Political Truth and Fact

Monday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Gore: the country has “a moral duty to pass health care reform. This year.”

Gore was on stage with Bill Clinton at a Democrat gathering in Tennessee Sunday

Both tried to offer support to Democrats in Congress being battered by having to defend Obama’s health care scam.

The pair attempted to exploit the death of Teddy Kennedy as a means of defending a health care plan many Americans don’t want.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26580.html

Cheney Says He Was Proponent for Military Action Against Iran
Fox News Sunday

Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney described himself as being isolated among advisers to then-President George W. Bush, who ultimately decided against direct military action.

Former Vice President Also Criticizes CIA Probe as Political Move

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125164376287270241.html

Only 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama.

 

Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Democrats approve while 83% of Republicans disapprove. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 66% disapprove.

 
President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That's because some of the President's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote.

Only 25% of those polled would support keeping the present Congress.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Opinion:
Enough talk, let’s take real action

We know the problem and we can see the dust raised by the horses of an enemy charging against us and our fellow Americans.

Those enemies are liberal, left wing Democrats, and at present, they control our government. 

 Democrats have dominating majorities in both the House and Senate.  Republicans can only maneuver to delay the threat.  Fortunately, public opinion – much of it expressed in the town hall meetings and via the tea party protest movement, has managed to delay passage of Obama’s health care plan.  It is also our only hope in defeating Obama’s new tax plan (hidden behind the label “Cap and Trade”) which would immediately cost each of us a solid $3,000 a year, and also raise costs substantially.  In fact Obama himself admitted his Cap and Trade scam would cause costs to “skyrocket”.

Obama’s health care plan will almost certainly include a “public option” – a liberal scheme that would allow the “camel’s nose” of government involvement under the edge of the mythical “tent” of health care.  “Public Option” will lead to “single payer” health care – which is a term for Canadian-style socialized medicine.

When Obama says you can keep your doctor and your insurance, he is either proving himself truly stupid, or lying to us all.  Again.  After all, Obama pledged those making less than $250,000 a year would not see a dime in increased taxes.  Yet he makes no bones of demanding passage of the Cap and Trade tax.  Obama’s having lied about taxation, predicts the likelihood he knows he is also lying about health care.

Angry crowds and demonstrators are displaying their fury.  Many are calling for firing all Congressmen and Senators.  While such a war chant stirs the blood, it does not cogently meet the danger and the threat.

We must meet the threat with action that can work.

We can do precisely that and are working hard on that answer this very day.  Success depends on how deeply and how sincerely those who join us in condemning the liberal threat to America truly feel.

We will be counting heads regarding who is willing to actually take part – or who are satisfied with sitting on the sidelines and just griping.  Griping is understandable and valid, not taking action when taking action is possible, is not,

We will lay out the plan in great detail.  When it is completed and fully prepared, it will be laid out for all to see on the web site “Tell Washington No.com”.  It will provide a plan for bringing home those Congressmen and Senators responsible for the threat we fact today.

Watch for it – if you are truly sincere about the feelings you and others demonstrate at town  hall meetings and tea party protests.  You want action?  We are giving you opportunity for action.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

Snopes – the real story

THIS MAY SURPRISE YOU, It sure did me!

For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it as the 'tell-all, final word' on any comment, claim and e-mail. 

But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby. 

David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions - or skepticisms - is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issues, when in fact, they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues. 

When I saw that Snopes had falsely claimed that Obama's Birth Certificate had been properly validated, I realized something was wrong with either their research and/or their credibility. It seems something is seriously wrong with both.

Then a few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, supposedly the Mikkelson's claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com.  In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ever took place. 

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers.  Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet snopes.com issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things.  Not! 

Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Democrat and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson's liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock! 

 

(NOTE: For the record, while we are at it – be aware that “FactCheck” is even more corrupted.  It began as a dodge created by the Obama campaign to provide a “third party” refutation to charges against Obama – it has even less credibility than Snopes.)

So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www.snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts:  Proceed with caution.  Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that's all the Mikkelson's do.

 After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not' fully looking into things.

2.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/protest_for_me_but_not_for_the.html

Protest for Me, But Not for Thee
Kyle-Anne Shiver

What happens when the middle class feels even more victimized than the nation's poor?  When American middle-class citizens feel that they are being steamrolled by a Changeopoly Blitzkrieg, engineered by the principalities and powers of overreaching government and corporate oligarchs? 
 
When the only answer they're given to their just concerns about unsustainable debt is "We won."? 

Well, those beleaguered middle-class folks might take a look at the tactics which have been working against them for four decades and decide to make use of some of those tactics themselves.  Middle-class Americans, myself among them, have watched for 40 years, as one angry group after another has managed to get its way, and more and more entitlements from our purses to theirs, using the tactics designed by the liberal fascist revolutionary, Saul Alinsky.

One would need to be buried under a rock not to understand by now that small groups of angry people can get what they want.

Think ACORN and NINJA home loans.

Think Code Pink and the tarring of GW as a "war criminal."

Think ANSWER and the closing of Gitmo.

This list could fill a museum on the success of "community organizing" for "change." 

So, what in the world is the legacy media doing going bonkers about it now?  Why on earth would media elites not give glowing coverage to this democracy in action, the same kind they've been unabashedly heralding for decades now, every time a dozen live bodies show up with signs in a public place?

Why, I do declare, they seem to be saying with a rather concerted effort, "Protest for me, but not for thee."

What the Democrats and their bullhorns in media are telling us, the folks, is that they are plum scared down to their woolies because they now know they've lost their monopoly on information.  And the left has lost its monopoly on grievance, too. 

For 40 years, this Country has been blackmailed by angry Alinskyite protest into redistributing great chunks of wealth to aggrieved-status mobs under the pretense of charity or entitlement. 
 
The scales of grievance have now tilted so far to the left that it is the middle-class, which feels itself most endangered, most unable to make its voice heard in the Halls of Congress.

Saul Alinsky, for his part, told the young radicals of the 1960s that they had to bring the middle-class into the revolution by the mid-1970s or give up altogether.  Alinsky understood where the real power in America was held.  Alinsky understood that power wasn't in the board rooms, but in the middle-class consumer's purse.  It wasn't in the school board, but in the middle-class parent's expectations.  Power wasn't even in Washington, but in the demands of the most populous group of Americans:  the vast middle-class, whom he called the "have-a-little-want-mores," in keeping with his solely material worldview.

But Saul Alinsky's vision amounted to making the middle-class so "rubbed raw" with "discontent", making them feel so downtrodden that they would demand more government handouts for themselves and more government control in the hands of their political masters.  Government controlling everything in the whole society was Alinsky's idea of "freedom" and "liberty." 
 
He disavowed the power of a single individual to affect change in his own life, and always, every single time, looked to collectivist power for strength.  Alinsky's vision was, of course, Marxist, but with fascist elements thrown into the mix.

Alinsky's first successes, during the 40s and 50s, were in getting the Catholic Church and other fair-weather liberals to sign onto the radical labor agenda, which has now successfully crippled the American auto industry and put it at the mercy of a federal takeover. 
 
This corporatist model, of leaving big business in private hands, while a central government calls all the shots, is one of the hallmarks of fascist third-way activity. 

But as we've learned to our dismay, the left has successfully branded conservative Americans, who continue to believe in limited government and the true separation of powers, as fascist. 
 
So, in Nancy Pelosi's addled imagination, protesters against government control of yet another still-mostly-private American enterprise, are the ones carrying Swastikas.

Doesn't Nancy Pelosi remind you, dear readers, of the mindless scarecrow in Oz?  With no independent mind of her own, she's giddily traveled the yellow-brick road and now depends upon her Wizard in Chief to call all the shots for her ninnified illusions.  

What we are seeing now in townhalls across this country are middle-class people demanding that their government drop any and every plan to convert America's healthcare system to one like those failing throughout socialized Europe and Canada. 
 
Anyone who honestly believed that a man, who had done nothing whatsoever in his entire life but go to school, shout slogans at rallies, and run for office could be an able president, have now been disabused of that fantasy.  Anyone who believed that Barack Obama was a conciliator who could de-polarize a Nation, purposely polarized for 80 years by his own side, has now awakened from the spell.

Honey, even a complete nitwit knows that a president, who hires out his real job to 32 czars, is not CEO material. 

And, it is those people mostly, who now are coming out of their homes and businesses in earnest dissent.  They oppose the takeover of yet another part, perhaps the most intimate part, of their already over-controlled lives.  And middle-class America seems anything but ready to concede and give life-and-death decision making over to the Wizard and his loyal band of Alinskyites.

The American people are anything but mindless dolts, most especially our vibrant and diverse middle-class.  We are seeing some of the same Alinsky tactics employed at townhall meetings, but by a group opposed to more government control, not demanding more of it.  They are the anti-fascist, anti-socialist, anti-Alinsky folks, who would prefer to keep the liberties they have, even if it means sacrifice and suffering.

This ain't what the leftists in charge expected to see.  The Democrats envisioned the middle-class welcoming, with spread-wide-open arms of gratitude, these new power plays that would put more control into the hands of their beneficent bureaucracy.

Instead, the Alinskyites are being met with 1776 Redux, and all they can do is yell "Fascist" at the top of their lungs, just as they've been doing for 40 years.

What a heap of malicious poppycock.

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com.

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/kennedy_legacy_black_voters_jo.html

Kennedy legacy: Black voters joining the Democratic Party
Andrew Walden

After nearly a week of incessant post-mortem vacuity, not a single commentator has hit upon the real legacy of the late Kennedy political dynasty.

The Kennedys are largely responsible for making African Americans dependent on an alliance with liberal Democrats. The result--highly unstable in a democratic society -- 90% of black voters regularly pull the Democrat lever. 

The 90% solid black vote tips the balance in favor of Democrats in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Without these votes, Democrats would simply cease to function as a national party.  Without the Kennedys around to check anti-black electoral dynamics within the Democrats' ranks, it is an open question as to how much longer this arrangement can continue. The end of the dynasty could mark the beginning of the liberation of black voters from dependency on government.

It was the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy which finally brought the majority of black voters out of the Republican camp and into the Democratic Party -- for 95 years the party of segregation, and before that the party of slavery. Communist Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK in 1963. Taking Kennedy's place, President Lyndon Johnson forced passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. In spite of the fact that Republican support was required to overcome Democrat segregationists in both houses of Congress, the votes sealed the liberal Democrats' deal with black voters. Younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, while campaigning for the Democrat Presidential nomination, would be murdered by Palestinian Arab Nationalist Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.

The price of Johnson's support for civil rights would be the "Great Society" programs which have done so much to destroy black families and--with disastrous consequences--weld black communities into dependence on the government-and the liberals who control social spending.

Their media acolytes endlessly portray the Kennedys' trajectory as morally based, but political calculation is more likely. John F Kennedy had been a close ally and personal friend of Senator Joe McCarthy and a staunch anti-communist throughout the 1950s. But as New England liberals, the Kennedys needed to manufacture a political base within the Democratic Party. Writing in Human Events, Frances Rice points out:

"Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King."

The Kennedys' political move was matched by the Republican "Southern strategy"--deployed to scoop up white Southerners abandoned by the national Democrats. This process -- which defeated efforts by George Wallace to form a segregationist third party -- began with the choice by the 1960 Nixon campaign to not match John F. Kennedy's telephonic shows of support for jailed civil rights activists.

(NOTE:  Claims by Democrats that the “Southern Strategy” was segregationist-based, are lies.  The strategy was a counter point to LBJ’s out of control liberalism and hi jacking of the Democrat party.  Democrats were the authors and enforcers of Jim Crow laws, Segregation, and party mandated rules for preventing Blacks from voting in several Southern states.  The GOP was not involved at all.  There was no party switching in post LBJ days – only Cong Albert Watson and Strom Thurmond switched parties, and neither for reasons involving civil rights.  Democrats have lied to Black voters and have them enslaved on a political plantation today.)

 

The Southern strategy continued with Goldwater's openly anti-civil rights "states rights" 1964 campaign -- carrying five southern states for Republicans -- the first GOP Deep South wins since 1872.  Nixon in 1968 carried six with another five going to the segregationist Wallace-Lemay ticket of the American Independent Party.  By 1972, Republicans swept all 15 Southern states as the last ditch Democrat segregationist primary campaign of George Wallace was stopped short by a nearly successful bullet fired by Arthur Bremer.

For the first time since 1877, the Democrats previously solid South became Republican. But in 1976 Georgia Democrat Governor Jimmy Carter would win the Presidency with the backing of Southern states.

This is where Ted Kennedy first stepped in to secure the legacy of his elder brother -- by challenging Carter in the 1980 Democratic Primaries. Kennedy argued:

"We must not permit the dream of social progress to be shattered by those whose promises have failed.  We cannot permit the Democratic Party to remain captive to those who have been so confused about its ideals."

Kennedy took his challenge all the way to the Convention and refused to endorse Carter's campaign against Reagan. It worked. Ronald Reagan captured the support of Carter's "born-again Christian" backers and won all the Southern states except Georgia. The threat to the liberal-black alliance controlling the Democratic Party passed. By 1984 Jesse Jackson would be winning Southern Democrat Primaries.

Carter never forgot. The headline August 27, 2009: "Carter Still Upset with Kennedy 28 Years Later."

Carter was no segregationist. But it was important to defeat him because binging black voters into the Democratic Party -- and keeping them there -- depended on driving white Southerners out.

In a 1970 New York Times interview, Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips explained the relationship:

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

The 1980 campaign was not the end of the story. At the beginning of the 2008 Democratic primary season, Ted Kennedy would for the last time play a key role in swinging Democrats away from another Democrat campaign basing itself on an appeal to white voters -- that of Hillary Clinton.

Although Bill Clinton was tagged "America's First Black President" by some, his political mentor was segregationist Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. His partner, Hillary Clinton, was, like Barack Obama, a student of leftist Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's "community organizing" techniques were developed in segregated white Chicago communities such as "Back of the Yards" and "Bridgeport". Based on Alinsky's techniques, these "organized" communities helped launch Chicago's Daley Machine.

Bill Clinton's 2008 campaign strategy came right out of Hillary's infamous and long-hidden 1969 senior thesis on Alinsky. Alinsky's 13th Rule is: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." For three weeks in January, 2008 the Clintons and their backers did their best to polarize non-black Democrat voters against Obama, bringing up Obama's admitted past drug use and firing off one-liners like "Lyndon Johnson," "fairy-tale," "shuck and jive," and "spade work" to increasing choruses of anger from liberals and conservatives alike.

But it backfired. Ted Kennedy reportedly phoned Clinton several times warning him to tone it down. Rush Limbaugh focused a spotlight on the racially divisive subtext of what he called the Democrats' "uncivil war." Al Sharpton said Clinton should "shut up." But Clinton took no heed, willing to gamble his own party for a return to the White House.

Going after black senators is a long Clinton tradition. Life Magazine gave Hillary an initial taste of nationwide media exposure for her 1969 Wellesley commencement speech in which she denounced the first black man to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 100 years. But that was different. Her target then was a liberal Republican, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. In the eyes of Democrats, the Clinton attacks on Obama are wrong for exactly the same reason that Hillary's attack on Brooke was right.

When three weeks of racially tinged Clinton remarks ended with Bill comparing Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, Ted Kennedy had heard enough. Kennedy had in 2005 famously blurted out "Obama bin Laden". But endorsing Obama, Kennedy told a cheering Obama rally January 28, 2008:

"With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay."

Caroline Kennedy, in a January 27, 2008 New York Times essay, called Obama "a president like my father."

Kennedy's reference to "Old politics" was a barely veiled assault on the Clintons for threatening to shatter the liberal-black alliance.  The term also showed up in January 24, 2008 remarks by former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich:

"Bill Clinton's ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former president, his legacy, or his wife's campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic Party. ... Now, sadly, we're witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics." 

It worked. Obama defeated Clinton in the primaries and the rest is history.

Now, with Ted Kennedy gone, who is left to keep these centrifugal forces in check?

Andrew Walden Edits Hawai`i Free Press

 

Saturday's Web

The day’s top political news

Potential for Health Bill Compromise Fades

Signaling a fading chance for compromise, a leading Republican negotiator on U.S. health care legislation on Saturday criticized Democrat legislative proposals as budget-busters that would reroute spending for the elderly and restrict medical choices.

The criticism from Sen. Michael Enzi echoed that of many opponents of the Democrat plans under consideration in the U.S. Congress. But Enzi's judgment was especially noteworthy because he is one of only three Republicans who have been willing to consider a bipartisan bill in the Senate.

Delivering the Republicans' weekly radio and Internet address, Enzi said any health care legislation must lower medical costs for Americans without increasing deficits and the national debt.

http://news.aol.com/article/hope-for-health-bill-compromise-fades/645869

Cheney: Obama Team Should Be Debriefing CIA Interrogators, Not Investigating Them

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday the Obama administration should be debriefing CIA interrogators about keeping the country safe rather than trying to punish them for doing their jobs.

In an exclusive interview taped to air this weekend on "FOX News Sunday," Cheney called the Justice Department probe of interrogators an "outrageous political act" that will do long-term damage to the United States' capacity to protect the country.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he was appointing a special prosecutor to look at data obtained about enhanced interrogation techniques to determine whether criminal acts were committed. The data are the same previously reviewed by career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the CIA is headquartered. The data led to one arrest and conviction.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/cheneyobamateamdebriefcia/

"People look at the United States as a country that has changed it's way and elected someone from Kenya and Kansas, I'll put it like that” -- Rep. Diane Watson [D] 

"They are spreading fear and they're trying to see that the first president who looks like me -- fails."

KABC’s Michael Linder was the only broadcast reporter at Thursday night’s town hall health care debate at Wade AME Church when Rep. Diane Watson [D] made some astonishing comments including claims that those opposed to health care reform are attempting to destroy a president “who looks like me.”

Later, Watson praised heath care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba — and, it seemed, the Cuban revolution itself.

 http://www.breitbart.tv/la-rep-obamacare-opponents-want-to-destroy-first-president-who-looks-like-me/

Opinion:
The Tea Parties must remain focused and responsible if we are to win

My wife attended and filmed a tea party protest locally yesterday afternoon. A previous effort had been quite successful – it was an ambush of the Blue Dog Democrat who represents this area of Florida’s Panhandle.

The Blue Dog, Allen Boyd, had voted for the huge Democrat taxation scam hidden by the title “Cap and Trade”.  300 angry Bay County voters told him he was wrong.  He had to escape the crowd by sneaking out a back door.

Boyd was due to address a health care seminar yesterday in Panama City.  Some locals stood in a long line to get one of the 500 tickets made available.  Boyd pulled a no show…having announced he would pass up the event late on the day before the event.

Protesters showed up anyway.  Boyd’s surrender to their pressures proved the effectiveness tea party protests are having.

However, my wife left the demonstration with deep concerns.

She reports:

“The main message being venomously spewed was “FIRE CONGRESS”.  Ok, I took the bait and put my two cents in that there ARE good folks in Washington.  I was quickly encircled by a dozen or so people shouting me down.”

Her experience reflects a major concern I have had for the tea parties from the start.  While they have been very successful in slowing and maybe stopping the liberal stampede to pass the Obama health care scheme, many protesters haven’t grasped the real message.  There is a major danger in that lack of understanding.

Calls to “throw all the rascals out” give the wrong message.  One protester told my wife that any real conservatives in Congress would resign immediately so “we could start all over”.  That idea, of course, is obviously impractical and, quite frankly, is down right stupid.

Our nation faces one of its greatest crises.  We face a massive and dominating majority of liberal Democrats riding high, and seeking to impose absurd legislative measures on us all.

The House narrowly passed their Cap and Trade tax – if the Senate does the same, be prepared to write a tax check for an additional $3,000 plus, then face higher food prices and gasoline costs in the area of $5 a gallon or higher.

Now the liberal majority is conspiring to pass a health care scheme that will result in socialized medicine, no matter how hard liberals work to deny it and deceive unsuspecting Americans.

Senate Democrat leader, Harry Reid, is already planning to pass the left wing health care plan without GOP participation – cramming socialized medicine down the throats of the American people.

Next, Obama will move to not only impose amnesty for illegal aliens, but to go even farther and welcome such people in.  Democrats anticipate being able to incorporate illegal aliens into a new voting bloc.

It gets even worse.  Possible clamping down on talk radio, Obama having power to take over the Internet, and more.

We are in a serious situation and in a fight we must win if the nation is to survive.  This means:

1. We must proceed with the tea party protests, since grass root power has proven effective against the liberal onslaught, despite liberal domination of both Houses of Congress.

2. Winning the 2010 by-election is critical.  The prime objective is changing the Capitol Hill equation.  We must work to defeat as many Democrats as possible and replace them with as many Republicans as possible.

3. This is an election in which party labels not only apply, but are the sole measurement of success or failure.

4. We must continue the grass root pressures and assure election of a rational presidential choice in 2012. 

5. We must proceed in an intelligent manner, keeping our eyes on the goal and remain dedicated to victory.

This is not a time to revisit mistakes of the past.  Voter mistakes in electing Obama and liberals, Republican errors in not standing firmly by their principles when they held the power.  Those facts are history.  Given the criticality of the moment, they must be kept as non sequiturs in the debate.

There will be time to prune the GOP tree of its RINOs when victory has been achieved an the nation rescued from disaster.  We take names and keep records.

At the moment, winning against the liberal disaster can be reduced to a  numbers game.  It’s strictly and absolutely a matter of which party holds the most seats on Capitol Hill. Surely no one would suggest Democrats are the party with conservative, patriotic, or positive inclinations regarding our future.

Clearly, Republicans don’t have all the answers.  No one does. But at the moment, in terms of Cap and Trade taxation and the looming threat of “single payer” health care, the best answer for the moment is “NO”. 

Of course there are Republican answers for issues such as health care – but they begin with a demand for real tort reform, an issue greedy trial lawyers who rape the system will never allow Democrats to pursue.  Trial Lawyers provide much of the billion dollar political funding Democrats enjoy, so they will never approve tort control.

If grass root America – represented by the tea party movement at present – can exert the power to stop Democrat health care conspiracies and defeat Cap and Trade taxation, then the same tea party power can demand and achieve necessary reform of the Republican Party.

There is strength and power within a real democracy – and we are seeing that fact in play at present.

However, it will only succeed if it remains pragmatic, practical, and smart.  Now is not a time for stupidity from our side.  “Throw all the bums out” is stupid.  We can win, but only as long as we move forward toward real goals and objectives.

Democracy is a fragile thing – it breaks easily.  The result of the last election should prove that to everyone with an ounce of sense. 

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

 http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/08/26/aclu_spying_for_americas_enemies
 
ACLU: Spying for America's Enemies
Michelle Malkin 
 
Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying.

Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

The ACLU undertook the so-called "John Adams Project" with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- last seen crusading for convicted jihadi assistant Lynne Stewart. She's the far-left lawyer who helped sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing and N.Y. landmark bombing plot mastermind, smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation.

The ACLU's team used lists and data from "human rights groups," European researchers and news organizations that were involved in "(t)racking international CIA-chartered flights" and monitoring hotel phone records. Working from a witch-hunt list of 45 CIA employees, the ACLU team tailed and photographed agency employees or obtained other photos from public records.

And then they showed the images to suspected al-Qaida operatives implicated in murdering 3,000 innocent men, women and children on American soil.

Where is the concern for the safety of these American officers and their families? Where's the outrage from all the indignant supporters of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose name was leaked by Bush State Department official Richard Armitage to the late Robert Novak? Lefties swung their nooses for years over the disclosure, citing federal laws prohibiting the sharing of classified information and proscribing anyone from unauthorized exposure of undercover intelligence agents.

(NOTE: The ACLU wages a constant effort against normal America.  They are intent on crippling our national security, and engaging in an active effort to violate the First Amendment and impose atheism as a national religion.)

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero refused to comment on Project CIA Paparazzi and instead whined some more about the evil Bush/CIA interrogators. Left-wing commentators and distraction artists are dutifully up in arms about such "inhumane" tactics as blowing cigar smoke in the faces of Gitmo detainees. But it's Romero blowing unconscionable smoke:

"We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients' interests," he told the Post. "Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings."

Courage? What tools and fools these jihadi-enablers be. Civil liberties opportunism is literally a part of the al-Qaida handbook. A terrorist manual seized in a Manchester, England, raid in 2005 advised operatives: "At the beginning of the trial ... the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison." Jihadi commanders rehearsed the lines with their foot soldiers "to ensure that they have assimilated it."

Since 9/11, the selective champions of privacy have recklessly blabbed about counter-terrorism operations, endangered the lives of military and intelligence officials at Gitmo, and undermined national security through endless litigation. They accused Bush immigration officials of xenophobia for pursuing visa over-stayers from jihadi-friendly countries. They accused local law enforcement, FBI and other homeland security officials of "racial profiling" for placing heightened scrutiny on mosques and jihadi-linked charities.

Now, caught red-handed blowing the cover of CIA operatives, they shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as "normal" research on behalf of "our clients."

But don't you dare question their love of country. Spying to stop the next 9/11 is treason, you see. Spying to stop enhanced interrogation of Gitmo detainees is patriotic. And endangering America on behalf of international human rights is the ultimate form of leftist dissent.
 
2.

http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2009/08/26/liberal_lies_in_national_health_care_second_in_a_series?page=full
 
 
Liberal Lies in National Health Care: Second in a Series

Ann Coulter 
 
With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, "receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling" -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists.

Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.

But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.

(6) There will be no rationing under national health care.

Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look -- I have two-thirds of a syllogism!)

Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, "The Death Panel") deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without ever denying a single medical treatment!

Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! But first, let's go over the specs for my perpetual motion machine -- and it uses no energy, so it's totally green!

For you newcomers to planet Earth, everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices.

Some people get new computers every year; some every five years. Some White House employees get new computers and then vandalize them on the way out the door when their candidate loses. (These are the same people who will be making decisions about your health care.)

Similarly, one person might say, "I want to live it up and spend freely now! No one lives forever." (That person is a Democrat.) And another might say, "I don't go to restaurants, I don't go to the theater, and I don't buy expensive designer clothes because I've decided to pour all my money into my health."

Under national health care, you'll have no choice about how to ration your own health care. If your neighbor isn't entitled to a hip replacement, then neither are you. At least that's how the plan was explained to me by our next surgeon general, Dr. Conrad Murray.

(7) National health care will reduce costs.

This claim comes from the same government that gave us the $500 hammer, the $1,200 toilet seat and postage stamps that increase in price every three weeks.

The last time liberals decided an industry was so important that the government needed to step in and contain costs was when they set their sights on the oil industry. Liberals in both the U.S. and Canada -- presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and Canadian P.M. Pierre Trudeau -- imposed price controls on oil.

As night leads to day, price controls led to reduced oil production, which led to oil shortages, skyrocketing prices for gasoline, rationing schemes and long angry lines at gas stations.
You may recall this era as "the Carter years."

Then, the white knight Ronald Reagan became president and immediately deregulated oil prices. The magic of the free market -- aka the "profit motive" -- produced surges in oil exploration and development, causing prices to plummet. Prices collapsed and remained low for the next 20 years, helping to fuel the greatest economic expansion in our nation's history.

You may recall this era as "the Reagan years."

Freedom not only allows you to make your own rationing choices, but also produces vastly more products and services at cheap prices, so less rationing is necessary.

(8) National health care won't cover abortions.

There are three certainties in life: (a) death, (b) taxes, and (C) no health care bill supported by Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro and signed by Barack Obama could possibly fail to cover abortions.
I don't think that requires elaboration, but here it is:

Despite being a thousand pages long, the health care bills passing through Congress are strikingly nonspecific. (Also, in a thousand pages, Democrats weren't able to squeeze in one paragraph on tort reform. Perhaps they were trying to save paper.)

These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words "abortion," "death panels" or "three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery."

That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions.

After the bill is passed, the Federal Health Commission will find that abortion is covered, pro-lifers will sue, and a court will say it's within the regulatory authority of the health commission to require coverage for abortions.

Then we'll watch a parade of senators and congressmen indignantly announcing, "Well, I'm pro-life, and if I had had any idea this bill would cover abortions, I never would have voted for it!"

No wonder Democrats want to remind us that they can't be trusted with foreign policy. They want us to forget that they can't be trusted with domestic policy.
 
Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault On America. 
 
 
3.

http://osmoothie.com/2009/08/28/film-producer-accuses-nea-of-enlisting-artists-to-push-obamas-domestic-agenda/.

Film Producer Accuses NEA of Enlisting Artists to Push Obama’s Domestic Agenda
Joshua Rhett Miller

A 39-year-old Los Angeles film producer is accusing the National Endowment for the Arts of initiating a “call to action” to artists to support President Obama’s domestic agenda.

The film producer, Patrick Courrielche, said he was one of roughly 75 artists, musicians, writers, poets and others on an Aug. 10 conference call hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement and United We Serve, a nationwide initiative launched by Obama to increase volunteerism.

Courrielche said officials on the hour-long call — including NEA Director of Communications Yosi Sergant and Michael Skolnik, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons — encouraged the artists on the line to create works of art in their respective fields related to health care, energy and the environment.

(NOTE:  Since they cannot prevail on a basis of truth and fact, expect the Team Obama conspiracy to resort to any and all avenues they can manipulate, to carry their message to unsuspecting Americans.  Corruption of the arts is just one more step in the steady march of liberal extremism.)

“What I heard was a well thought-out pitch to encourage artists to create art on these issues,” Courrielche told FOXNews.com. “We were told we were consulted for a reason, and they specifically stated those issues as the issues we should focus on, to plant the seed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what they’re attempting to do.”

The NEA did not respond to several requests for comment, but others familiar with the conference call dispute Courrielche’s version of events, saying the purpose was a broad pitch for artworks on the theme of public service.

Siobhan Dugan, a spokeswoman for United We Serve, said the call was organized by an “individual interested” in the group and was unable to provide a list of those invited to participate on the call.

“The service that we are encouraging through United We Serve is taking place with no direct tie to any policy initiative, but instead focuses on the areas of the greatest need of our nation and our neighborhoods,” Dugan said in a statement to FOXNews.com.

Thomas Bates, vice president of civic engagement for Rock the Vote, confirmed to FOXNews.com he was on the call, saying he was invited by officials at United We Serve. He doesn’t agree with Courrielche that there was a political undercurrent.

“I don’t remember it that way,” Bates said. “The call I was on was about engaging artists in ongoing service projects, including on Sept. 11.”

Bates said his participation in the call revolved around a proposed service event in Chicago that his organization had considered. He did not elaborate.

Told of Bates’ denial that artists were encouraged to produce art in certain areas, Courrielche said he omitted an “essential, specific aspect” of the conference call.

“The word volunteerism was never used,” Courrielche said. “Service was the word being used and it was in specific areas, those being health care, energy and the environment.”

Courrielche said the now ubiquitous Obama “Hope” poster by artist Shepard Fairey and musician will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were offered as “shining examples” of the artist group’s clear impact on Obama’s landslide election.

The “potential propaganda machine,” Courrielche said, is concerning on many levels.

“The issue that troubles me the most is that the NEA was set up to promote the arts,” he said. “If you have a meeting where you’re trying to set up a machine that does your bidding, a propaganda machine, that’s not what the National Endowment for Arts is for.”

Moderators on the conference call did not specify whether any piece of subsequent artwork should be supportive or critical of the president’s agenda in key areas like health care and the environment.
“For me, it was implied,” said Courrielche, adding he felt the NEA “tainted” the artistic process.
Courrielche, who said he took extensive notes during the call, recalled one particular passage he attributed to Skolink, who acted a moderator on the call.

“So what I had hoped in bringing this group together,” Skolnik said, according to Courrielche, “with the great hosts that again I want to thank for reaching out to their communities, was that we could begin to bring together our community in the same enthusiasm, with the same enthusiasm, and with the same energy that we all saw each other during the campaign, and we continue to work together on issues as important as United We Serve, and service, and begin here and continue to work together on other issues that we feel are important as was mentioned, some of them health care and others.”
Courrielche also wrote up his experiences for Big Hollywood.

Reached by FOXNews.com on Friday, Skolnik declined to comment for this story.

Dugan said the group was not aware of the conference call leading to any new artwork or campaigns.

“Organizations and people from all political persuasions and beliefs continue to support community service as one part of the solution to the economic crisis and the recovery efforts,” she said. “There are no government funds provided or funding incentives given to organizations or individuals to participate or encourage community service as part of United We Serve.”

Courrielche, who said he felt compelled to speak out about the call, said unidentified members of the press were also on the call.

“I felt like I needed to say something about it,” he said. “Now I think if [a piece of art] comes out, you have to question it, did it come from this meeting? This is the exact argument for why an agency like this shouldn’t exist.”

 
 
 

Friday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

 
They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

After Kennedy's Death: Silence from the Pope

Perhaps the Holy Father is responding to the admonition “if you cant say something nice about a person, it’s better to remain quiet.

The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Kennedy's death, praising his work on civil rights and fighting poverty, but noted that his record was marred by his stance on abortion. As of yet, unlike some other world leaders, Pope .

Benedict has not commented or issued an official communique in response to Kennedy's death.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090827/wl_time/08599191906400

A Senator “I don’t need to read the Health care bill to know I oppose it”

At a town hall meeting  Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Chickasha residents he does not need to read the 1,000 page health care reform bill, he will simply vote against it.

Inhofe said public opinion and information provided by news media have helped him become a staunch non-supporter of the bill. He said he would prefer waiting until after mid-term elections in 2010 to enact reforms. He did not say nothing should be done. He simply feels that a topic as important as healthcare should not be rushed through the Senate or House of Representatives.

Inhofe took the opportunity to blame Democrats for a bevy of issues. He lashed out at democrats for overtaking the government and spending billions of dollars on unpopular packages. He said government is becoming too big and overreaching its boundaries.

http://www.chickashanews.com/local/local_story_239102559.html/

Opinion:
We are all that stands between our ideals and liberal extremism

In even primitive societies, provisions were usually adopted through which alarms could be sounded to warn people of impending threats by nature or by invading armies of enemies.

Normal, grass root America needs its own alarm system today.

We face impending threats and grass root power is all that stands between them and those we are charged to defend and protect.

The threats from Obama and other extreme liberals are real and the dangers posed are imminent. The reality of such threats can be measured by the degree of frenzy our mainstream media and other liberal groups bring to the argument. Especially when they work overtime to insult, slander, and dismiss opponents on an issue.

Regarding health care, Obama promises if you like your doctor and insurance, nothing will change.  Obama either lies or is truly dumb.  Once government-run health care is imposed, all bets are off. 

Obama pledged before and after being elected that Middle Americans will not see “a dime of increased taxation”.  Within his first 100 days, Obama  promoted the “Cap and Trade” scheme which is a hidden tax analysts say will cost each and every American an addition $3,000 in taxation, plus more in increased costs of services and products such as gasoline.

Obama has rushed through questionable legislation such as his “stimulus” scam.  He forces legislative members to vote on proposed legislation before it can be read and the negatives detected.

Sarah Palin was savaged by the media, liberals, and even many GOP moderates to a point she had to step down as governor.  Those forces arrayed against here were (and are) terrified of her ability to connect with middle America.  They absolutely had to destroy her before she could gain more power and momentum.

Her reference to “death panels” was a bit extreme, but contained a definite element of truth and fact.  Obama’s top health care advisor is Ezekiel Emanuel who advocates an extreme approach to the handicapped and the elderly that would limit care and access to care.  A form of “take an aspirin and call me in the morning”  (and leave a voice mail)

The liberal threat goes further.

We see stirrings of efforts to shut down free speech.  Just this past week, two over-the-air networks have refused to sell time to sponsors of TV commercials that attack Obama’s health care plan.  Of course, both networks have smothered the Obama administration with over-the-top biased coverage.

Fortunately, talk radio provides us with a source of news, opinion, and discussion denied us by ABC, NBC, or by CBS.  However, Obama’s people want to shut down talk radio to close off dissenting voices.

The Internet provides a source of news and information that is unfiltered by liberal extremism.  But there is Senate legislation that opponents say could give Obama power to shut down the Internet if he declares an emergency.

Does anyone not see the danger?  Is there anyone who does not understand Democrats have an overwhelming and dominating majority in both Houses and the White House itself?  Can anyone fail to grasp the fact that in 2010, the prime objective is in defeating any Democrat we can and replace him with a Republican.  Any Republican.  This is a battle of party numbers…never allow anyone to forget that fact.

Real America has a single source of power with which to oppose, and, hopefully, defeat liberal extremism on health care, Cap and Trade taxation, and shutting down free speech. 

In short, it is up to us.  There is no “them” or “they” to whom we can look for help, relief, or salvation.

Be ready – we need to be prepared to sound an alarm and do so effectively when event pose a threat.  Grass root America has slowed Obama’s frantic efforts to impose his health care scheme.  That delay may ultimately allow us to defeat it.

The Senate faces a Cap and Trade vote – we need to bring all the pressure we can muster against those Senators who might waver and vote for the huge Democrat tax.

We must remain vigilant and prepared to shout down and bring effective pressures against other liberal assaults.  This means everyone on this list should pass this along to their entire name list and urge those on it to do the same.  Our greatest power and best defense is an ability to spread the word, and sound the alarm.

It’s as basic and realistic as the lanterns in the church steeple when Paul Revere issued the sort of alarm of which I speak: “The British are coming”, “The British are coming”.

I don’t have a horse to ride, but I DO have Internet access – so do you.  We must organize to use it and to make it work.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108088

THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
Glenn Beck's fear of Obama: Seize power overnight

Rush: 'Most dangerous time in my life for freedom and liberty in this country'

Joe Kovacs

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Will President Obama "seize power overnight" in a move to consolidate White House control of the U.S. government?

That's the fear of Fox News anchor Glenn Beck who discussed the issue at length today with another broadcasting powerhouse, radio's Rush Limbaugh.
"I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought," Beck said.

His comment came as he was analyzing the changing nature of the media since Obama's election, citing the administration's close ties with the NBC network, owned by corporate giant General Electric:
If you watch what could only be called the administration's organ – anything involved with GE or NBC – you've got [GE CEO] Jeffrey Immelt on the board of the Federal Reserve, you have him in the Oval Office consulting not only on health care, but the financial situation, and they are an organ.

If you watch MSNBC, I contend that you will see the future because they are laying the ground for a horrible event ... anything from the right, there's some awful event and I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought.

Limbaugh responded, "I don't think they're going to be able to seize it overnight without anybody knowing about it."

The pair analyzed Obama's appointment of Mark Lloyd, the nation's first "chief diversity officer" at the Federal Communications Commission, and both agreed he is looking to severely limit free speech in America through a series of new initiatives without ever having to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" that was abandoned in 1985.

WND recently reported that Lloyd believes the policy was never actually repealed, and he is said to advocate crippling $250 million fines for radio stations whose programming does not meet with the government's approval. 

(NOTE: Should such fines be imposed, it will be crucial for normal America to rise up, confront such an outrage, and bring pressures sufficient to oust Lloyd and make sure his position is abandoned.)

He's also reportedly pushing for private broadcasters to pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs. That money would then be used to enhance funding of government-subsidized networks such as National Public Radio.

"Citizen access to popular information has been undermined by bad political decisions," Lloyd wrote in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America." "Corporate liberty has overwhelmed citizen equality."

"What they're trying to do here to communications is simply stifle dissenting voices. They're trying to wipe out any opposition," Limbaugh explained. "The things he's talking about doing to shut down radio are simply un-American. ... It is a dangerous time. It's the most dangerous time in my life for freedom and liberty in this country."

Limbaugh maintained every action thus far by Obama has been designed to intentionally hurt, rather than help the nation.

"Look at what they're doing to the U.S. economy," he said. "Anybody with a sense of economic literacy would know this is not how you create jobs. You do not rebuild the private sector. This is being done on purpose. All of these disasters are exactly what Obama wants. The more crises, the better. The more opportunity for government to say, 'Let us in and fix the problem.'"

Limbaugh has been maligned by some in the media for previous comments that he would like Obama to fail in implementing his policies, and he said today he was "uncomfortable thinking and saying these things about a man who's been elected president of the United States."

It is terribly upsetting and disconcerting, and I wish I didn't think it and I wish I didn't have to say it.

 But there's no way to sugarcoat it. This is not politics as usual. This is not left versus right. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is statism, totalitarianism versus freedom. And if these people are allowed to go where they want to go unchecked, then some people, a lot of people – I don't think half the country, but close – will wake up one day and find, "My God, what the hell happened?" Because this is not what they voted for. They had no intention of this. They thought they were getting something entirely different and it is a responsibility that we all have being honest and earnest to inform people of what these possibilities are because they are very real.

Beck, who has a national radio show of his own as well as his television broadcast on the Fox News Channel, wondered about a perceived lack of coverage on the issues they were discussing.

"Where is the true outrage from anyone in the media?" asked Beck. "Why are these things not grabbing traction at this point?"

 
"I think the whole concept of reporting has gone out the window," Limbaugh answered. "I call them the State-Controlled Media because it's what they are. They're just repeaters. They take dictation from [Obama Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel for the most part, and they simply run with it. It's who they are, too."

Despite the potential for doom and gloom, Limbaugh assured Beck that there was a ray of hope that Obama's goals could be defeated.

"Passion, love of country, truth is going to outmaneuver and overpower fake passion, trumped-up people who are just given marching orders and sent out to act in a certain way," Limbaugh said.

"I'm confident that this can be beaten back. If I weren't, you know what, Glenn? I'd pack it all in and I'd spend my money before they take it and I'd go enjoy the rest of what my life is gonna be, but I –
"That's quite a shopping spree," Beck interrupted with a laugh. "Can I come with you?"

"There's plenty of room," said Rush.

2.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/26/colorado-gop-calls-apology-democratic-office-vandalism/

Colorado GOP Calls for Apology After Democratic Office Vandalism
The chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is calling on his Democratic counterpart to apologize following comments he claims connects an act of vandalism to opposition of President Obama's health care reform.

Joshua Rhett Miller
FOXNews.com

(Note:  Democrats have provided thugs and union goons to trash GOP campaign headquarters in many states.  Such vandalism for implied intimidation of opponents I a regular practice within some Democrat groups – Obama’s own ACORN and the SEIU come to mind – they have provided violence at town hall meetings – violence against those who disagree with Obama.)

The chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is calling on his Democratic counterpart to apologize for suggesting that an act of vandalism at Democratic Party headquarters was linked to opposition to President Obama's push for health care reform.

State GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams told FOXNews.com he was "stunned" by comments made by Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak following the smashing of 11 windows at the Democratic headquarters early Tuesday morning.

Waak told the Denver Post that the vandalism, allegedly carried out by a former Democratic canvasser who left behind an anti-health care reformer poster, was "an effort on the other side to stir up hate."

 After learning about alleged vandal's political past, Waak told the newspaper that "there is a lot of rhetoric out there from both sides of the spectrum."

"I was stunned by [Waak] actually suggesting the act of vandalism had something to do with opposition to Obama's health care reform," Wadhams told FOXNews.com Wednesday. "That is unfair and inappropriate to say that anybody who opposes Obama's health care plan is somehow responsible for this despicable act of vandalism."

Wadhams called on Waak to apologize to "everyone, who in good faith, opposes the president's health care proposal," saying her assertion was "terribly" irresponsible.
Waak, meanwhile, told FOXNews.com that the shattered windows wer

e directly in front of posters depicting President Obama and health care reform.

"If you look at the windows, that's where the major smashes were done," Waak said Wednesday. "To us, that indicates this is about health care reform."

Maurice Schwenkler, 24, was arrested in Denver on Tuesday in connection to the vandalism on charges of criminal mischief. The shattered windows will cost roughly $10,000 or more to replace.

The Post reported that Schwenkler was paid $500 in November 2008 to walk door-to-door in support of Democrat Mollie Cullom, a candidate for the state House. Campaign records also show Schwenkler was among dozens of canvassers paid by a political committee called the Colorado Citizens' Coalition.

Schwenkler was also reportedly arrested in St. Paul, Minn., on the last day of the 2008 Republican convention on charges of unlawful assembly.

Denver Police say they have not identified a motive in the incident. A second suspect is still at large. No injuries were reported.

Republican David Balmer, who defeated Cullom, said he thought the vandals might have trying to make Republicans look bad.

"This sounds like the type of Democratic tactic from the left fringe trying to make Republicans look mean-spirited," Balmer told the Denver Post. "In this case, it blew up in their face. He was caught red-handed."

Waak told FOXNews.com that Balmer's assertion was the "most ridiculous comment" she's ever heard.
"This wasn't just any random kind of thing," she said. "I have a lot of other things to do rather than replace my windows. Quite frankly, I feel violated."

 3.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

 
They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

(NOTE: Given what we have seen of Team Obama in terms of their cramming unwanted or questionable legislation down the throats of Americans makes providing any control over the Internet a really bad and ominous act.  The Internet remains our only source for news and information unfiltered by liberals. Freedom cannot survive allowing liberal extremists to have any control.)

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller's revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a "cybersecurity workforce plan" from every federal agency, a "dashboard" pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a "comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy" in six months--even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.

 
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

 
Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

The Internet Security Alliance's Clinton adds that his group is "supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective."

Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com who writes a daily feature called Taking Liberties focused on individual and economic rights. You can bookmark his CBS News Taking Liberties site here, or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can e-mail Declan at declan@cbsnews.com.

 

Thursday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Files prove the Obama Pentagon is profiling reporters

 

Contrary to Pentagon denials that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64401

ACLU extremists go after border lap top searches

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to uncover documents related to laptop searches at the border.

In July 2008, the Customs and Border Protection agency within DHS published formal guidelines for laptop border searches that gave CBP officials permission to search laptops and electronic devices at the border. Court cases on the topic have generally found that citizens should have diminished expectations of privacy when re-entering the country because the U.S. has a right to protect itself and control what crosses its borders.

Critics of the policy claim that laptop searches are an invasion of privacy – a personal computer holds a lot more information than a suitcase full of clothes or briefcase full of paperwork. What's to stop CBP from copying the contents of your computer and keeping it on file indefinitely, they have argued

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352055,00.asp

Democratic Health Care Bill Divulges IRS Tax Data

Invasion of privacy proposals fly under the radar and have not become issues for opposition – of course proponents of the Obama scheme wont mention it.

The Institute for Policy Innovation argues: "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee....

So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years."

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/26/taking_liberties/entry5268079.shtml

Opinion:
Is nothing sacred?  Obama care would open access to IRS data.

Reasons for opposing the Obama health care scheme have be detailed over and over, and, despite liberal denials, have been verified.  It is the task of our side to make sure every Americans knows and understands reasons for avidly opposing the bill.  Of course, Democrat denials fly in the face of truth and fact. 

They deny the bill is an open door for socialized medicine when even Barney Frank has been caught on video admitting their “public option” scam is a gate way to their even more extreme “single payer” plan – which would impose on us all the sort of socialized health care Canada suffers under.

ANY government plan will lead to a loss of quality and destruction of our present system.  When Obama promises you will not lose your present doctor or  health plan, he is either lying or he is a fool.

It gets worse.

We are now learning the more than 1,000 pages of rhetoric, is a provision that has another assault on our privacy. As no less a source than CBS reveal, the Obama scheme also invades the privacy we expect when filing our taxes.

“Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for ‘affordability credits’."

“Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details -- there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable -- to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify "affordability credits."

“Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.

Meanwhile on another front – liberal insanity and criminal irresponsibility increased in their assault on the CIA and efforts to protect Americans and their lives.

As another news outlet, CNS news reports:

“Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
 
“Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.
 
“CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.
 
“The IG's office described this smoke-blowing as one of several "unauthorized or undocumented techniques" it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.
 
‘"An Agency (redacted phrase) interrogator admitted that, in December 2002, he and another (redacted phrase) smoked cigars and blew cigar smoke in al-Nashiri's face during the interrogation," said the IG report.
 
“The IG, however, was unable to clearly establish that the smoke-blowing was intended to force Nashiri to cough up what he knew about al-Qaida's plans.
 
‘"The interrogator claimed they did this to 'cover the stench' in the room and to help keep the interrogators alert late at night," said the IG report.”

Imagine the horror!  Blowing cigar smoke in the face of a terrorist to get him to reveal information that could save American lives!!!  We sure can’t have that!!

This liberal irresponsibility raises a serious question: how do liberals expect interrogation of Islamic terrorists to be conducted?  Are they suggesting simple questions would produce viable information that could save lives?

That might seem a rhetorical question – but given the incredible positions of liberals and their demonstrated lack of support for our effort to contain terror and demands that would betray and corrupt support – there seems to be no limit.

Face it, when it comes to confronting our enemies, liberal Democrats continue to have one and only one strategy: “cut, run, and surrender”.  Some things never change.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

Direct Threat to Education: Bill Ayers
Mary Grabar

Imagine if, as you chat with your child’s first-grade teacher and ask about how he decided to embark on a career in education, he told you, “I walked out of jail and into my first teaching job.”

Imagine him telling you that his days in jail and violent protesting were formative to his teaching philosophy.

Most parents would have a serious discussion with the principal.

But the teacher who brags about such beginnings is now a “Distinguished Professor of Education.”

 Despite his specialty as “Professor of Curriculum and Instruction,” he trains future teachers to dispense with curricula and discipline, as well as tests and grades.

His many books appear on syllabi in education schools. Regarding classroom management, he advises future teachers to hold on “until the storm” of the “wildest kids in their fullest eruptions” passes.

 Knowledge of the subject is unimportant; the teacher’s willingness to “plunge into the unknown alongside their students” is. So is the teacher’s “love.”

Yet, as he told the World Education Forum and President Hugo Chavez during one of several trips to Venezuela, education does have a goal: it is “the motor-force of revolution.” This education professor also enjoys a lucrative sideline as invited speaker to education conferences, college and high school assemblies, and civic groups, in the United States and Europe, but has been barred from Canada on several occasions.

 
This, of course, is William Ayers, Ed.D., who came into the news during the presidential campaign for his association with Barack Obama on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

 
It was in his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days,” that Ayers bragged about walking into his first teaching job at the alternative Children’s Community school in Ann Arbor, “a school that, we hoped, would change the world.” His leadership in the Weather Underground, a terrorist organization, and the quotation about having “no regrets” for that, appeared in the New York Times on 9/11 and was repeated in 2008.

 
Ayers and wife Bernardine Dohrn hid from the law for the better part of the 1970s, until 1979 when charges for terroristic activities were dropped, as a result of President Carter’s justice department’s pursuit of the FBI and accusation of illegal wiretapping. The couple is still being investigated for the 1970 police station bombing that killed Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell.

Today, Ayers and Dohrn sit on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society, which has been guiding a resurgent “SDS” of student activists who intimidate conservative speakers on campuses.
Ayers laid low until after the election. But now he and Dohrn enjoy invitations on the speaking circuit, many for their latest book, “Race Course Against White Supremacy,” whose premise is that as long as the U.S. remains capitalistic it will remain racist.

The wish to overthrow capitalism repeats young Ayers’ fantasies of the “red army” marching in to take over amidst the chaos of protests, as he describes in “Fugitive Days.” Dohrn once laughed about the Charles Manson murders. A professor at Northwestern University School of Law, she now directs the Children and Family Law Justice Center.

Ayers is vice president of the curriculum studies division in the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association.

(NOTE: It is widely speculated, and some convincing evidence provided, that Ayers is the real author of Obama’s books which played to important a part in his spectacular rise to political stardom.  Phrases taken from Obama’s books, match precisely and in syntax to many from books known to have been authored by Ayers.  No matter, Obama denied knowing Ayers – “he was just some guy in the neighborhood”.  Where I come from, someone who lies about one thing is likely to lie about everything.  We know Obama lied about Ayers – perhaps more than we will ever see admitted.)

 

But declining national test scores and widening racial disparities show a failure of Ayers’ “progressive” methods. In spite of upwards of $150 million spent on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge achievement scores were not raised, as Stanley Kurtz has pointed out. As education writer Diane Ravitch, citing parents’ complaints about their children’s low achievement, notes, it is minority children who are usually the most harmed by the education methods promoted by Ayers.

The trajectory of inmate to teacher to bomb thrower to fugitive to graduate student at Columbia Teachers College, and then to “distinguished professor” at a public university that educates future teachers might seem to be a strange one. But Ayers’ influence is felt far and wide. Most people know him only as someone with a terrorist past who palled around with Barack Obama.

But, in the classroom, Ayers continues to work for the overthrow of our government as he trains future teachers, as I’ve described in my reports for America’s Survival. I’ll also be participating in a conference on “Communism in the Classroom,” with America’s Survival President Cliff Kincaid and Grove City College Professor and Townhall columnist Paul Kengor on August 20, 2009. It begins at 12:30 p.m. in the First Amendment Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. For more information and to read the reports, please go here.

Mary Grabar earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia and teaches in the Atlanta area. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and published fiction writer.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574370301468452872.html
 
2.
 
Obama's Summer of Discontent
The politics of charisma is so Third World. Americans were never going to buy into it for long.
FOUAD AJAMI

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These "townhallers" who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled "evil-mongers" (Harry Reid), "un-American" (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.

A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-

confidence. Historically, this republic, unlike the Old World and the command economies of the Third World, had trusted the society rather than the state. In a perilous moment, that balance had shifted, and Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of that shift.

So our new president wanted a fundamental overhaul of the health-care system—17% of our GDP—without a serious debate, and without "loud voices." It is akin to government by emergency decrees. How dare those townhallers (the voters) heckle Arlen Specter! Americans eager to rein in this runaway populism were now guilty of lèse-majesté by talking back to the political class.

(NOTE: This liberal outrage is wide spread and focused on many issues.  They derisively refer to those who question Obama’s legitimacy as “birthers”.  Insults to cover the fact Obama has failed to meet his obligation to simply provide proof he was born on US soil.  It is Obama’s obligation, not that of those who question it.  I have let the matter drop since “the fix is in” and no matter the truth or how much evidence might be presented, nothing will happen. So, why bother?  Issues such as Cap and Trade taxation, and the attempted rape of our health care system, need our attention and efforts to defeat them both.  So move on, stiff arm liberal opposition, and do all we can to protect this country from out of control liberal assault.)

We were led to this summer of discontent by the very nature of the coalition that brought Mr. Obama, and the political class around him, to power, and by the circumstances of his victory. The man was elected amid economic distress. Faith in the country's institutions, perhaps in the free-enterprise system itself, had given way. Mr. Obama had ridden that distress. His politics of charisma was reminiscent of the Third World. A leader steps forth, better yet someone with no discernible trail, someone hard to pin down to a specific political program, and the crowd could read into him what it wished, what it needed.

The leader would be different things to different people. The Obama coalition was the coming together of disparate groups: the white professional liberals seeking absolution for the country in the election of an African-American man, the opponents of the Iraq war who grew more strident as the project in Iraq was taking root, the African-American community that had been invested in the Clintons and then came around out of an understandable pride in one of its own.

The last segment of the electorate to flock to the Obama banners were the blue-collar workers who delivered him Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. He was not their man. They fully knew that he didn't share their culture. They were, by his portrait, clinging to their guns and religion, but the promise of economic help, and of protectionism, carried the day with them.

The Obama devotees were the victims of their own belief in political magic. The devotees could not make up their minds. In a newly minted U.S. senator from Illinois, they saw the embodiment of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama was tall and thin and from Illinois, and the historic campaign was launched out of Springfield. The oath of office was taken on the Lincoln Bible. Like FDR, he had a huge economic challenge, and he better get it done, repair and streamline the economy in his "first hundred days." Like JFK, he was young and stylish, with a young family.

All this hero-worship before Mr. Obama met his first test of leadership. In reality, he was who he was, a Chicago politician who had done well by his opposition to the Iraq war. He had run a skillful campaign, and had met a Clinton machine that had run out of tricks and a McCain campaign that never understood the nature of the contest of 2008.

He was no FDR, and besides the history of the depression—the real history—bears little resemblance to the received narrative of the nation instantly rescued, in the course of 100 days or 200 days, by an interventionist state. FDR began his second term, in 1937, with the economy still in the grip of recession.

Nor was JFK about style. He had known military service and combat, and familial loss; he had run in 1960 as a hawk committed to the nation's victory in the Cold War. He and his rival, Richard Nixon, shared a fundamental outlook on American power and its burdens.

Now that realism about Mr. Obama has begun to sink in, these iconic figures of history had best be left alone. They can't rescue the Obama presidency. Their magic can't be his. Mr. Obama isn't Lincoln with a BlackBerry. Those great personages are made by history, in the course of history, and not by the spinners or the smitten talking heads.

In one of the revealing moments of the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama rightly observed that the Reagan presidency was a transformational presidency in a way Clinton's wasn't. And by that Reagan precedent, that Reagan standard, the faults of the Obama presidency are laid bare. Ronald Reagan, it should be recalled, had been swept into office by a wave of dissatisfaction with Jimmy Carter and his failures.
At the core of the Reagan mission was the recovery of the nation's esteem and self-regard. Reagan was an optimist. He was Hollywood glamour to be sure, but he was also Peoria, Ill. His faith in the country was boundless, and when he said it was "morning in America" he meant it; he believed in America's miracle and had seen it in his own life, in his rise from a child of the Depression to the summit of political power.

 
The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan's view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path.

Thus the moment of crisis would become an opportunity to push through a political economy of redistribution and a foreign policy of American penance. The independent voters were the first to break ranks. They hadn't underwritten this fundamental change in the American polity when they cast their votes for Mr. Obama.

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place.
In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them.

 
The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

 
Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation's recovery of its self-confidence.

Mr. Ajami teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is also an adjunct fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

3.
 
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336004183229504
 
No Going Back On New Style Of Capitalism?
GEORGE F. WILL

 

As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs in sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia's liberalization.

The doctrine was supposed to guarantee history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed. We are already testing whether President Obama and other statists who have given his administration and this Congress their ideological cast have a doctrine analogous to Brezhnev's.

Having aggressively, even promiscuously, blurred the distinction between public and private sectors with improvised and largely unauthorized interventions in the economy, will they countenance a retreat of the state?

Or do they have an aspiration that they dare not speak?

Do they hope state capitalism will be irreversible — that wherever government has asserted the primacy of politics, the primacy will be permanent? They say not, but they say many things they probably do not believe.

(That a government-run "public option" health insurance would not extinguish or even harm private insurance; that cap-and-trade carbon regulations will raise energy costs without injuring the economy; that taxing Peter to subsidize Paul's purchase of a new car isa sound basis for economic growth; that an 85% unspent stimulus has routed the recession, etc.)

Two legislative proposals are revealing the administration's real intentions regarding government ownership of companies.

The Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act drafted by Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, would have required the Treasury Department to distribute to individual taxpayers — evenly, to the approximately 120 million who filed 2008 returns — all the stock the government holds in General Motors (61%) and Chrysler (8%).

The legislation also would have prohibited using any more TARP funds for GM or Chrysler. And the legislation would have prevented government from influencing corporate decisions for social, energy or environmental policy purposes. Last month the Senate rejected this legislation 59-38. Only one Democrat voted for it.

There remains, however, the TARP Recipient Ownership Trust Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Corker, another Tennessee Republican, and Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. It says that when the government owns more than 20% of a company (today, AIG, Citigroup and GM), that stake will be controlled by an independent trust administered by three unpaid trustees appointed by the president. The trust would have two primary responsibilities.

One would be to guarantee that the companies are run not as political pawns but as profit-making entities seeking to maximize shareholder value. As Alexander notes, "there are at least 60 congressional committees and subcommittees authorized to hold hearings on auto companies and most of them will, probably many times."

Another responsibility would be to divest the government's ownership stake by Dec. 24, 2011, thereby giving friends of private enterprise a merry Christmas. That, however, would be a lump of coal in the stockings of many giddy people in today's Washington.

Even more than the New Deal and the Great Society, Obama's agenda expresses the mentality of a class that was nascent in the 1930s but burgeoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The spirit of that class is described in Saul Bellow's 1975 novel "Humboldt's Gift." In it Bellow wrote that the modern age began when a particular class of people decided, excitedly, that life had "lost the ability to arrange itself":

"It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. . . . This arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project. A man like Humboldt, inspired, shrewd, nutty, was brimming over with the discovery that the human enterprise, so grand and infinitely varied, had now to be managed by exceptional persons. He was an exceptional person, therefore he was an eligible candidate for power."

So, shrewd and nutty people such as Rep. Barney Frank are brimful of excitement about arranging American life. What will stop them?

The president accurately says Americans are "reluctant shareholders" of GM, AIG and Citigroup. But is he?

If the Corker-Warner legislation is defeated, as Alexander's bill was, on an essentially party-line vote, this will be redundant proof that Obama's professed reluctance is fictitious.

If it is, then what is real is what the Democratic left desires, an Obama Doctrine that says the trumpet of state capitalism — capital increasingly controlled from Capitol Hill and the Treasury Department — will never sound retreat.

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

Wednesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Cong. Peter King (R-Ny) on Holder: 'You wonder which side they’re on'

A "furious" Rep. Peter King, the hawkish, maverick Long Island Republican, blasted a "disgraceful" Eric Holder for opening an investigation of CIA interrogators and chided his own party for what he described as a weak response to the move in an interview just now with POLITICO.

"It’s bulls***. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on," he said of the attorney general's move, which he described as a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."

King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee's family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0809/King_on_Holder_You_wonder_which_side_theyre_on.html

Teddy Kennedy – Dead at 77

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, a towering figure in the Democratic Party who took the helm of one of America's most fabled political families after two older brothers were assassinated, died at age 77, his family said.

Kennedy had brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

He was one of the most influential and longest-serving senators in U.S. history, a liberal standard-bearer who recovered politically from a string of personal scandals to become known as a consummate congressional dealmaker.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090826/us_nm/us_kennedy

A Major Democratic Fundraiser Charged in Citigroup Fraud

The U.S. attorney in New York on Tuesday charged a New York investor and major Democratic fund-raiser with a $74 million scheme to defraud Citigroup.

Hassan Nemazee, 59, was charged with one count of bank fraud, and faces up to 30 years in prison plus a fine. His lawyer Marc Mukasey, a former federal prosecutor, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Nemazee was a national finance chair of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and a supporter of John Kerry's run for the White House in 2004.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32554816

Opinion:
Obama’s Department of Justice and its threat to normal Americans.

The Obama Justice Department has already done things to cause normal Americans reason for unease and deep concern.

Of course, Eric Holder is infamous for his racial slander of Americans with his comments about our being “a nation of cowards” regarding discussions of race.  The observation itself, of course, served to reveal a deep seated bigotry on the part of Holder himself.  He has done nothing since then to mitigate that fact.

Among the more notorious transgressions of the Holder DOJ, involved the failure to prosecute the “New Black Panthers” who threatened non-Obama voters at a Philadelphia polling place with violence.  They were terrorizing people who only sought to exercise their most basic democratic right.

Professionals in the DOJ, of course, were prepared to move ahead with prosecutions – as most certainly should have happened.  Not on Holder’s watch!

Instead, political appointees in Justice moved in and let the thugs walk.

This incredible move gave a wink and a nod to all thugs who support Democrat candidates.  They now  have an implied “get our of jail free” card.  We are seeing a replication of this thuggery in violence against people who oppose Obama’s radical health care plan by members of the SEIU union and ACORN.

The old KKK was formed by a former Confederate General – Nathan Bedford Forrest – as a device to discourage voting by newly freed Black.  The KKK “knights” would arrive at polling places in their white robes and hoods, with the hoofs of their mounts padded.  They would somberly walk past the polling places and would be Black voters – Republicans --  would head home.

Holder has replaced General Forest.

Currently, we are witnessing the political hanky panky of Holder and Obama on the issue of prosecuting CIA employees they claim tortured captured terrorists.  Obama is playing the part of someone who opposes the prosecution, while Holder pushes forward and takes the heat.

Of course the charade is political cynicism and hypocrisy of the highest order.  Obama, in effect, is lying to us again.  If he was really opposed to the prosecution, a telephone call to Holder is all that would be required. In fact, a simple text message would handle it.

You wont see it.  The CIA prosecution is a 100% political scam with a single intent of making loyal Americans pay a price for their patriotism. There is no legitimacy involved in the effort at all.

The prime obligation of any nation is protecting the lives of its people.

Liberals don’t embrace that fact and give short shrift to efforts to protect us from Islamic terror.  They oppose our tapping the phone calls of terrorists and our interrogating those we capture.

During the post 9/11 years, America remained safe, thanks to the Bush administration and despite all that liberals – especially extremist groups such as the ACLU – could do in opposition.

Holder now heads that sort of effort.  He invites disaster from both our enemies without and our enemies within.  ACORN, SEIU, and other groups of liberal thugs will continue unabated in their efforts to use force and even occasional violence in support of the Democrat health scheme.

Opposing this effort will not be easy for any of us, but we must continue and eventually prevail.  We currently enjoy a needed momentum – we must not allow that momentum to falter.

However, keep in mind, that under Eric Holder, the DOJ is not an agency on whom we can depend.

Buddy

The day’s top blog:

1.

A quick look at a real town hall meeting and its response to the issue of “single payer” health care.

Google Web Alert for: "spencer bachus"
Townhall Downfall Rep Spencer BachusRAL Applauded for his Anti ...
Townhall Downfall Rep Spencer BachusRAL Applauded for his AntiSingle Payer Stance.

As Cong. Bachus’ Democrat opposite number, Barney Frank, has admitted, “public option” health care is a gateway to “single payer” care – a form of Canada’s socialized medicine.

2.

Why unions are “Astroturfing” health-care town halls
Ed Morrissey

After enraged constituents started showing up at Congressional town-hall forums to oppose ObamaCare, the unions acted quickly to counterdemonstrate on behalf of the Democratic agenda item.  In at least one case, union representatives used violence to intimidate and harrass ObamaCare opponents.  The same union, which represents a large percentage of government workers and would be presumably immune from any health-care reform action, issued memos demanding volunteers to “drown out” opposition to ObamaCare. But why?

(NOTE: Brace yourself.  Union members – especially the giant SEIU --  and members of other liberal groups such as Obama’s own infamous ACORN, are taking to the road and plan to instigate hundreds of “town hall” events implying there is far more support for Obama’s health care plan than there actually is.)

This report from the Detroit Free Press explains that the unions have a good reason — actually, ten billion good reasons:

Antilabor forces say it’s welfare for the UAW and Democrats’ union allies. Labor supporters say it falls short of what’s needed as tens of thousands of union members are pushed into early retirement as employers cut back health care coverage.

They’re both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64. …

Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee called it “a shameless case of political payback,” saying Democrats and President Barack Obama are trying “to force the rest of us to pay billions to cover those unions’ health care.”

The money will be yet another bailout of Detroit, although the Obama administration and the Democrats have it flying under the radar, buried in HR3200:

Thanks to Detroit’s twin auto bankruptcies and other concessions, the UAW’s voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, had to take stock of unknown value for $24 billion in claims, while adding thousands of early retirees to its rolls.

Outside experts estimate the funds have about 30 cents in cash for every dollar of future claims, with no guarantee of what its stock assets will be worth. Lance Wallach, a New York-based VEBA expert, says if the funds “don’t get something, they’re out of business in 12 years.” …

Key provisions in House and Senate proposals set aside $10 billion to pay some claims for early retirees covered by employers and VEBAs, before other cost-saving measures kick in. Critics call it a union giveaway, but the union says the money would keep companies from further slashing coverage.

That’s explicitly a bailout.  It comes on the heels of tens of billions of dollars committed to GM and Chrysler, as well as politically-motivated bankruptcies that violated the rights of senior creditors in favor of the unions.  The unions have overcommitted and underresourced their health plans, and now Congress wants to surreptitiously bail them out from bankruptcy — all while making them more or less immune from the restrictions in the rest of the bill.

That $10,000,000,000 bailout certainly gives the unions a big incentive to crack heads and intimidate people into retreat on ObamaCare, doesn’t it?  That’s the granddaddy of all Astroturfing efforts.

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obamas_nazi_straw_man_an_old_a.html

Obama's Nazi Straw man: An Old Alinsky Trick
Kyle-Anne Shiver

When I saw this video interview of Bill Burton, White House Deputy Press Secretary, I could not help but be reminded of one of old Saul Alinsky's favorite fake-em-out tricks of the revolutionary trade.  Burton is reinforcing Pelosi's earlier claim that people were carrying Swastikas at townhalls, but goes even further and claims that folks are actually "dressing up like Hitler."
 
Saul Alinsky, crusader for the downtrodden, darling of the Auxiliary Archbishop of Chicago, was just an underachieving nobody with neither guts nor moral code, who flummoxed a whole lot of willing-to-be-deceived power seekers.  Saul Alinsky didn't invent a single new thing.  His whole methodology, so widely-hailed by whole generations of leftists, could have been devised by any 12 year-old gang-style bully with half a brain and an ounce of charisma.
 
It's quite disheartening, now, to see the top echelons of the Democratic Party using Alinsky tactics in an attempt to freeze political dialogue, most especially when that dialogue is about the most intimate service we Americans procure for ourselves and our families:  our medical care.
 
Nevertheless, they've decided to go at this whole hog, even if it means stripping off their dignity and parading their political bloomers right out in the public square.
 
When Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and now the president's own deputy press secretary conjure up images of Nazis at healthcare townhalls, they are engaging in one of the oldest tricks in anyone's book, but an especial favorite of their mentor, Saul Alinsky.
 
Alinsky himself employed this method, quite deviously.  Alinsky biographer, Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this same diabolical tactic to deceive the people.  From Horwitt's Let Them Call Me Rebel:
 
"...in the spring of 1972, at Tulane University...students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations - a speech likely to include a defense of the Nixon administration's Vietnam War policies.  The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush's address.  That's the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative - and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school.  He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.'  And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results."
 
Planting major falsehoods has been a favorite Alinsky strategy from the start.  His acolyte, Barack Obama, learned his Industrial Areas Foundation lessons on deceiving for power while on a side trip during his Harvard years, then taught the Alinsky power tactics at the University of Chicago. 
 
Hardly qualifies as ‘Constitutional Law' if you ask me.
 
Covering for oneself by accusing the other fellow has been the left's most successful deception for decades now.  It took on its best traction lately, as leftists within Moveon.org and others have used this Nazi smear tactic for the past eight years against George W. Bush.  They've seen how well it's worked and just can't stop themselves now. 
 
Here's a little hint from me on the Nazi card.  If a few folks actually do start showing up at townhalls, opposing the MediCoup*, even dressed like Hitler and carrying a Swastika poster, I'll lay good hard cash on a bet that they've been sent by this Alinskyite President or his minions to deceive, just as Saul did with getting students to dress like the KKK at that rally back in the 70s. 
 
And any newsman worth an ounce of table salt ought to be able to pin the tail right on that Alinsky donkey.
 
*MediCoup is a term coined by writer, James Lewis, right here on American Thinker.
 
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and a newly syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate.  She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com. 
 

 

Tuesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Glenn Beck goes after Color of Change co-founder Van Jones – now an Obama adviser.

 

Glenn Beck has used his Fox News show to attack the background of Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor who co-founded a radical African American political advocacy group that has organized an advertising boycott of his program.

Beck suggests Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical. Jones now serves as a special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

During a six-minute biographical profile, Beck said Jones was twice arrested for political protests and has described himself as a "rowdy black nationalist." The talk show host cast the piece as part of a broader examination of Obama's "czars," special advisers to the president who "don't answer to anybody."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/glenn-beck-ignores-ad-boycott.html

Drudge Report poll: “Can Obama’s Presidency be saved?”

90% of the respondents (total of 2,034) say it cannot.  Only 8% say it can be saved.  Only 2% were not sure.

Of course such a poll has no statistical validity at all – it only reflects the sentiments of those who read the Drudge Report, and are moved to take part in the poll. 

Two things are significant, however: the belief Obama is heading for total defeat is incredibly huge.  AS significant is the very small number who are not sure.  This reflects a monumental amount of sentiment that Obama’s administration is doomed – and a very small number (8%) doubt that outcome.

http://www.drudgereport.com/

New deficit projections could slow Obama's agenda

The White House and U.S. Congress will issue separate budget estimates on Tuesday that could slow President Barack Obama's domestic policy proposals as he faces increased skepticism among lawmakers.

The reports by the White House budget office and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office are expected to show the government will spend a record $1.6 trillion more than it collects this year and nearly double its outstanding debt over the next 10 years.

The grim fiscal picture could provide further fodder to opponents of Obama's nearly $1 trillion healthcare overhaul, including fiscally conservative members of his own Democratic party, who say the nation must get its existing healthcare and retirement programs under control before extending them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE57M0WV20090825

Opinion:
The price of an arrogance of power

90% of the more than 25,000 people moved to participate in the Drudge Report on line survey say they don’t believe Obama’s administration can be saved.  Only a miniscule 2% were uncertain.

While the Drudge poll has no statistical value, it is very bad news for the current White House any way.  It reveals a serious fracture in public perception at a time in which Obama is embroiled in a bitter confrontation that is a key issue.  He not only wants to pass health care reform, he absolutely MUST pass it.

Passage of Obama’s health care scheme may have become impossible.

Obama’s problems go back to the very start of his campaign.

He had been carefully selected, groomed, and cleverly inserted into Illinois politics.  He was handed a State Senate seat in a campaign most notable for having been launched in the home of domestic terrorist William Ayers

Obama was accorded star standing, and handed a seat in the US Senate.  He tarried only briefly in the Senate, beginning almost at once to run for president.

His early momentum came frp, his opposition – Hillary Clinton – at the time, the most hated woman in American politics.  Being a black candidate for president added to his momentum – the novelty of the idea attracted many.

Team Obama won the election then swept into Washington last January still thinking the vote count of November was still in play.  The experience was heady – far more than usual -- it was a takeover of our government by an ideology…an extreme philosophy of the left.

Team Obama and the extreme left wing were understandably exuberant.  They finally had access to the levers of power and could use those levers to change America.

Oozing with confidence and afloat on a sea of over-stated optimism suggesting they could do damn well anything they wished.  They were free of worry about the media – mainline journalism had willingly signed on as participating elements of the Obama campaign long ago.  Media mavens endorsed, embraced, and supported whatever the Obama team decided to do.

For liberals, it was a giddy time.  The more extreme the liberalism, the giddier the moment.

Suddenly, the sheet was ripped asunder – a scream for return to normalcy.

April 15 as millions stood in protest to taxes, bailouts, and Obama proposals in general.  The Obama media downplayed the rallies, and, when they could not ignore them, vastly understated the size of the multitudes.

Then Congress came home and the protests grew louder.  Democrats missed the signs and disputed the polliing. They claimed the town hall meeting crowds were contrived protests.

Not only were Democrats wrong about the protests, the failed completely to comprehend the pent up anger and frustration.  They crammed “stimulus” legislation through Congress by denying Republicans any opportunity to read the bill.  Democrats narrowly passed their Cap and Trade tax scheme, and dropped 300 pages in the hopper mere hours before demanding a vote.

Democrats needed to pass their health care plan before Congress had time to come home and feel the heat from their people.  Democrats failed.  That failure may have also doomed their health care plan…and destroyed the prospects of the Obama administratioin.

The anger of the town hall protests is not limited to opposition to the health care plot. Health care – because of obvious extremism – is simply a convenient focus point.

Thus we see an Obama administration in an extreme position.

90% believing his administration cannot be saved is not statistically viable, but it shows a chasm of doubt Team Obama may find difficult to span.  It will be seen by many as a measurement of vulnerability.

Thus the hyenas gather, and there are condors circling in the sky.

The first law of politics is in play – “truth is what the people believe” --  many now believe Obama has failed.

Grass root voices and pressures clearly have not.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/arrogance.html

Arrogance
Gene Schwimmer

"The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood -- and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same actions." 
 - Thomas Sowell

"The minute the president signs a health care reform bill, his approval will go up. Secondly, within a year, when all those bad things they say will happen don't happen, and all the good things happen, approval will explode." 
 - Bill Clinton

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
 - Bible (King James version)

"We have the right and the ability to ram our health care ‘reform' down your throats and after we do, you'll thank us for it."  That's what Thomas Sowell and Bill Clinton, both, are saying, except that Clinton actually believes it.  So, apparently, do a large portion of his party.  Others, including the president, don't care whether we thank them or not.  And I would go a step farther to question whether they even care if they have the right, as long as they have the power.

(NOTE: Clinton makes no bones about it – he believes if Obama can get his health care bill passed, once it passes, the controversy ends.  Clinton reveals he embraces the arrogance of liberals and shares their being oblivious to the realities of the anger and fury of real America.)

Which brings us to the third quote.  Is there any trait that defines your average "contemporary liberal" more than haughtiness of spirit -- or to put in common parlance, arrogance?  Here's what the president told the employees of Monaco RV, Indiana (unemployment rate:  10.6%), earlier this month (emphasis mine):

"I promise you, we will pass reform by the end of this year because the American people need it."

So says the president and never mind whether the American people want it.  Indeed a majority of the public, in one recent poll, said that if the choice is between the Democrats' plan and no plan at all, they'll take option B.  As would I.

But what's the clearly stated preference of the majority of Americans to Barack Obama? Or Nancy Pelosi?  Or Harry Reid?  They and their congressional fellows know what you need and that's good enough for them.  Who cares what the American people want?  Why think when we've got the collective wisdom of Barney Frank and Maxine Waters to do our thinking for us?  And if congressional committee chairmen see no reason even to read the legislation they're voting for, why should we?  I mean, we're talking 1,000 pages, here, more pages, even, than Harry Potter.

On the other hand, more pages means more room for Harry Potter-esque magic -- the kind our intellectual superiors in Congress will need to make a $1 trillion plan save money after the CBO specifically said that it won't.  But then, you're nobody while they're congressmen.  You need to budget.  They don't.  They don't need no stinkin' CBO estimate.

And we don't need their stinkin' health care "reform."  What we do need is tort reform, and the ability to buy health care insurance across state lines.  Which is precisely what the Republicans are proposing.  But the Democrats are not listening.  Nor, apparently, do they plan to soon.

Not, that is, unless We, the People -- we, the very foolish people who elected these jokers -- make them listen.  And toss out the ones who refuse to listen.

Pride doth indeed goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.  The Democrats' arrogance has brought them to the precipice.  All they need is a push, which it is incumbent upon us to supply.  And remember:  The word, fall, has more than one meaning.  For me, it means the fall of 2010, when I suspect a lot of Democrats will find out just how true a biblical quote can be.

2.

Governing as a community organizer: Heidelbaugh
Heather Heidelbaugh: Obama is governing as a community organizer

Heather Heidelbaugh
OpEd Contributor

President Barack Obama was a community organizer with “Project Vote”, an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), before entering public service. What effect has his prior association with ACORN had on his methodology of governing as president?
The recent effort by the White House to keep track of all of the rumors about the healthcare reform bill must lead all but the most ardent Obama supporters to acknowledge one thing: The White House has implemented the radical tactics the president learned in the streets of Chicago, organizing for ACORN.

(NOTE: Obama’s own ACORN represents a major threat to American politics.  It has already been proven willing to engage in fraudulent voter registration.  Now Obama wants to hand his old organization a role in gathering census data – a position from which political basics can be easily distorted, corrupted and controlled.)

In a book written in 1986 and long ago forgotten, titled "Organizing the Movement," author Gary Delgado a 14-year ACORN organizer, trainer, and recruiter explicitly and unapologetically outlines the guerilla response of ACORN when confronted by opposition. His book is the diary of an insider revealing the early history of ACORN through its first years.

Delgado describes the history of how ACORN started as a welfare rights organization in Arkansas and then began to expand into other areas of interest or "campaigns." He writes:

"Organizing campaigns implement what organizers call the three I's: Identify the enemy, isolate him, and ice him ... ACORN's approach to political parties, completely IN LINE WITH ITS APPROACH TO OTHER TARGETS, was to create or uncover policy handles, then identify the enemy, isolate him, and ice him ... Besides mobilizing more than 10,000 people in the primaries [1980], ACORN mobilized an equal number to picket, demonstrate, disrupt, and generally raise hell."

The American people have begun in record numbers to protest the big government push behind health care reform. In guerilla response, Obama and his cronies have reverted to classic ACORN protocols: Identify the enemy, isolate him, and ice him.

First, "identify the enemy." The White House Office of Health Care Reform developed the email address flag@whitehouse.gov wherein your neighbor can report you to the government.

Second, "isolate him" appears to be the handmaiden of Nancy Pelosi and the other Congressional leaders when they refer to their neighbors, constituents, and fellow citizens as mobsters, planted insurance company employees, and manufactured protestors.

And lastly, the third prong, "ice him," was the special gift that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) thugs bestowed on the head and body of Ken Gladney, an African American from St. Louis who had the temerity to sell 'Don't Tread on Me' flags at a town hall meeting.

After ACORN succeeds in executing the three I's, it starts in motion its signature moves: Pickets, demonstrations, disruptions, and general hell raising. And just like ACORN, the President through his senior advisor David Axelrod and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina said to Democrat senators in regard to the opponents at town hall meetings on health care: "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard." SEIU and ACORN thugs started to show up at town hall meetings.

A nut, or ACORN acolyte in this case, doesn't fall far from the tree. Obama learned the essentials of community organizing, ACORN/Chicago style, and it is imbued into his soul.

Despite the smooth talk and charisma, Obama adopted the beliefs and tactics of the organization he helped grow into a mighty tree. You want to understand the real Obama? Understand ACORN.

3.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8398902

Obama White House v. CIA; Panetta Threatened to Quit
Tensions Lead to CIA Director's "Screaming Match" at the White House
MATTHEW COLE, RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS

 

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.

Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.

"You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.

Since 9/11, the CIA has had five directors or acting directors.

A White House spokesperson, Denis McDonough, said reports that Panetta had threatened to quit and that the White House was seeking a replacement were "inaccurate."

According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of allegations that CIA officers broke the law in carrying out certain interrogation techniques that President Obama has termed "torture."

A CIA spokesman quoted Panetta as saying "it is absolutely untrue" that he has any plans to leave the CIA. As to the reported White House tirade, the spokesman said Panetta is known to use "salty language." CIA spokesman George Little said the report was "wrong, inaccurate, bogus and false."

Investigation by CIA Inspector General

Another source of contention for Panetta was today's public release of an investigation by the CIA inspector general on the first two years of the agency's interrogation and detention program. The report has been delayed by an internal administration debate over how much of the report should be kept secret.

One CIA official said colleagues involved in the interrogation program were preparing for a far-reaching criminal investigation.

In addition to concerns about the CIA's reputation and its legal exposure, other White House insiders say Panetta has been frustrated by what he perceives to be less of a role than he was promised in the administration's intelligence structure. Panetta has reportedly chafed at reporting through the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, according to the senior adviser who said Blair is equally unhappy with Panetta.

"Leon will be leaving," predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with Blair. The former official said Panetta is also "uncomfortable" with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job.

Other Candidates for the Job

The New York Times reported Thursday that the CIA had planned to use the private security contractor Blackwater to carry out assassinations of al Qaeda leaders.

Six other current and former senior intelligence officials said they too had been briefed about Panetta's frustrations in the job, including dealing with his former Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives.

One of the officials said the White House had begun informal discussions with candidates who were runners-up to Panetta in the CIA director selection process last year.

One of the candidates reportedly has begun a series of preparatory briefings.

"It would be a shame if such as talented a Washington hand as Panetta were to leave after one year," said Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant who worked on the national security team for the Clinton and Bush administrations and served as an adviser to President-elect Obama.

"It takes that long for any senior bureaucrat to begin to understand what needs to get done and how to do it, "said Clarke. "The CIA needs some stability."

Monday Web

The day’s top political news:

Obama as frantic to hide vacation activities as he is to hide details of his early life

The Obama White House has gone to extreme lengths to accommodate the press corps traveling with the president but the real message to those hoping to cover the president’s vacation is we wish you wouldn’t.

Unlike recent presidents, Obama has two young children, and the first couple is adamant that the girls be left alone. That means no approaching, cameras in tow, when Sasha and Malia are trying to get ice cream, or perhaps ride on the island’s famed carousel.

Hmm Obama wants to avoid the sort of coverage of his daughters that was used against the daughters of George Bush.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/08/24/president_urges_media_shutterbugs_to_respect_daughters_privacy/

The stimulus package is living up to its provocative name by funding a bacchanalia of behavioral sex research, a NY Post analysis reveals.

The next fiscal year is set to be one of the friskiest ever in the nation's science labs, as researchers probe the ins and outs of sex patterns among humans and even some of our four-legged friends.

Among the most titillating grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health are studies that would:

* Examine "barriers to correct condom use" at Indiana University, at a cost of $221,000.
* Study "hookups" among adolescents at Syracuse University. Study's cost: $219,000.
* Evaluate "drug use as a sex enhancer" in an analysis of "high-risk community sex networks" at the University of Illinois, Chicago. That study will cost $123,000.
* Study how methamphetamine, thought to produce an "insatiable need" for sex among users, "enhances the motivation for female rat sexual behavior." Some $28,000 has been awarded for the University of Maryland at Baltimore study.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08242009/news/nationalnews/sex_study_stimulus_186153.htm

Report: Arizona Rep. considering birther lawsuit

Taking the birther thing to a new level, archconservative Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) is considering filing a lawsuit to put President Obama on the spot over his birth documents, according to Mohave Daily News readout of a Franks town hall over the weekend.

Another issue deals with numerous speakers questioning Obama's birth certificate and why there wasn't an investigation into whether he is a naturalized citizen. One woman said a newspaper announcement of his birth in Hawaii was not sufficient. Another asked how he could have a passport without a birth certificate.

Franks said there was not enough evidence that Obama is not an American citizen. He did say there was a lot of conflicting evidence of Obama's citizenship and that he was considering filing a lawsuit, the only congressman to do so. Franks asked why the president did not simply produce a birth certificate.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0809/Report_Arizona_Rep_considering_birther_lawsuit.html

Opinion:
“Horatius at the Bridge” – a story of grass root America.  Part 2

Legend has it that a single hero, Horatius Cocles, saved early Rome by holding a key bridge against Etruscan enemies.  Horatius became applauded in poems and ballads.  He stands as an example of what a single man (and two stalwart allies) can do to fend off the threat of masses of enemies.

The symbolism can be applied to grass root America today as it faces a threat of overwhelming numbers on Capitol Hill.  Democrats dominate both houses and, if they choose, can cram any measure, no matter how extreme, down the throats of all Americans.

In fact, that’s precisely what liberals such as New York Democrat Charles (never get between Charlie and a TV camera) Schumer.  He is not alone in openly promoting the idea that Democrats use their dominating numbers to pass their liberal health care “reform” despite opposition from Republicans and the American people. 

At the moment, there seems momentum for Democrats imposing THEIR version of health care reform, including its “public option” provision which would give government a role in health care – a role that will most certainly expand until government controls health care just at it controls what was once General Motors.  The Democrat scheme will also include “single payer” health care provisions which controversial Democrat Barney Frank admits will prove a gateway for Canadian style socialized medicine.

Neither provision is acceptable to a majority of real Americans, nor should they be.  Government involvement will destroy the quality health care we enjoy today.  Liberals argue about how our health care quality stacks up against the rest of the world, but no matter where it rates, one thing is as certain as the rising of the sun – government-run health care will be health care with less quality than we have now.  Government and quality are in eternal conflict.

With single payer, access will be even more restricted that any government-run operation, and rationing of care will be a given.

Check the documents being used by the VA – documents getting a lot of attention these days because they are morbid end of life discussions that are sure to at least sadden and depress the veterans who are patients.  To me more plain spoken – the VA provisions destroy liberal objections to predictions Obama’s health care program will include “death panels” or “death squads”.  Senior citizens being required to “present themselves” for examination every five years for examinations to determine if they meet guidelines demanding substituting care for pain relief – and other provisions for restricting care.

Understand this point: Democrats have the power on Capitol Hill to cram such legislation down our throats and impose such cruel programs void of compassion, reason, and integrity on our country.

Those who are not yet senior citizens, come closer to being elderly every day that passes.  These assaults on our old people will ultimately be assaults on us all. 

Only public pressure can protect America from Democrat extremism.

We must remain vigilant and committed to action.

Of course you have heard me say that before.  Count on hearing me say that again.  Keep it ever in your mind.  The Democrat threat is real…

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/08/24/obamas-plan-to-desecrate-911

Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11

Matthew Vadum

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

(NOTE: Liberal Democrats don’t view reactions to 9/11 as most Americans do.  Nor do Democrats see the same enemies most Americans see.  They pay obeisance to the Al Gore myth of man made global warming – despite scientific evidence to the contrary.  9/11 must be celebrated for what it is – an anniversary of an unwarranted attack and declaration of war by radical Islam on all civilization.  Opposing that enemy is crucial – we cannot allow it to be sacrificed to the eternal Democrat strategy of cut, run, and surrender.  Nor can we allow the date to be hi-jacked by Al Gore’s minions.)

The administration's plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.

Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the "Democracy Now" radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. "I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die," he said.

On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning," and "productive," said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."

A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.

Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.

With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.

"The organizing term is to 'go dark.' You don't tell the press, don't tell people you think will tell the press," said the source.

Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don't see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.

"When you criticize them, they are prepared to say, 'Did you want 9/11 to be another day of selling mattresses, like Presidents Day?" the source said. "They are truly trying to change the American mindset."

They view Sept. 11 as a "Republican" day because it focuses the public on supposedly "Republican" issues like patriotism, national security, and terrorism. According to liberals, 9/11 was long ago hijacked by Republicans and their enablers and unfairly used to bludgeon helpless Democrats at election time.

MSNBC's foremost left-wing bloviator, Keith Olbermann, summed up this ugly perspective the week after the Republican Party convention last year:

But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without -- literally -- any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.

On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration's plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity "for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America."

On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be "the first milestone" of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.

"From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations," Yearwood said.

At no time does anyone explain why this National Day of Service has to be held -- of all the 365 days in a year -- on Sept. 11.

Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.

 2.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTVlMjkwZmNlNDNhZGYxMDFjMDkyZDRiNDY1ZmQzZWI=

Why the Stimulus Flopped
Under Obama, nothing is certain but death panels and taxes.

Mark Steyn

The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several “stimulus” projects — every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK” with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a “PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT.” There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned, scarified pavement, followed by an “END OF ROAD WORKS” sign, until the next “stimulus” project a couple of bends down a quiet rural blacktop.

I don’t know why one of the least fiscally debauched states in the Union needs funds from “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” to repair random stretches of highway, especially stretches that were perfectly fine until someone came along to dig them up in order to access “stimulus” funding. I would have asked one of those men with a shovel, as depicted on the sign, but there were none to be found. Usually in New Hampshire, they dig up the road, and re-grade or repave it, while the flagmen stand guard until it’s all done. But here a certain federal torpor seemed to hang in the eerie silence.

Still, what do I know? Evidently, it’s stimulated the sign-making industry, putting America back to work by putting up “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK” signs every 200 yards across the land. And at 300 bucks a pop, the signage alone should be enough to launch an era of unparalleled prosperity, assuming America’s gilded sign magnates don’t spend their newfound wealth on Bahamian vacations and European imports. Perhaps if the president were to have his All-Seeing O logo lovingly hand-painted onto each sign, it would stimulate the economy even more, if only when they were taken down and auctioned on eBay.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

Actually, when I say “to less effect,” that’s not strictly true: Thanks to Obama, one of the least indebted developed nations is now one of the most indebted — and getting ever more so. We’ve become the third most debt-ridden country after Japan and Italy. According to last month’s IMF report, general government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 63 percent in 2007 to 88.8 percent this year and to 99.8 percent of GDP next year.

Of course, the president retains his formidable political skills, artfully distracting attention from his stimulus debacle with his health-care debacle. But there are diminishing returns to his serial thousand-page trillion-dollar boondoggles. They may be too long for your representatives to bother reading before passing into law, but, whatever the intricacies of Section 417(a) xii on page 938, people are beginning to spot what all this stuff has in common: He’s spending your future. And by “future” I don’t mean 2070, 2060, 2040, but the day after tomorrow. Democrats can talk about only raising taxes on “the rich,” but more and more Americans are beginning to figure out what percentage of them will wind up in “the richest 5 percent” before this binge is over. According to Gallup, nearly 70 percent of Americans now expect higher taxes under Obama.

(NOTE:  Obama has already shown his disdain for his campaign pledges.  More than once, Obama has committed himself to making certain no American making less than $250,000 a year will see a dime in increased taxes.  Yet Obama hardly blinked at supporting the “Cap and Trade” scam which is nothing more than a major tax – as much as $3,000 a year – on ALL Americans, no matter their middle class income level.  Where I come from, a man who’ll lie to you about one thing, will lie to you about everything.  Obama has lied to us all.)

But the silver-tongued salesman sails on. Why be scared of a government health program? After all, says the president, “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” and if “we’re able to get something right like Medicare,” we should have more “confidence” about being able to do it for everyone.

On the other hand, says the president, Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money.”

By the way, unlike your run-of-the-mill politician’s contradictory statements, these weren’t made a year or even a week apart, but during the same presidential speech in Portsmouth, N.H. At any rate, in order to “control costs” Obama says we need to introduce a new trillion-dollar government entitlement. It’s a good thing he’s the smartest president of all time and the greatest orator since Socrates because otherwise one might easily confuse him with some birdbrained Bush type. But, if we take him at his word, then a trillion-dollar public expenditure that “controls costs” presumably means he’s planning on reducing private health expenditure — such as, say, your insurance plan — by at least a trillion. Or he’ll be raising a trillion dollars’ worth of revenue. Either way, under Obama nothing is certain but death panels and taxes — i.e., a vast enervating statism, and the confiscation of the fruits of your labors required to pay for it.

That’s why the “stimulus” flopped. It didn’t just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats’ political priorities overrode everything else. If you’re a business owner, why take on extra employees when cap’n’trade is promising increased regulatory costs and health “reform” wants to stick you with an 8 percent tax for not having a company insurance plan? Obama’s leviathan sends a consistent message to business and consumers alike: When he’s spending this crazy, maybe the smart thing for you to do is hunker down until the dust’s settled and you get a better sense of just how broke he’s going to make you. For this level of “community organization,” there aren’t enough of “the rich” to pay for it. That leaves you.

For Obama, government health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture in which all elections and most public discourse will be conducted on Democratic terms. It’s no surprise that the president can’t make a coherent economic or medical argument for Obamacare, because that’s not what it’s about — and for all his cool, he can’t quite disguise that. Apropos a new poll, the Associated Press reports that Americans “are losing faith in Barack Obama.”

“Losing faith”? Oh, no! Fall on your knees and beseech the One: “Give me a sign, O Lord!”

But he has. They’re all along empty highways across rural New Hampshire: “This Massive Expansion of Wasteful Statism Brought to You by Obama Marketing, Inc.”

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
 
3.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_595889.html

Fired ACORN affiliate staffer links donor list to Obama

Brad Bumsted

HARRISBURG -- A fired staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified Wednesday the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts.

Anita Moncrief, a former Washington staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of the community activist group ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign.

Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.

Moncrief testified for more than two hours in a Commonwealth Court hearing on a lawsuit brought by the state Republican Party, alleging voter fraud by ACORN in Philadelphia, Allegheny, Delaware and Dauphin counties.

The action mirrors efforts by GOP presidential nominee John McCain and national Republicans to discredit ACORN and attempt to tie Obama to the group.

(NOTE: Interdicting the operations of Obama’s own ACORN conspiracy, is crucial to our political future.  Already identified in more than a dozen states of having engaged in huge amounts of fraudulent voter registration, ACORN is also providing its share of thugs (along with the SEIU union) to efforts to intimidate participants in town hall meetings by Americans opposed to the Obama health care reform schemes.  Democrats are said to be scheming to turn over major amounts of census data collection to ACORN – a move that would open wide many doors to vote corruption and election theft.)

The state lawsuit against ACORN, its affiliates and Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes asks the court for a preliminary injunction. GOP lawyers want the court to force ACORN to make its voter database available and to require voter education efforts. They want the Department of State to make its voter registration database more readily available to counties, something a Department of State lawyer said Pennsylvania does.

The Obama campaign said it wasn't involved in ACORN registration drives.

"Our campaign has not coordinated with ACORN whatsoever on any voter registration activities," said Obama spokesman Sean Smith.

The McCain campaign later in a statement used Moncrief's testimony to criticize Obama. Her statement "proves Barack Obama is guilty of lying to the American people about his relationship with ACORN," the campaign said.

An Obama campaign spokeswoman last week said the campaign has "no ties" to ACORN.

Project Vote national spokesman Michael McDunnah denied the donor list came from Obama's campaign, according to The Associated Press. Donor lists for candidates are public information and can be downloaded from the Federal Election Commission's Web site. The lists include how much individuals have given.

But Heather Heidelbaugh, a Pittsburgh lawyer representing state Republicans, said the computer disk she submitted to the court as evidence did not come from FEC documents.

"It's not an FEC document. I looked at the spreadsheet," Heidelbaugh said.

ACORN officials said Moncrief is not a credible witness. "Moncrief has no idea what she's talking about," said Pennsylvania ACORN spokeswoman Ali Kronley.

Moncrief acknowledged she was fired in January from Project Vote for running up more than $3,000 in personal expenses on a credit card. She said she has paid half the money back, and "I am really sorry."

Moncrief testified that ACORN and Project Vote were virtually identical. Under cross-examination, she conceded she had no personal knowledge of how Pennsylvania ACORN workers registered voters.

Moncrief, 29, who lives in Virginia, said she took a call from an Obama campaign worker inquiring whether it was the same organization Obama worked with in the 1990s.

Moncrief said she received repeated warnings to "back off" from testifying by people she knows at ACORN.

"I thought it was powerful testimony. She took a great personal risk," said Heidelbaugh.

Carol Hemmingway of Philadelphia, another ACORN spokeswoman, said the group sets aside problematic voter registration forms and turns them over to authorities. She called the lawsuit "an attempt to suppress voters."

Hemmingway said Moncrief was not part of "senior management" at ACORN and can't speak for them.
Moncrief said she does not have a vendetta against ACORN. "I do not think it is a bad organization," she said.

Moncrief said she came forward and contacted Heidelbaugh because she believes vote canvassers were not trained and then were "thrown under the bus" -- facing possible criminal prosecution -- for fraudulent registrations. She said that workers needed to meet quotas for voter registrations and that some were fired for not meeting them.

"The (voter) cards are tied to money. The more cards you get, the more money you get," Moncrief said.

ACORN officials denied that, saying in Pennsylvania canvassers are paid by the hour. They insisted the workers are trained.

Kira Gardner-Marshall, who oversees quality control for ACORN in Philadelphia, said in 2007-08 the organization fired 220 employees for voter fraud there. There were 1,100 voter registration canvassers statewide, but none of the ACORN spokeswomen attending the hearing could say how many were in Philadelphia.

Sunday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Congressman Wally Herger (R-Pa) calls Obama plan 'threat to democracy'

A town meeting crowd of over 2,000 people loudly cheered Herger’s position that a public option was “unacceptable.”

Herger did not hold back on his opinion of the health care plan and the administration’s appointment of “czars” to head various departments and task forces.
“Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today,” Herger said to a loud standing ovation.

After denouncing the Obama plan to wild cheering, Herger offered a few solutions of his own including opening up competition among private health care companies by forcing companies to sell policies nationwide rather than just within individual states, tort reform to bring down malpractice costs and “risk pools like automobile companies” for those with preexisting conditions who Herger conceded are unable to get coverage. He also suggested “bargaining groups and associations” could help bring down costs.

http://www.mtshastanews.com/news/x769902147/Congressman-Herger-calls-Obama-plan-threat-to-democracy

White House Reveals Identity of Firm That Sent Unsolicited E-Mails on Health Reform

The White House hired a private communications company based in Minnesota to distribute mass e-mails, helping to shed light on how some recipients received e-mails in support of President Obama's health care plan without signing up for them, FOX News has learned.

The company, Govdelivery, describes itself as the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communication solutions and says its e-mail service provides a fully-automated on-demand public communication system. It is still unknown how much taxpayer money the White House provides to Govdelivery for its services.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/22/white-house-reveals-identity-firm-sent-unsolicited-e-mails-health-reform/

ObamaCare provides little to no authentic healthcare
Obama uses Liberal Christianity and Judaism to Push Marxist Agenda

With the establishment of another “if-you-hadn’t-heard-and-seen-it-you-wouldn’t-believe-it” moment, Obama broght in Christian clergy to convince the masses that ‘Jesus would want ObamaCare’. 

Where was the ACLU?  Persecuting innocent school teachers in the Florida Panhandle, that’s where. 

 Once more, liberal hypocrisy is on parade.

http://webmail.aol.com/44148/aol/en-us/Suite.aspx

Opinion:
Does the ACLU conspiracy against normal America threaten imposing atheism as a national religion?

A driving motivation for the founding of this nation is the concept of freedom of religion.  In Great Britain – from which a majority of early settlers escaped – the Church of England was the official Church and the birth of the colonial settlements followed in the wake of serious and brutal clashes between Protestants and Roman Catholics over control of the country.  No wonder a freedom from an imposed Faith was sought by the founders.

Thus our First Amendment – guaranteed freedom of the press, speech, assembly, freedom to petition our government, and freedom of religion.  The guarantee is freedom OF religion, not FROM religion.  Nothing in the First Amendment supports atheism – as the ACLU does.

Liberal Democrats demand atheism as an overriding principle be accepted as the order of the day.

In the Santa Rosa Florida school board case, the ACLU attains another record in extremism and in cruel assaults on innocent, normal, Americans.  The court ruling – to which the School Board surrendered --  reveals another fact – corruption of our judiciary by liberals.  Nothing new about judicial corruption, but the fact is worth specific note.

As aside: I admit a bit of confusion.  A case might be made the judge in the case, and the School Board members, have caved to the ACLU position with confidence an appeal will overturn the ruling and, in the end, defeat the ACLU cause.  Obtuse reasoning, but I want to be fair to the School Board – and even to the judge.  They may be innocent – just sly and conniving.  Utilizing a strategy for the people, not surrendering to extremism against the people.

The ACLU is a liberal conspiracy.  It delights in doing disgusting and outrageous things – many of them consciously designed to offend and insult normal people.  The Santa Rosa case is just such a case.

The ACLU sued the district, Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and former Superintendent John Rogers on behalf of two unnamed Pace High students.  (Who put these “students up to suing?” – a form of child abuse?)

Rodgers’ order prohibits employees from:

• Promoting prayer at school-sponsored events, including graduation.
• Planning or financing religious baccalaureate services.
• Promoting religious beliefs to students in class or during school-sponsored events and activities.
• Holding school-sponsored events at churches.

Now, two Christian teachers in the school face jail time for allegedly breaking the law as they gave thanks at a school-related event at which a meal was provided.

Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman in Santa Rosa County led the prayer before a meal at a booster club meeting for adults, but a judge said the meeting violated a federal court order banning school officials from leading prayers at school events.

The case against the Principal and Athletic Director are clear abuses of the principle of Freedom of Religion.  The two are denied a freedom to pray.  Those in the audience were denied a freedom to have their meal blessed – a circumstance in practice almost universally across the Florida Panhandle. 

 This is an area of decent, patriotic, devout Americans – which is why the ACLU’s being able to find two students to front this absurd suit is suspect.

At some point, the ACLU extremism must be confronted and eliminated.  In the past, ACLU extremists have done their best to destroy a monument to American war dead, tried to deny the benefits of scouting to American military families, and even supported violent child molesters.

In the late 1950s, decent, patriotic, honorable Americans rose up and ended the old KKK once and for all.  It’s time the same fate be focused on the ACLU.  Cancers can primarily be cured by being excised. 

The case of Santa Rosa County, Florida, is so extreme it may provide an opportunity to do just that.  The case must be confronted, it must be convincingly won.  It must be used to end the threat to an honorable and patriotic society posed by the ACLU.

We need to take action.

Buddy

The days’ top blogs:

1.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2009m8d14-Political-Corruption-Congressman-slams-ACORN-Census-participation

"Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It  and Polarize It." 

 - Barack Obama mentor Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals.  Barack Obama taught this to ACORN followers in all his Community Organizing classes in Chicago.

Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Ranking Member on the Census Oversight Subcommittee, sent a letter to the US Census Bureau concerning its partnership with ACORN. While the Bureau has reported to Congress that ACORN is not recruiting census workers, internal documents contradict this claim.

Assuming the Bureau can reconcile these contradictions and verify that ACORN has been instructed not to recruit census workers, Congressman McHenry asked, “If ACORN has been singled out in such a manner because of its long criminal history, it begs the question, why are they a national partner in the first place?  If they cannot be trusted to recruit enumerators, it would seem to me that ACORN should be disqualified as a partner altogether.”

This is just the latest in the ongoing saga of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN. The allegations of voter registration fraud still linger and many observers believe ACORN participation in the 2010 Census will lead to fraudulent statistics.
Voter registration fraud is a serious problem that endangers the security of our elections and puts legitimate voters at risk of having their ballots devalued or stolen. If a person -- such as an illegal alien or convicted felon -- casts an illegal ballot, that vote cancels out a legitimate voter's ballot.

(NOTE: That’s the threat posed by Obama’s own ACORN, but there is more.  Political appointees in Obama’s Justice Department have given a wink and nod to thuggish groups such as the New Black Panthers for intimidation and even threats of violence to voters who are not likely to vote Democrat.  The thought is outrageous, the position of Obama’s Justice Department on this issue is scandalous, but both are real, very real indeed.)

 

To combat this fraud, Congress made such acts a serious federal crime. It is therefore deeply troubling to read continued reports of alleged voter registration fraud in many of the states that are considered to be "battleground states" and where the margin of victory or loss could be small. Just as troubling is the failure of the Obama Justice Department to investigate this and other crimes linked to voters' rights, such as members of the New Black Panthers intimidating Americans at the polls.

President Barack Obama's ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- the nation's largest organization of community activists -- include training ACORN employees, providing legal representation to the group, receiving their endorsement for his presidential bid, and compensating a known subsidiary.

One story that got short shrift by many reporters, is the $800,000.00 donation to ACORN by the Obama campaign. Obama spokespersons told reporters who managed to ask about the ACORN gift were told that the donation was a bookkeeping error. Case closed.

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune, the campaign originally “misrepresented” the group’s work to the FEC.

Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services, Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in ‘get-out-the-vote’ projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.” (David M. Brown, “Obama To Amend Report On $800,000 In Spending,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 8/22/08)

As Obama once said said, "The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree," and in this case, he's exactly right.

Obama's spokespersons also claimed he had a limited relationship with ACORN. However, the record shows that "[Obama] says he was drawn to politics, despite its superficialities, as a means to advance his real passion and calling: community organization. In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history."

"Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the US Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls -- even more than were registered during Harold Washington's mayoral campaigns.

"‘It's a power thing,’ said the brochures and radio commercials. … Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.” (Hank De Zutter, Op-Ed, “What Makes Obama Run?” Chicago Reader, 12/8/95)."

In the past, ACORN officials admitted to submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in Ohio and press reports confirmed that ACORN submitted hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms in Kansas City, Missouri, forcing local officials to wade through fraudulent voter registrations, potentially disenfranchising legitimate voters.

Unfortunately, with the Democrat Party in complete control of both houses of Congress and the White House, the chances of seeing a full investigation of ACORN's alleged illegal activities are slim or none. And don't hold your breath for the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, or the major broadcast news media to investigate this story.
 

2.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/13/supporters-obamas-health-care-plan-push-town-hall-protesters/

Roadblocks Devised to Push Back Against Health Care Town Hall Protesters

Supporters of health reform say they are simply pushing back against opposition that is disruptive and designed to shut down debate while opponents say the tactics are underhanded and intended to undermine democracy in action.

FOXNews.com.

Americans who want to express their opinions on health care reform at town halls across the country are encountering a host of roadblocks, ranging from fake schedules to a demand that they show their driver's licenses or photo identification.

Supporters of President Obama's plan say they are pushing back against opposition that is disruptive and designed to shut down debate. But opponents say the supporters' tactics are underhanded and designed to undermine democracy in action.

In Texas, Rep. Gene Green's office is requiring town hall attendees to present a photo ID that proves they live in his district.

On his Web site, Green says "due to a coordinated effort to disrupt our town hall meetings, we will be restricting further attendance to residents ... and verifying residency by requiring photo identification."

(NOTE: Liberals such as Green are in deep denial.  They cannot accept a thought normal Americans would be so angered about what they see as “Washington” today is a threat to them personally.  Health care is the focus, but not the only motivating factor.  Liberals such as Green will learn sooner or later liberals are forced to swim against the current.  They are the targets of honest anger and fury from real Americans.  That anger is very real and likely will be felt at the ballot box next year.)

Green's spokeswoman, Brenda Arredondo, told FOXNews.com that the Democratic congressman enacted the policy after she and other staffers overheard attendees saying they were going to keep disrupting the town halls. After the policy went into effect at the fourth town hall Green hosted this month, she said eight out of 10 attendees were found not to be constituents.

They were allowed to stay, she said, leading to the same outbursts seen at the other three. But they won't be allowed to attend the fifth one, she said.

"Those people are welcome to call their members of Congress and voice their opinions," she said, adding that Green is trying to listen to his constituents.

She said the policy is not intended to block opponents of health care reform. "If you want to come yell and scream and are constituents, we obviously more than welcome your voice," she said. "It's not to silence anyone's voice from the district."

In Illinois, two Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Obama this week complaining that Democratic organizers scheduled meetings between them and their constituents without ever notifying them, misleading their constituents into going to town halls on the wrong day.

Illinois Reps. Mark Kirk and Judy Biggert wrote that their constituents had apparently signed up for meetings to discuss health care reform with them after receiving an Aug. 9 e-mail from BarackObama.com urging them to do so.

"However, the names of our constituents and the times they wished to visit were never communicated to us," the letter said.

As a result, the lawmakers claimed more than 20 constituents came to their district offices on Monday.
"When they learned neither the White House, the Democratic National Committee nor Organizing for America had passed their request to our offices, they were understandably confused and upset with the BarackObama.com e-mail they had received," they wrote.
They urged the organizers not to keep them in the dark in the future.

In response, Democratic National Committee Communications Director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement saying that the OFA members were not told to go to offices unannounced.

"They are mischaracterizing this -- which is not surprising if you look at the falsehoods Republicans are spreading on this issue," he wrote. "OFA sent an e-mail to all its supporters asking them to sign up for drop bys with every House and Senate office -- Democrat and Republican -- to drop off a flyer in support of heath insurance reform."

Woodhouse said the e-mail advised supporters that "they should call ahead to make sure the office was open and that if they wanted to do more than drop by the office they should schedule a meeting on their own."
Health Care

 for America Now, a coalition group organizing support for Obama's proposal, e-mailed a four-page memo to activists across the country on how to provide "cover" to lawmakers at the town halls. The group, whose members include ACORN, the Service Employees International Union and the National Council of La Raza, urged activists to contact lawmakers before the town halls to plan ways to preempt opposition.

"Ask the member's staff what would be most helpful and talk through a strategy for making sure the right messages don't get drowned out by chaotic protesters," field director Margarida Jorge wrote.
"Address the [member of Congress] directly with a positive message: Remember, these members need cover and they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots in these meetings."

Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for HCAN, told FOXNews.com that the group sent the memo after many of its 120 field organizers in 44 states encountered screaming and shouting at the town halls.
"Not that the opposition caught anyone off guard," she said. "The level of screaming and shouting and lack of intelligent discourse caught people off guard."

Schechner noted that the memo does not emphasize any one tactic, but rather coordination with lawmakers to facilitate the town hall. She rejected the notion that the memo is designed to undermine democracy.

"We would love to have more conversation," she said. "What undermines democracy is the screaming and yelling and not allowing people to talk.

"There's a very important detail being lost here. There are details of health care not being explained because no one can get a word in edgewise," she said, adding that the town halls are intended for lawmakers to explain those details. "That legitimate conversation is not happening because there's such an angry din of noise."

Schechner said the memo has already helping lawmakers like Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who was rushed by protesters at earlier town halls where one held a sign showing Doggett with devil's horns. But now the town halls are more orderly, she said.

3.

 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/10/pub-fccs-new-hire-previously-targeted-gop-radio-stations/

FCC's New Hire Targeted Conservative Radio Stations in Writings

Mark Lloyd, the FCC's new chief diversity officer, laid out a "battle plan" for liberal activists to target conservative talk radio stations in 2007.

FOXNews.com

The FCC's new chief diversity officer laid out a battle plan two years ago for liberal activists to target conservative talk radio stations, and critics say they are concerned that he now will want to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine."

Mark Lloyd, who was named the associate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission last month, is under attack for authoring a June 2007 report entitled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio" and a subsequent essay, "Forget the Fairness Doctrine."

Adopted in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine held that broadcasters were obligated to provide opposing points of views on controversial issues of national importance. The policy was halted under the Reagan administration.

(NOTE: Liberals are desperate to find a means through which they can destroy talk radio.  Conservative talk radio has thrived.  Liberal attempts at talk radio have been embarrassing failures. The lone exception is NPR – which survive ONLY by ripping off unwilling American tax payers.  Liberal talk radio simple cannot survive in an honest market place of ideas.  Liberals feel they must destroy what they cannot control.)

Lloyd insists he does not support reinstatement of the doctrine, but critics suspect he has a hidden agenda to curtail conservative talk radio. They say Lloyd is the wrong person for his new post.

Seton Motley, director of communications for the Media Research Center, said Lloyd instructed liberals to file complaints against conservative stations in "Forget the Fairness Doctrine."

"What he lays out is a battle plan to use the FCC to threaten stations' licenses with whom they do not agree with politically, and now he's at the FCC waiting to take their calls," Motley told FOXNews.com. "This is not about serving the local interest, it's about political opposition."

Lloyd, who wrote the essay during his tenure at the Center for American Progress, said the rise and influence of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio hosts were traced to "relaxed ownership rules" and other pro-business regulation that destroyed localism.

While he said he was not interested in reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, he called for "equal opportunity employment practices," "local engagement" and "license challenges" to rectify the that perceived imbalance. "Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine," he wrote.

"The other part of our proposal that gets the 'dittoheads' upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don't want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community."

In February, a report in the American Spectator said aides to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., met with FCC staff to discuss ways to re-enact Fairness Doctrine policies and to apply them to the Internet as well. Both the FCC and Waxman's office denied the report.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said at the time that President Obama opposed any move to bring back the policy. He reiterated that position to FOXNews.com on Monday.

While Obama continues to oppose the Fairness Doctrine publicly, Lloyd's appointment has some critics worried. Motley said the not-so-subtle move is "frightening."

"You read his essay and he's incessantly attacked Rush Limbaugh," Motley said. "He doesn't like conservative talk -- and now he's an official at the weapon to shut down conservative talk radio."

Lloyd, who declined to be interviewed at length for this story, told FOXNews.com there are "no plans or interest" in reinstating the policy.

The FCC confirmed that stance but refused to address Lloyd's prior statements.

In a statement, the commission said: "The FCC agenda does not include reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine or in any way censoring speech based on political views and opinions. ...

"The FCC's interest in promoting diversity goes back to core principles underlying the First Amendment. Our nation benefits from a vibrant marketplace of ideas representing different points of view. [Lloyd] will help ensure that the communications field is competitive and generates widespread opportunities."

Representatives from media watchdog groups Free Press and Media Matters declined to comment for this story. Officials at the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank where Lloyd previously worked, also declined repeated requests for comment.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowksi announced Lloyd's hiring late last month along with two other senior staffers in its Office of Communications Business Opportunities.

"The FCC must ensure that the communications field is competitive, generates widespread opportunities, and is open to new ideas from all sources," Genachowksi said in a statement announcing the hires on July 29. "This exceptionally talented team will collaborate on the policies and legal framework necessary to expand opportunities for women, minorities, and small businesses to participate in the communications marketplace."

Prior to joining the FCC, Lloyd most recently served as vice president for strategic initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights/Education Fund, where he specialized in media and telecommunications. Lloyd has also served as an adjunct professor of public policy at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute and taught communications policy as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lloyd, who worked at NBC and CNN as a broadcast journalist prior to becoming a communications attorney, has also worked as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and as general counsel at the Benton Foundation, a nonprofit organization aiming to ensure that media serve the public interest and enhance democracy.
 

Saturday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Obama to raise 10-year deficit to $9 trillion

The Obama makes the announcement at the last minute Friday afternoon to provide limited notice by the media…an old political trick to avoid damage from bad news.

The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.

The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57K4XE20090821

NY Gov. David Paterson blames calls for him to step aside on race

 

Criticize a black politician, no matter how irrefutable the facts, and expect being called “racist” – it’s a consistent line of defense for those who cant defend the accusations…and the media makes the tactic work.

 

Gov. Paterson blames a racist media Friday for trying to push him out of next year's election - launching into an angry rant that left even some black Democrats shaking their heads.

"The reality is the next victim on the list - and you can see it coming - is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than trying to reform a health care system."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/08/21/2009-08-21_gov_david_paterson_blames_call_for_.html

Obama: we are  "wee-weed up'' in Washington?

"It's a phrase I use,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today, hesitating at his press briefing to offer a physical demonstration of the phraseology…'wee-weed up' is when people get all nervous for no particular reason....

"Bedwetting would probably be the more consumer-friendly term for it,'' the press secretary said.

"I hesitate to call August a make it or break it'' month, Gibbs says of the president's troubles with health-care as he departs today for a week's vacation at Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/08/weeweed_up_white_house_explain.html

Opinion:
If you really want to fight back, read this:

We are sending the following to everyone we can reach – some of you will get duplicates – sorry, but this is a message that must reach as many as quixkly as possible.

I would hope everyone – especially those who cannot fiancially contribute to buying cable TV time – would send this urgent message to everyone on your name lists.  We don’t have to raise millions to compete, but we do have to raise thousands.

Urgent:

We have got to compete – even if in a small way – with the massive flood of liberal television spots trying to sell Obama’s health care scam.  Many Americans don’t fully understand the facts and what is really at stake.

Certainly Obama wont tell us the truth, nor will the mainstream media.  We need to do ALL we can to get the real facts to as many people as possible.

We don’t have access to Obama’s special interest groups with the huge dollars – people such as George Soros – but we can reach normal America – the grass root masses that have so far beaten back the Obama threat.

We are beginning production of TV spots for use on the Internet, through YouTube email video, and, if possible, on spots run on cable TV in carefully selected areas…areas in which we can draw particular attention to our efforts.

We intend to do this with small contributions from grass root America – donations of as little as $10.

Here is the script of the first commercial – one which will be produced next week.  It is designed to get our message out and to also generate a flow of small contributions.

Please, give me your reactions – to our plans, to the script, and to where you think we need to go with our efforts.

Tell Washington No – Truth about Obama-care
Draft script

Announcer: Straight talk about the health care issue: Make no mistake – The Obama plan objective is control of our health care system.  Liberals want it all.  They have coveted it for decades.

“Public option”?  Even Barney Frank admits it means “single payer” health care – socialized medicine as we see in Canada.

(Barney on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3BS4C9el98
0:28 – “I think if we get a good public option… and that’s the best way to get single payer” 0:37 – and that’s a sure way never to get it”) .

This is a question of quality.Instead of quality, Obama offers “health care on the cheap”.  His government run health care can never, ever provide quality.   

As for senior citizens, the message is chilling. 

Bureaucratic calculations regarding end of life considerations.
A measure of cost-of-care versus human value.

Long lines.  Rationed care.  Limited access.

Cold calculations.  Cruel.

A lack of honest compassion -- especially for our elderly. 

Face it.  It’s a matter of life or death. 

Quality care or health care on the cheap.

You can help normal America fight back.  Help get our message to every single American voter. 

(Pay Pal etc)

Television such as the one you are watching. Internet.  E mail.
Right now, use your credit card to send us $50, $25, whatever you think you can afford. 
We are in this together and real Americans must fight back against these liberal schemes.
Help us stop this health care steam

Contributions can also be sent to:

Bishop & Associates
9700 Stauber Lane
Youngstown, Fl 32466

Checks should be made out to: "Tell Washington No"

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08212009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/blood_investments_185589.htm

BLOOD INVESTMENTS
RALPH PETERS 

IN Washington, politicians of all persuasions toss around the word "strategy." But it's rare to meet anyone inside the Beltway who understands what it means.

A strategy applies the necessary means to achieve a clearly defined goal. If your goal is unclear, you won't get the means right, either. So we wind up in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan with our national fingers crossed.

The clearest way to explain strategy is in terms of your personal investments. Your goal is a positive return. The more you're asked to risk, the greater the potential return has to be. And you don't pile your savings into a chronic money-loser.

The problem is that, before investing, you weigh the pros and cons more critically than our political leaders think through our wars -- in which our investment isn't only treasure, but blood.

You wouldn't invest without calculating the potential pay-off. Yet our elected officials, Democrat and Republican, are too lazy to fill out the investment-planning worksheet before piling on more troops:

* What precisely do we want to achieve?

* Is our goal realistic?

* Does the potential return justify the risk?

* Do we understand the need to cut irretrievable losses?

You wouldn't knowingly dump your 401(K) money in a fund that's lost money for every previous investor for hundreds of years. But that's what successive administrations did in Somalia and, more painfully, Afghanistan.

 

(NOTE: As the wars drag on – uncertainty of just how long we will go without the left completely rebelling and following the usual Democrat strategy of “cut, run and surrender”.  After all, Harry Reid, the top Senate Democrat surrendered in Iraq about a year ago, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been frantic as she desperately attempted more than 40 times to pull funding support for our troops under fire in combat.  With Obama in control, it can only get worse.)

Consider Afghanistan as an investment proposition. Initially, we had to make a short-term outlay to shatter a cut-throat competitor's business model. But then, without even reviewing the books, we conducted a hostile takeover of a huge derelict factory (where our rival had briefly squatted) that had been a chronic money pit for every previous owner.

As we try to modernize the Afghan plant, local managers steal us blind and the workers sabotage our efforts. Even if we break the Taliban "union," the labor is unskilled and the product line is worthless. We'll have to subsidize this factory forever.

Does that make sense to you?

Really, what does the Obama administration hope to do in Afghanistan? Establish a stable democracy in a land where blood vendettas last for centuries and tribal loyalties trump all? Force a secular constitution on a society that prefers religious law? Develop a modern economy where running water is a rarity? Why?

Even if we achieved each of those goals, would the result be worth the cost in blood, money and time? Don't we have better things to do with our strategic capital? Al Qaeda is a global franchise -- yet we're concentrating our investment on the Taliban, the equivalent of a local chain of blacksmith shops.

If it were only a matter of wasted tax dollars, that would be bad enough. But our troops suffer grievous wounds or die because neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations did the basic calculations you'd do before buying shares in a mutual fund.

And no, we're not too big to fail. Our troops can beat the Taliban every time, and we can remain in Afghanistan as long as we want, but where's the return on our investment?

It isn't enough to claim, as President Obama has done, that Afghanistan's vital to our national security. It isn't. Neither he nor his befuddled advisers can explain convincingly what the payoff will be for investing more blood and treasure.

Our confusion about strategic ends and means made a bloody mess of Vietnam, but at least we could cite a hold-the-line-against-Communism rationale back then. In Somalia, we ran a bait-and-switch on ourselves -- going in to save lives, then staying to prop up an imaginary state. Our one recent strategic investment with a high potential payoff -- the removal of Saddam Hussein -- got botched so badly that the return is frustratingly low.

A fundamental problem with our strategic investments is that, to many of our political leaders, our troops are funny money. Democrat or Republican, their public piety knows no limits, but they can't be bothered to define a strategic bottom line. Instead of spending our strategic capital thoughtfully, they behave like drunks in a casino. The chips land in military hospitals or cemeteries.

When it comes to our troops, the left's hypocrisy is beyond contempt. But some Washington conservatives also act as if we have to macho out our mistakes.

Well, some fights work out, some don't. What's wrong with stating publicly that Afghanistan just ain't worth it?

We shouldn't leave Afghanistan entirely. But we need to balance our investment with the potential return, maintaining a compact, lethal force to continue killing our enemies. But let's not sacrifice more soldiers because our leaders decline to think things through.

In war, soldiers die. But our soldiers shouldn't die because politicians put less thought into our wars than you put into your retirement account.
Ralph Peters' novel, "The War After Armageddon," will be published Sept. 15.

2.
 
http://townhall.com/columnists/MattTowery/2009/08/21/february_prediction_proves_true_in_august_obama_is_new_jimmy_carter
 
February Prediction Proves True in August: Obama Is New Jimmy Carter
Matt Towery

It's as simple as this: Just as semi-rural southwest Georgia politics of the mid-1970s couldn't be imposed on the Washington establishment, Chicago-style, brute-force politics doesn't work, either.

 Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress started digging a hole when they decided to force-feed massive health care reform on the American people in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis.

 And with every town hall meeting, press conference and leak of a new strategy, they just keep digging that hole deeper.

In early February, I suggested that the new president might become the Jimmy Carter of this generation. To date, I have little doubt that he's well on his way. In fact, Obama is the "super-sized" version of Carter -- the style and gimmicks that he uses to try to get his way have gone way over the top. The result is that his polling numbers are dropping like granite.

Carter's early years as president included cute moves like amnesty for Vietnam War draft dodgers, a bailout of Chrysler (sound familiar?) and the creation of an energy department that was heralded by the installation of solar panels at the White House. They never really worked.

Carter's staff felt that their man had been elected on a mandate of "change." They got that notion from the nation's anti-Washington, post-Watergate mood. The Carter crew viewed Congress as a necessary impediment that was expected to yield to the new ways of the White House.

But the Carter team had nothing on Obama. For example, Carter began his term with no official chief of staff. But quickly enough, that role fell to a brilliant man by the name of Hamilton Jordan. While many in Washington saw Jordan as arrogant and a playboy, he was never feared like current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is.

Carter's press secretary was the genial and soft-spoken Jody Powell. It's hard to imagine Powell getting into the type of ruckus recently ignited by current White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

(NOTE: Powell is a professional, Gibbs is clearly not.  Gibbs seems confused as to just who is actually the president – seeming at times to be speaking for an entity (not Obama) that is controlling matters just off stage with priorities and objectives that bring little confidence to troubled Americans.  Powell in recent years has pulled back from Carter as Carter’s out of control anti-Americanism gets more and more frantic.)

With the Obama team, everything has to be a bigger and brasher brand of Carter-style politics. Carter merely had his pearly white teeth to flash to the media. President Obama has his endless wit and charm, and the ability to sink a half-court basketball shot on a moment's notice.

But just like Carter's toothy grin grew weary on the general public, Obama's stylish forays and endless press conferences, while perhaps still the apple of the eye of the D.C. press corps, are quickly growing old with Americans. They're not entertained or charmed because they're too busy being terrified over their economic future and confused by a barrage of government programs that the new administration is proposing.

Like Carter, one gets the sense that the Obama administration is not as keen on the strength of our military as perhaps a president should be. Nor is he willing, at least in the early going, to stare down potentially dangerous foreign adversaries. In essence, both men came into office believing they had been given a mandate from heaven to change the lives of Americans. It's just that Carter thought so in comparatively modest ways, while Obama came from Chicago with the idea that his big city machine should move mountains at a snap of the fingers.

Like Carter, Obama is running into a buzz saw with Congress. He has quickly learned that a strong-willed liberal House speaker and a not-so-friendly Senate can mangle legislation into something unrecognizable. Now the health care effort has become a political football, and like Carter, Obama believes the public still loves him and his rhetoric.

Here's a message, Mr. President: They don't. Barack Obama is overwrought, overexposed and under-prepared with policy details.

Because of his administration's haste to solve all of the world's problems in six months, ideas such as the "cash for clunkers" auto program have yielded plenty of car sales, but also have proved how inept the government is at administering such initiatives. Car dealers can't get their cash for the clunkers they accepted in exchange for new car purchases. It sure does provide encouragement about the ability of government to pay for health care, huh?

In short, as a writer once put it, "Jimmy Carter's biggest problem was that he believed his own 'BS.'" That goes super-sized for President Obama, at least for now. 

 
Matt Towery is a former National Republican legislator of the year and author of Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America. 
 
 
 
3.

 
http://townhall.com/columnists/DougGiles/2009/08/16/what_obama%E2%80%99s_town_hall_charade_and_pam_anderson%E2%80%99s_breasts_have_in_common?page=full
 
 
What Obama’s Town Hall Charade and Pam Anderson’s Breasts Have in Common

Doug Giles 

I was watching Obama’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth this past week, and I’ve got to give it to Barack and his boys . . . I haven’t seen choreography that tight since the finale of So You Think You Can Dance.

I bet if the Queen of Scream, Mary Murphy, was watching that little Cirque du Soleil she would have been yelling, “Barack, I think I hear a whistle blowing! Yep, I hear it! Woo woo! It’s the Hot Tamale Train, and it’s coming to pick you up, honey! Get your chocolate milkshake on the Hot Tamale Train! Woo woo woo!” Then her head would spin 360 degrees as she rises from her seat, hikes up her dress and runs straight through a sheetrock wall and down the studio alley until Nigel summons Ted Nugent to come and shoot her with an elephant tranquilizing dart.

Yep, that was a beautiful little tango Obama danced with his White House appointed Portsmouth crowd. (I wonder if there’s a Crowd Czar yet? No? Well, give ‘em a week.) I’ll be damned if Obama can’t get a doting throng when he needs one. Weren’t they sweet, cute and capitulating? Unlike the rest of the nation, there was nary a contrary word in New Hampshire.

Y’know, our good old Mr. Hope & Change has a cabal handy at the drop of the red fez, whether it’s ACORN lug nuts ready to register Mickey Mouse to vote, some SEIU hooligans waiting to whup a conservative black guy’s butt outside a town hall meeting, or a gaggle of splooge-brained Clockwork Orange droogies begging to drool on his Health Scare plan in the Granite State. Achtung, baby!

Matter of fact, as Erick Erickson’s outfit, Redstate.com, pointed out: You can make some cash being one of Barack’s butt kissers. Why, hell yeah! I mean, aside from it being illegitimate and disingenuous, why shouldn’t you make some drachmas drumming up “unsolicited” support for Obama and the dreams of his father?

(NOTE: Obama is even dishonest in the case of his “books”.  Increasingly, evidence is becoming clear the real author is Bill Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist who declared war on this country and set off bombs.  Nothing Obama has said or done seems dismissive of Ayers and his evil – Obama has attempted to lie out of the connection – but connected Ayers and Obama remain.  That really says all we need to know about Obama.)

Check it out: Liberal organizations, advertising now on Craigslist, pay you $325 - $500 a week to tramp around to various town hall meetings to make a big stink on behalf of B-HO and his ShamWow! (They especially want blacks and homosexuals! I ain’t making this up. Check the adverts!) And you thought Craigslist was just a classifieds site for cheap washers and dryers and 13-year-old hookers.

Silly you.

Now, thanks to Obama’s Rent-a-Mob, thoughtless people watching this past week’s Clown Hall were left thinking after Tuesday’s tête-à-tête that everyone is cool with his granny-slaying, obfuscated to the hundredth power, 1,100 page bill (Or is it bills? Heck, who knows?). Yes, “everyone loves it, everyone wants it by tomorrow, and unicorns and centaurs are real!”

The only problem with the Portsmouth town hall is that it was more artificially stacked with Obama lap dogs than Pam Anderson’s ta-tas are with boat caulk. Of course the meeting was upbeat and thumping . . . it was contrived. A Cyclops could see that. Look, as a knuckle-dragging heterosexual who lives in a God-blessed testosterone fog, I don’t mind fake when it comes to breasts. But when it comes to being conned by a Boob and his stacked crowd, well . . . I gotta admit . . . that makes me want to spit.

The high low point (or low high point) in Obama’s deceptive dance was when they trotted out little Julia Hall, you know, the daughter of Kathleen Manning Hall, the high rolling operative who ran Massachusetts Women for Obama during the election? Little Julia was so worried about the “mean things” people were saying about Obama, and she was wondering how kiddos can “know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can help more of us?”

I couldn’t believe it. When the White House trotted that little pony out it was the final straw that made me think they must believe we are a bunch of stupid, stupid bastards. Or, or, the white House, blinded by hubris, has just moved into daft mode and gone stupid. Yeah, the conservatives are the ones who are fabricating questions and protests. Puh-lease. After that SNL moment I was expecting Barack to turn to Will Ferrell dressed up like Jesus in the audience for the next softball puff query. Where are Penn and Teller when you need ‘em?

The only shiny moment for me, aside from him outright lying about AARP’s endorsement and the nineteen other bald-faced lies (see KeithHennessey.com) during Tuesday’s masturbatory meeting was when Obama went rogue and strayed from the teleprompter, comparing his health care plan to the efficient U. S. Postal Service. That’s the same post office that just delivered a letter I wrote to my dad twenty-one years ago.

 
Yes, Virginia, when I saw the ‘prompter mechanically collapse into the stage and realized B-HO was about to go off script, I thought, “Yee-frickin’-haw. What’s he gonna say, Lord? Is he going to insult an upstanding white cop? Is he gonna channel Michelle and call America a mean nation?” Nope, he compared his health care bill to a crappy postal system. Obamacare is going postal.

You see, agnostics and atheists, there may be a God after all—and Barack be not his name. 
 
 

Friday's Web

NOTE: We are experiencing problems with formatting and typography due to being unable to upload our material on Firefox or direct to AOL.

Please be patient, we are working to correct it.

Buddy

 

 

The day’s top political news:

Zogby: Obama Hits Record Low in Poll

President Barack Obama's popularity has plummeted to a record low, with just 45 percent of voters now approving of his performance, according to the latest Zogby International poll.

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president's job performance, just 45.3 percent of likely voters say they approve. That compares with 50.5 percent who disapprove of the job Obama is doing.

The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president's popularity.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Obama_plummets_Zogby/2009/08/20/250566.html?s=al&promo_code=85C8-1

Obama: Republican conspiracy out to kill health reform

Obama took to the conservative airwaves Thursday to charge that Republican leaders are engaged in a vast right-wing conspiracy to kill health care reform in order to repeat the 1994 mid-term takeover of Congress, which followed the defeat of President Clinton's reform plan.

Unable to win with facts and truth, Obama turns to slander

(NOTE: Republicans don’t oppose reform of health care – just the sort of reform Obama is pushing that would result in government-run, single payer, socialized medicine.)

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/20/obama-gop-conspiracy-out-kill-health-reform/

Charlie Cook: Dem situation has 'slipped completely out of control'

Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.

Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.

Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0809/Charlie_Cook_Dem_situation_has_slipped_completely_out_of_control.html

Opinion:
Democrats and their dominating numbers

I saw it coming and expected to see it sooner.

Democrats have the raw numbers to govern all by themselves and telling the GOP to get lost.  In fact, that is pretty much what they have already done – since the GOP has largely held together in opposition to Obama’s spending escapade.

So far, Republicans are hanging tough on health care.  Of course Republicans support health care reform – but NOT the reform Obama is trying to sell.

The GOP shares a vies on this issue with a growing majority of Americans.  We don’t want government involvement, we don’t want the single payer scam that introduces socialized medicine for us all, and, most of all, we don’t want to surrender quality in exchange for Obama’s “health care on the cheap”.

NO government run health care can provide quality.  None.  Nada.  Zip.

Now Democrats threaten to cram their health care conspiracy down the throats of America no matter how much we object.

It’s the sort of thing we should expect from politicians such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  They have the numbers and have shown eager willingness to use that majority to “just do it”.

Harry Reid, especially, has hinted darkly he plans to do just that in the Senate.

Of course, Obama will sign the Senate bill – he dare not do otherwise – nor is he so inclined .  After all, brutish, bare knuckled, power-driven politics is his heritage from the Chicago Democrat Machine. This is the way things are done in Chicago.

Blue Dogs should fear for the safety of their knee caps.

Of course, the Mainstram Media sold us all out decades ago.  They are a part of the Obama conspiracy.  They will give him cover and will not report the news honestly.  For that matter, keep in mind “Snopes” is heavily slanted to liberal positions, and Fact Check.com is a creation of the Obama campaign.  Beware.

Fortunately, there is one force that can stop Democrats – or make them pay a very heavy price if they follow through with plans that amount to a power grab of our country and its government.

Public opinion has driven back the Obama surge on health care.  A few years ago, this grass root opposition defeated amnesty for illegals, and it is effectively pushing back on the government-run health care schemes.

So far.

We must keep up the pressures.  In town  hall meetings, on the Internet, through email.  Hold the line against the threat of single payer health care and the sort of medical mess we see in Canada.

It’s up to you, to me, and to normal Americans everywhere.

The  Democrats are coming and we are all that stands in their way.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204884404574362353920424782.html

No Compromise on Health 'Reform'

Why the GOP should resist all entreaties to be 'bipartisan.'
HEATHER RICHARDSON HIGGINS

The political winds have shifted dramatically on health care in the last two months. Suddenly, instead of hearing that legislation is inevitable, some argue that it can't possibly pass. But that conclusion is premature, and the odds still favor passage.

The left's previous strategy was to get the bill passed with as little discussion as possible. Now, along with a coalition of self-serving corporate interests, it is gearing up for a fight. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by unions and the trade association PhRMA on ad campaigns this fall.

This heavy promotion will manifest on the ground as well; the AFL-CIO just allocated $15 million for "mobilization and communication," and legislation supporters are being coached on aggressively interrupting others at town halls as well as arriving in greater numbers and with more signage to affect media perception. Contrary to unsupported allegations, the efforts in opposition to the health-care legislation are relatively modest, largely voluntary, and funded entirely by individuals.

Most importantly, health "reform" is the must-pass item for this administration, even more so than cap and trade or card check. And Democrats have clear majorities in both houses of Congress, so they can pass legislation of some kind if they can ever pull their party together.

Republicans augment the chance of passage with their desire to be "bipartisan." The Democratic strategy is to take off the table particular proposals that stir up public outrage—items like the public option, end-of-life counseling, or mandatory coverage of abortion services. That will be the excuse for those Republicans who want to seem "reasonable" to come over. The media will act as though the compromise bill is fully centrist. It won't be.

There are many legitimate concerns raised by these massive plans, and what you hear depends on who you ask. If you ask men, they tend to be most concerned about the legislation's cost and the long-term effect of government controlling such an enormous share of the economy.

If you ask women, they worry about the risks of delayed care and the intrusion on their choices. If you ask the elderly, it is the idea of being pushed to quietly accept the pains of old age and settle for the palliative pill rather than the new hip.

 

(NOTE: The problems we have with health care are problems BECAUSE of government controls! Because politicians over the decades have meddled & interfered in the marketplace! Giving them a free hand in the mess they created can only make it worse! Better to establish an absolute ban on government interference & involvement! Let suppliers fight amongst themselves for customers & customers bid for medicines & for care, i.e. choose the winner amongst the suppliers competing for their dollars!       Harry Becker)

All these concerns are real and matter. But the larger point is that Democrats aren't proposing a subsidy to enable people to get the care they need. Rather they want to shift decision-making authority from the American citizen to the government bureaucrat.

These proposals are yet another manifestation of the no-growth, redistributionist mindset, combined with an elitist, authoritarian philosophy of government. To buy into them and ignore the reality they've produced elsewhere is to love humanity more than human beings, and value utopian ideals of equity over the tremendous individual costs they inflict.

In these proposals, human beings aren't individuals with freedom to contract as they see fit and make their own best judgments, but interchangeable widgets for whom rules should be fashioned and enforced based on age, or quality of life, or some other metric. Bureaucrats would evaluate whether one is young enough to warrant a pacemaker or a hip, or sufficiently long gone from a hospital to justify readmission. Medicine would become a one-size-fits-all bureaucracy, not an art, in which the physician would face real risks for deciding that the bureaucratically approved "effective treatment" isn't what works in a particular case.
It makes no sense to try to achieve a bipartisan consensus when the fundamentals underlying the Democratic approach are so contrary to the entire foundational idea of who we are as Americans.

We're the country that believes that individuals have the right not to have their decisions interfered with, and that individuals are best able to make those decisions that most affect their life and happiness. Nothing could be more central to that than the ability to control one's own health and the health options of loved ones.

There is much that needs reforming in health care, and everyone wants to make sure that those who are genuinely uninsured because of pre-existing conditions, for example, have access to coverage and care. But the Democratic proposals use those real problems as a stalking horse to achieve very different goals.

Would-be Republican deal-brokers should stand aside. They need to understand how the rest of us see this: That this is not just about the normal compromise of politics, but the core of what America is and will be.

Once the left's health-care vision is in place, it will be almost impossible to undo. If this takeover isn't worth resisting, what is?

Mrs. Higgins is chairman of the Independent Women's Forum. 
 
2.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574360500363745662.html

'Closing in on Rove'
Why John Conyers, the New York Times and the Washington Post owe me an apology.
KARL ROVE

For more than two years, House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006 for failing to investigate Democrats. The Washington Post editorial board also echoed this last charge.

The Times and the Post have published a combined 18 editorials on these issues, which were also catnip to House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Politico's Ryan Grimm reported last year overhearing the Committee's chairman, John Conyers of Michigan, tell two others, "We're closing in on Rove. Someone's got to kick his ass."

To get to the bottom of these issues, the Obama administration brokered a deal with former President George W. Bush's lawyers and the House Judiciary Committee to provide the committee with the information it wanted while protecting executive privilege. This resulted in me sitting down for a 12-hour, two-day interview last month. More than 500 pages of material, including interview transcripts (available at Rove.com), were released last week, tidbits of which made the front pages.

Judiciary Democrats had California Rep. Adam Schiff doggedly ask me about four-year-old phone logs, emails, meetings and conversations. What did the committee discover?

Judging from the evidence released, it uncovered facts that show that my role in the U.S. attorneys issue was minimal and entirely proper. I did not conceive of the idea of removing certain U.S. attorneys, did not select those to be removed, and did not see the lists of U.S. attorneys Justice was considering to replace. I had no idea who was on the final list until Justice sent it to the White House in November 2006. No fair-minded person can review the thousands of pages of documents and testimony and conclude that I drove the process.

Instead, the committee seems to have found only evidence that discredits the idea that I orchestrated the firings to protect Republicans or punish Democrats. The committee found nothing to indicate that I ordered U.S. attorneys in Arizona, California or Wisconsin to be removed to sabotage investigations of Republicans, as some Judiciary Democrats have alleged.

I told the committee just as the White House acknowledged publicly in March 2007hat I had told the White House Counsel of complaints about David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney for New Mexico. Those complaints included the allegation that he failed to do anything about voter fraud in the 2004 election, even though that fraud appeared to be so egregious that the Bernalillo County clerk (a Democrat) and sheriff (a Republican) as well as the Albuquerque Journal all called for a federal investigation.

I also told the White House Counsel about complaints that Mr. Iglesias bungled a high-profile corruption case by interfering with career prosecutors, and that he shelved an indictment involving corruption in the construction of the Bernalillo County Courthouse for months. The accusation was that he refused to file the indictments until after the 2006 election out of fear that he might offend Democrats he would need if he ran for office himself.

These were serious allegations. I didn't know if they were true, but I had a responsibility to pass them to the appropriate officials. The Justice Department needed to determine if they were accurate and, if so, weigh them appropriately. The allegations about Mr. Iglesias were similar to those Judiciary Democrats and their media allies raised against mehat the judicial process had been manipulated for political reasons.

Committee Democrats also found evidence that I recommended Tim Griffin, a bright and capable lawyer, for a U.S. attorney position in Arkansas after I learned that the then-U.S. attorney was likely to leave his post. Mr. Griffin was well-qualified. He graduated from Tulane Law, practiced with an outstanding New Orleans firm, worked as an aide to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, was a special assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas, and served as an Army reserve officer in the Judge Advocate General corps in Iraq. Mr. Griffin had earlier been considered for a different U.S. attorney post and was the first choice of a Justice Department panel of career and noncareer officials.

Democrats have seized on an October 2006 email sent to me by White House staffer Scott Jennings that said Mr. Iglesias shouldn't "be shy about doing his job" on state Attorney General Patricia Madrid, who was then running to unseat Republican Rep. Heather Wilson. Despite all their digging, Judiciary Democrats produced not a shred of evidence that I encouraged Mr. Iglesias to undertake a prosecution. And they found nothing that showed that I responded to Mr. Jennings' email or understood what he meant by it.

 

(NOTE: Democrats are desperate to use their dominating numbers to  have their way – whether their way is legitimate or not.  They hate Rove because he out thought and out performed them for years.  They hate him because they could not compete with him honestly.  Expect the same arrogant attitude in health care and other schemes and scams Democrats are dedicated to pass.)

Judiciary Democrats asked little about Don Siegelman's bribery conviction, despite overheated assertions by the Times, Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes," and various MSNBC talking heads that I was behind the prosecution of the former governor. Judiciary Democrats didn't get testimony from either Mr. Siegelman or Dana Jill Simpson, the eccentric Alabama lawyer who drew attention by publicly supporting the allegations. Committee staff confided to me that they considered her an unreliable witness. I also understand that Mr. Siegelman and Ms. Simpson refused to cooperate with the Justice Department's review of his claim of political persecution, while I willingly gave sworn testimony.

Unfazed by facts and left with nothing to support their suspicions, the Times and Post editorial boards and Judiciary Democrats now seem to hope that special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who is looking into the U.S. attorneys removals, will dig up something that implicates me. I am confident her findings will confirm that my actions were limited and proper.

Perhaps then Judiciary Democrats will focus on more important issues and the Times and Post will admit their mistakes. It would be the responsible thing to do.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/youre_a_racist_the_ultimate_em.html

You're A Racist! The Ultimate Emotional Intimidation
Lloyd Marcus

I am on the email list of a dear black friend of 20 years. He is a minister, writer and professor. He has mentored and advised me with great wisdom on numerous occasions. With me being a black conservative Republican and he a Democrat, we avoid talking politics. Since the election of Obama, my friend will talk about nothing else. He is in Baltimore. I'm in Florida. Every time he calls me, he turns the conversation into trashing all who oppose Obama's agenda. Thank God for caller ID.

I received a mass email from my friend in which he vilifies the Christian community for not chastising ministers who speak against Obama and for not attacking Sarah Palin. He said the Republicans used Palin as their "attack dog against Obama." He said watching a McCain/Palin rally was like watching a KKK lynch mob and he personally heard the crowds yelling, "kill him," referring to Obama. Folks, my dear friend is a liar.

In 2008, I traveled the U.S. attending forty rallies on the national "Stop Obama Tour" with Our Country Deserves Better PAC. Not once, did I hear any violent or racist comments. Seeing through his smooth speeches and charisma, people were simply terrified of what was to come with an Obama victory.

Behind all of my friend's intellectual yada, yada, yada, festers a deep hatred for the rich and white people. In a conversation, he said with great glee that Obama was going to "reign in Wall Street" and CEO's salaries should be limited to $500,000 per year. I thought, "Who the heck are you to dictate how much someone should be permitted to earn. This is America. The sky's the limit."

Anger caused me to write a passionate reply to my friend's hate filled email. I stated numerous reasons why Obama's agenda and the health care bills are wrong for America.

Included was abortion. Fifty percent of black babies are aborted. (BlackGenocide.org) Also, Obama voted three times against protecting babies who survive an abortion. So, how does my black minister friend justify supporting Obama. And why does he consider anyone opposing Obama's policies non Christian, racist or an Uncle Tom if you are black?

Ready to hit "reply all," I remembered the White House requested all emails against ObamaCare be forwarded to them. I thought, why give them more ammo to attempt to shut me up? The folks on my friend's liberal email list are all infected will Obama Brainlock Syndrome. They do not want to know the truth. In the current climate set by our "I'm gonna make you a Health Care offer you can't refuse" president, I could be setting myself up for physical attacks.

Many sincere white Americans thought by electing a black president America could never again be characterized as a "racist country." Shamefully, this characterless administration betrayed Obama voters by exploiting race, using it as a tool to implement their far left agenda. If you don't agree with everything Obama wants, you must be a racist. Rather than the election of America's first black president bringing the races together, Obama's administration is tearing us apart. They will continue to play the tired, old and tattered geriatric "race card" as long as it is effective.

Folks, please, please, please do not fall for it. The stakes are far too high. Boldly speak the truth and stand up for what you know in your hearts to be right for America. Obama wants to redistribute wealth, punish achievers, decide who lives or dies and control as much of our lives as possible. It is just that simple. His must be stopped. Do not allow yourselves to be manipulated and intimidated for fear of being called "racist."

Ironically, "Black Racism" has blinded my long time friend as well as many other black Americans from seeing beyond Obama's skin color. MLK would not be proud.

Lloyd Marcus, Singer/Songwriter of the "American Tea Party Anthem", is President, NAACPC (National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color) and star of the Lloyd Marcus TV Show.

4.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/the_racial_straw_man_in_the_he.html

The Racial Straw Man in the Healthcare Debate
Kyle Stone

It didn't take long for the race-baiters on the left to reveal themselves.  Only now, they are larger in numbers and their names more recognizable.  While playing the race card is nothing new in national politics, the presence of a black president has given liberals convenient cover behind which to hide.  As a result, many have misdirected the health care debate by falsely framing it in racial terms.  From a coward's position, they no longer hesitate in hurling what was once a powerful and weighty accusation -- branding someone a racist.

Let us recount those who have recently dropped the race bomb with regard to the healthcare debate:

Among the media elites, MSNBC stands at the forefront of misapplying the racial component.  Their leftist lineup -- that silly cadre of Bush-bashing rabble-rousers (or "communist cabal" if you're enamored with alliteration), continues to push the racial button:

• MSNBC host Carlos Watson, who is black, suggested last week that calling the president a "socialist" has become fresh code for the N-word. According to Watson's stunningly irresponsible and incendiary logic, conservatives have been calling Nancy Pelosi that disgusting word for years.

As for the network's primetime lineup, highlighting one instance from each host would belie the fact that their racial branding is a daily habit:

• Chris Matthews seemed content to dismiss everyday folks who vocally oppose Obamacare as simply "upset because we have a black president," as he barked to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore on August 11th.

• Following Matthews are Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the sneering commentators who repeatedly dismissed participants in numerous Tax Day Tea Parties on April 15th as racists.

• Liberal personality Ed Shultz lobbed a racial grenade when he translated honest conservative opposition to Obamacare as a threat on the president's life, undoubtedly motivated by racial animus.

 "Sometime I think they [conservatives] want Obama to get shot," he told his meager radio audience.

 Never mind that compared to the hateful and vicious treatment President Bush faced in recent years from the left, conservative opposition to Obamacare has been a picnic-or "tea party", if you will.

Leftwing columnists have joined the talking heads in racial carpet-bombing: 

• The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote on August 6th that the town hall brushback to healthcare was actually "racial anxiety" at play, not legitimate opposition to the potential legislation.

• Days later the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker groundlessly declared that 45 to 65 percent of all vocal opponents to Obamacare are motivated by racism. Disturbingly, Tucker was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007 for "her courageous, clear-headed columns that evince a strong sense of morality and persuasive knowledge of the community."

More alarming is the sudden outburst of prominent politicians throwing racial daggers: 

• Michigan Congressman John Dingell injected race after getting an earful last week from a constituent who feared his son's cerebral palsy treatment wouldn't be fully covered under Obamacare. Dingell's response later to the berating was astounding: "The last time I had to confront something like this was when I voted for the civil rights bill... At that time, we had a lot of Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets and other things running around causing trouble."

 Dingell's defective analogy painted the concerned citizen and others at the Romulus, Michigan meeting as a 1960s lynch mob.

• Nancy Pelosi, in trying to portray opponents to Obamacare as racist extremists, told reporters that protesters had been "carrying swastikas and symbols like that." When pressed for proof, a staffer said the speaker was referring to a photo taken at a town hall meeting where a protester held a sign with a swastika crossed out over President Obama's name along with a question mark. No word from Pelosi regarding the years of mass protest against President Bush featuring similar signs.

These politicians and pundits fail to see through their partisan lens the damage they inflict on the very cause they proclaim to advance.  Blurring the lines between the many who oppose the President's policies and the few who spurn his blackness sets a dangerous precedent.  Their supposed goal of racial unity instead becomes poisoned with distrust and racial discord.

As for the President, he contributes to the ugliness by not denouncing it.  His presidency was branded the "post-racial" administration, yet during his seven months in office we see his political foot soldiers fight using race-baiting rhetoric with impunity from the White House.  He need only recognize that despite the very few on the fringe, those who oppose him are not motivated by racial animus.  But he won't.

As a result, a great irony reveals itself: in President Obama's "post-racial" administration, by erroneously evoking racism in the health care debate, many liberals are rendering the "racist" tag meaningless.

Kyle Stone is a practicing attorney in Chicago, IL, and is Membership Director of Chicago Young Republicans. He can be contacted at kylestone@comcast.net.