this year, Barack Obama had a negligible public record. He burst onto the national scene what seemed like five minutes before his election to the presidency: a first-term U.S. senator who actually served less than four years in that post — after a short time as a state legislator, some shadowy years as a “community organizer,” and scholastic terms at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard that remain shrouded in mystery. The primary qualification supporters offered for Obama’s candidacy was his compelling life story, as packaged in 850 pages’ worth of the not one but two autobiographies this seemingly unaccomplished candidate had written by the age of 45.
Yet we now know that this life story is chock full of fiction. Typical and disturbing, to take just one example, is the entirely fabricated account in Dreams from My Father of Obama’s first job after college:
Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant.
Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe.
As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day. . . . The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank.
Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors — see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand — and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve. . . .
As the website Sweetness & Light details, this is bunk. Obama did not work at “a consulting house to multinational corporations”; it was, a then-colleague of his has related, “a small company that published newsletters on international business.” He wasn’t the only black man in the company, and he didn’t have an office, have a secretary, wear a suit and tie on the job, or conduct “interviews” with “Japanese financiers or German bond traders” — he was a junior copyeditor.
What’s unnerving about this is that it is so gratuitous. It would have made no difference to anyone curious about Obama’s life that he, like most of us, took a ho-hum entry-level job to establish himself. But Obama lies about the small things, the inconsequential things, just as he does about the important ones — depending on what he is trying to accomplish at any given time.
In the above fairy tale, he sought to frame his life as a morality play: the hero giving up the cushy life of the capitalist “enemy” for the virtues of community organizing. But we’ve seen this dance a hundred times. If Obama wants to strike a connection with graduating students in Moscow, he makes up a story about meeting his “future wife . . . in class” (Barack and Michelle Obama met at work). If he wants to posture about his poverty and struggle in America, he waxes eloquent about his single mother’s surviving on “food stamps” so she could use every cent to send him “to the best schools in the country” (Obama was raised by his maternal grandparents, who had good jobs and were able to pull strings to get him into an elite Hawaiian prep school). If he wants to tie himself to the civil-rights struggle of African Americans, he tells an audience in Selma, “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma . . . so [my parents] got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born” (Obama was born in 1961, four years before the civil-rights march in Selma — by which time his parents had divorced and his mother was planning a move to Indonesia with the second of her two non-African-American husbands). If he wants to buy a home he can’t afford, he “unwittingly” collaborates with a key fundraiser (who had been publicly reported to be under federal investigation for fraud and political corruption). If he wants to sell a phony stimulus as a job-creator, he tells the country that Caterpillar has told him the stimulus will enable the company “to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off” (Caterpillar’s CEO actually said no, “we’re going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again”).
The fact is that Obama’s account of his background is increasingly revealed as a fabrication, not his life as lived; his utterances reflect the expediencies of the moment, not the truth. What is supposed to save the country from fraudulence of this sort is the media. Here, though, the establishment press is deep in Obama’s tank — so much so that they can’t even accurately report his flub of a ceremonial opening pitch lest he come off as something less than Sandy Koufax. Astonishingly, reporters see their job not as reporting Obama news but as debunking Obama news, or flat-out suppressing it. How many Americans know, for example, that as a sitting U.S. senator in 2006, Obama interfered in a Kenyan election, publicly ripping the incumbent government (a U.S. ally) for corruption while he was its guest and barnstorming with his preferred candidate: a Marxist now known to have made a secret agreement with Islamists to convert Kenya to sharia law, and whose supporters, upon losing the election, committed murder and mayhem, displacing thousands of Kenyans and plunging their country into utter chaos?
A MUSLIM CITIZEN OF INDONESIA
The aforementioned Indonesian interval in Obama’s childhood is instructive. Obama and the media worked in tireless harmony to refute any indication that he had ever been a Muslim. It’s now apparent, however, not only that he was raised as a Muslim while living for four years in the world’s most populous Islamic country, but that he very likely became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia.
Shortly after divorcing Barack Obama Sr., Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, whom she met — just as she had met Barack Sr. — when both were students at the University of Hawaii. At some point, Soetoro almost certainly adopted the youngster, who became known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama’s lengthy, deeply introspective autobiographies do not address whether he was adopted by the stepfather whose surname he shared for many years, but in all likelihood that did happen in Hawaii, before the family moved to Jakarta.
Under Indonesian law, adoption before the age of six by an Indonesian male qualified a child for citizenship. According to Dreams from My Father, Obama was four when he met Lolo Soetoro; his mother married Soetoro shortly thereafter; and Obama was already registered for school when he and his mother relocated to Jakarta, where Soetoro was an oil-company executive and liaison to the Suharto government. That was in 1966, when Obama was five. Obama attended Indonesian elementary schools, which, in Suharto’s police state, were generally reserved for citizens (and students were required to carry identity cards that matched student registration information). The records of the Catholic school Obama/Soetoro attended for three years identify him as a citizen of Indonesia. Thus Obama probably obtained Indonesian citizenship through his adoption by Soetoro in Hawaii. That inference is bolstered by the 1980 divorce submission of Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro, filed in Hawaii state court. It said “the parties” (Ann and Lolo) had a child (name not given) who was no longer a minor (Obama was 19 at the time). If Soetoro had not adopted Obama, there would have been no basis for the couple to refer to Obama as their child — he’d have been only Ann Dunham’s child.
In any event, the records of the Catholic school and the public school Obama attended during his last year in Indonesia identify him as a Muslim. As Obama relates in Dreams from My Father, he took Koran classes. As Obama doesn’t relate in Dreams from My Father, children in Indonesia attended religious instruction in accordance with their family’s chosen faith. Moreover, acquaintances recall that young Barry occasionally attended Friday prayers at the local mosque, and Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister (born after Lolo and Ann moved the family to Jakarta), told the New York Times in a 2008 interview, “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” In fact, back in March 2007 — i.e., during the early “Islamic ties are good” phase of Obama’s campaign — the candidate wistfully shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof his memories of the muezzin’s Arabic call to prayer: “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Kristof marveled at the “first-rate accent” with which Obama was able to repeat its opening lines.
The point here is not to join another crackpot conspiracy, the “Obama as Muslim Manchurian Candidate” canard. Obama was only ten years old when he left Indonesia; there is no known evidence of his having made an adult choice to practice Islam, and he is a professed Christian. The point is that he lies elaborately about himself and plainly doesn’t believe it’s important to be straight with the American people — to whom he is constantly making bold promises. And it makes a difference whether he was ever a Muslim. He knows that — it’s exactly why, as a candidate, he originally suggested his name and heritage would be a selling point. Obama’s religious background matters in terms of how he is perceived by Muslims (Islam rejects the notion of renouncing the faith; some Muslims, like Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, make no bones about regarding Obama as a Muslim; and — as the mainstream media took pains not to report during the campaign — it is suspected that significant illegal donations poured into the Obama campaign from Islamic countries and territories). Obama’s religious background also matters in terms of how he views American policies bearing on the Muslim world.
WHEN DID INFORMATION SUDDENLY BECOME A BAD THING?
While it is all well and good to belittle the birth-certificate controversy, without it we’d know only what the media and Obama himself would tell us about his multiple citizenships, which is nothing. As noted above, we now know Obama, by operation of British and Kenyan law, was a citizen of Kenya (a status that lapsed in 1982, when he turned 21). That’s something voters would find relevant, especially when Obama’s shocking 2006 conduct in Kenya is considered. But we don’t know about his Kenyan citizenship because the media thought it was newsworthy. We know it only because of the birth-certificate controversy: Pressed to debunk the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, his embarrassed supporters felt compelled to clarify his Kenyan citizenship.
By contrast, the question whether Obama ever was an Indonesian citizen is still unresolved, as are such related matters as whether the foreign citizenship (if he had it) ever lapsed, and whether he ever held or used an Indonesian passport — for example, during a mysterious trip to Pakistan he took in 1981, after Zia’s coup, when advisories warned Americans against traveling there. By the way, many details about that journey, too, remain unknown. Obama strangely neglected to mention it in his 850 pages of autobiography, even though the 20-year-old’s adventure included a stay at the home of prominent Pakistani politicians.
There may be perfectly benign answers to all of this. But the real question is: Why don’t the media — the watchdog legions who trekked to Sarah Palin’s Alaska hometown to scour for every kernel of gossip, and who were so desperate for Bush dirt that they ran with palpably forged military records — want to dig into Obama’s background?
Who cares that Hawaii’s full state records would doubtless confirm what we already know about Obama’s birthplace? They would also reveal interesting facts about Obama’s life: the delivering doctor, how his parents described themselves, which of them provided the pertinent information, etc. Wasn’t the press once in the business of interesting — and even not-so-interesting — news?
And why would Obama not welcome Hawaii’s release of any record in its possession about the facts and circumstances of his birth? Isn’t that kind of weird? It would, after all, make the whole issue go away and, if there’s nothing there, make those who’ve obsessed over it look like fools. Why should I need any better reason to be curious than Obama’s odd resistance to so obvious a resolution?
There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama may have wanted that suppressed for a host of reasons: issues about his citizenship, questions about his name (it’s been claimed that Obama represented in his application to the Illinois bar that he had never been known by any name other than Barack Obama), and the undermining of his (false) claim of remoteness from Islam. Is that true? I don’t know and neither do you.
But we should know. The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it. What’s wrong with saying, to a president who promised unprecedented “transparency”: Give us all the raw data and we’ll figure it out for ourselves?
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmJhMzlmZWFhOTQ3YjUxMDE2YWY4ZDMzZjZlYTVmZmU=&w=MA
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Posted by: MEGANMorales29 | January 30, 2011 at 07:07 AM