The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
SEC Split on Party Lines Over Goldman Case
The Securities and Exchange Commission decided to sue Goldman Sachs Group Inc. over the objections of two Republican commissioners, suggesting an unusual split at the agency that could politicize one of its most prominent cases in years.
People familiar with the matter said the five-member commission held a lengthy meeting Wednesday to debate the civil-fraud charges against Goldman, and ultimately voted 3-2 in favor of pushing forward. The charges were filed Friday.
Normally the agency prefers to have unanimous support when bringing enforcement actions against the firms it regulates. Word of the SEC split could exacerbate partisan tensions in Washington Politics, politics, politics are at play.
Web site shows Obama campaign received almost a billion dollars from Goldman Sachs in 2008
The contribution kktable lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
“Open Secrets.org” provides the documentation.Drudge asks if Obama will give the billion back given Democrat assaults on that firm.
Don’t expect any action – anticipate Obama will respond in whatever manner benefits him most politically.
http://images.opensecrets.org/obama_top_contribs.htm?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Ari
Arizona lawmakers have passed an immigration bill requiring police in the state to determine if people are in the United States illegally, a measure critics say is open to racial profiling.
Immigration is a bitterly fought issue in the United States, where some 10.8 million illegal immigrants live and work in the shadows, although it has been eclipsed in recent months by a healthcare overhaul and concern over the economy.
The law requires state and local police to determine the status of people if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are illegal immigrants and to arrest people who are unable to provide documentation proving they are in the country legally.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63I6TU20100419
Opinion:
Democrats face tea parties with slanderous claims of extremism and potential violence.
Democrat talking heads are frantically coached to make certain references to tea parties, are all embellished with references to extremism, far right participants, and other inappropriate descriptions through which Democrats hope to demonize the tea party movement. The problem is, the references are mostly bald faced lies.
Extremist? Then so are local Kiwanis and Rotary clubs. Take another look at tea party protests. People standing in the crowds are ordinary Americans, Plus they are upset with more than deficits and the national debt. They are also worried about wide open borders (Democrats say that makes them racists), they oppose new tax schemes by Democrats, and, most of all, they resent Democrats forcing them to accept a radical health care scheme. They see constant signs their country is being moved to the left. The far left.
When TV talking heads contend claims Obama is a socialist are unfounded and slanderous, resentment moves a tick higher. Forget the brouhaha over Obama’s birth certificate – it doesn’t matter. No matter the claims, the denials, or any evidence anyone might provide, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is Obama had an obligation to deal wit the question and shut down the clamor. Americans deserve honest answers from and about their leaders. Obama could have easily ended the controversy by refuting the claims. He failed in that obligation, and no addition evidence is required to prove that fact. In dire times such as these, arguments on the fringe don’t help and should be ended.
So far, Democrat efforts, no matter how frantic, have failed and failed completely. The Pew Research group released a poll yesterday showing 80% of Americans don’t trust their government and show one in three sees the Democrat dominated government as a direct threat to their personal freedom and liberty.
Some analyst see the Pew findings as representing “a perfect storm” for politics. Democrats face a challenge to sell their position to a massive number of voters who resent what they have done and who actively oppose it. Democrats have lost trust. That can be fatal in politics. It should be noted, a multitude of tea party participants have never been active in politics until now.
The perceived extremism of the Obama government has disenchanted many voters. Obama is, supported by the Democrat dominated House led by Nancy Pelosi. (Pelosi has replaced Hillary Clinton as the most hated woman in American politics).
Some Democrats are beginning to understand they have little chance of winning over a majority of voters (with certain localized exceptions) so they are adopting other tactics.
Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, when asked about the Tea Party protests, claimed the Obama administration is pays more attention to deficit and spending concerns than Bush did. (Once again, “Bush did it”)
“You don't hear people saying we can pass enormous expansions in government without paying for it. That's an important change."
“We cant pass huge tax cuts, pass huge new programs without paying for them. That debate has changed fundamentally," Geithner said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Attention, Mr Geithner – you miss the message – people oppose “enormous expansions in government” – in fact, for most tea party protesters, that expansion of government ranks among their top motivations for demonstrating. Obama’s expansion is winning Democrats no adherents. At all.
(By the way, Mr Geithner, did you ever pay your taxes?)
Meanwhile, Obama tells a Democratic National Committee fundraiser that Tea Partiers should "be saying thank you" to him for the tax cuts passed by Democrats.
Obama doesn’t get it either. Whatever minor tax cut scams he has pulled off so far, tea party protesters are well educated people and they perceive the tax threat Obama’s radical agenda will demand.
Revive the Democrat Cap and Trade scheme, and every family in America will immediately suffer a tax liability of more than $3,000 annually according to the Heritage Foundation. Certainly the health care scheme Democrats just imposed on an unwilling America will lead to additional tax strategies. Now there are rumblings of Obama may impose a VAT tax to American industry – a scheme by which every produce would be taxed at every level of production.
Obama’s solemn pledge that Ameericans making less than $250,000 a year wouldn’t see a dime in additional taxes, is revealed for what Americans paying more attention to Obama always knew it was – a cynical campaign device he never intended to respect.
No wonder 80 percent of Americans don’t trust their government, no wonder 25% contacted their elected officials about Obamacare, and no wonder more than 30% see their own government as direct threats to their freedom and their liberty.
Is there any wonder why ordinary Americans are moved to join the multitudes protesting out-of-control government? The wonder is the lack of extremism in such a movement. It is reported the Mall was clean when the September 12 million person demonstration cleared out.
Democrats don’t get it. They dare not get it and then be forced to admit it. The hole out of which they must dig, is deep, large, and growing.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Tea Partiers Fight Obama's Culture of Dependence
Commentary By Michael Barone
"Do you realize," CNN's Susan Roesgen asked a man at the April 15, 2009, tea party in Chicago, "that you're eligible for a $400 credit?" When the man refused to drop his "drop socialism" sign, she went on, "Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion out of the stimulus?"
Roesgen is no longer with CNN, and CNN has only about half as many viewers as it did last year. But her questions are revealing. They help us understand that the issue on which our politics has become centered -- the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government -- is really not just about economics. It is really a battle about culture, a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence.
Probably unknowingly, Roesgen was reflecting the mid-century sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld's dictum that politics is about who gets how much when. If some guy is getting $400, shouldn't he just shut up and collect the money? Shouldn't he be happy that his state government, headed recently by Rod Blagojevich, was getting an extra $50 billion?
But public policy also helps determine the kind of society we are. The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves. That is the culture of dependence.
The tea partiers see things differently. They're not looking for lower taxes -- half of tea party supporters, a New York Times survey found, think their taxes are fair. Nor are they financially secure -- half say someone in their household may lose their job in the next year. Two-thirds say the recession has caused some hardship in their lives.
But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens' dependence on it. And, invoking the language of the Founding Fathers, they believe that this will destroy the culture of independence which has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous -- and the most charitably generous -- nation in the world.
Seeing our political divisions as a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence helps to make sense of the divisions seen in the 2008 election. Barack Obama carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and those with incomes over $200,000, and lost those with incomes in between. He won large margins from those who never graduated from high school and from those with graduate school degrees, and barely exceeded 50 percent among those in between.
The top-and-bottom Obama coalition was in effect a coalition of those dependent on government transfers and benefits and those in what David Brooks calls "the educated class," who administer or believe that their kind of people administer those transactions. They are the natural constituency for the culture of dependence.
Interestingly, in the Massachusetts special Senate election, the purported beneficiaries of the culture of dependence -- low-income and low-education voters -- did not turn out in large numbers. In contrast, the administrators of that culture -- affluent secular professionals, public employees, university personnel -- were the one group that turned out in force and voted for the hapless Democratic candidate.
The in-between people on the income and education ladders, it turns out, are a constituency for the culture of independence. Smart conservatives like David Frum, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argued in 2009 books that modest-income conservative voters have had stagnant incomes over the last decade and that Republicans should offer them compensatory tax breaks.
That seemed to make sense in the wake of the 2008 election. But it's been undercut by developments since. As Susan Roesgen discovered, tea party supporters are not in the mood to be bought off with $400 tax credits. They have a longer time horizon and can see where the Obama Democrats are trying to take us.
Paul Lazarsfeld saw politics as just a matter of dollars and cents. The tea party movement reminds us of what the Founders taught -- that it has a moral dimension, as well. They risked all in the cause of the culture of independence. The polling evidence suggests that most Americans don't want to leave that behind.
Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.
2.
Tyranny May Be Closer than We Think
Bob WeirWhen Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, I experienced ambivalence about a national election result for the first time in my life. In every other presidential election that ran counter to my vote, I felt that the winner didn't represent any advantage for the future of the country. When Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, I braced myself for the liberal climate about to descend on us. When Clinton beat Bush 1, it meant that the country was willing to overlook the man's well-documented history of immoral conduct, which inevitably led to national disgrace. For me, neither of these victors provided anything salubrious for the country's future.
Although I voted for John McCain, and I believed that he was the better leader for our country, seeing the first African-American become the nation's chief executive gave me the feeling that we had finally crossed a threshold in race relations. After all, with blacks representing only about 12 percent of the population, a huge non-black turnout was needed for a black candidate to be elected. Winning by a comfortable margin seemed to make it clear that Obama's victory could result in less vitriol from race-baiters who had enriched their bank accounts by fulminating about the country's history of bigotry. Finally, we would no longer be urged to view everything through a prism of pigmentation. Hence, my ambivalence was an example of finding something good about being on the losing side of a national plebiscite.
I suppose you could say that I saw Obama's color as a consolation prize. His political philosophy of bigger government, more taxes, closing of Guantánamo Bay, Miranda rights for terrorists, etc. is an example of the type of liberal orthodoxy that has weakened the U.S. for more than a generation. However, it felt good to know that we had proven to the world that we are truly a melting pot.
Alas, that sentiment was short-lived. When the president insinuated last year that a black Harvard professor's arrest by a white police officer was racially motivated, it became clear that he wasn't interested in leading the country toward a colorblind society. Furthermore, Democrats have become more creative about finding racism in everyone who opposes this president. When the grassroots efforts of the Tea Party movement began to gain national attention, it became a target for accusations of racism. It's a typical red herring intended to divert attention from the president's massive power-grab known as ObamaCare, which will, in addition to destroying the best health care system on the planet, put an unsustainable debt burden on future generations. Does any rational person really believe that the majority of our citizens would be in favor of that medical monstrosity if it had been proposed by a white president?
Nancy Pelosi, the most arrogant and polarizing Speaker in the history of the House, dismissed the Tea Party as nothing more than "disheartened Republicans and racists, who could not accept a bi-racial man as president." Similarly, the mainstream media and Democrat activists, evidently taking their orders from the Speaker's office, tried to portray the health care debate as being based solely on President Obama's race rather than on the policies of an overreaching government. Therefore, we are in the bizarre position of having the first black POTUS, while being constantly scolded for being racist. Every word, gesture, and nuance is being parsed and magnified in a cynical attempt to scare non-blacks into a state of reticent acquiescence.
The left-wing lunatics realize that their days are numbered if they don't find a way to discredit the national movement that is poised for a landslide victory in November. They feel that the best way to accomplish that is to muzzle people by twisting their words until everything sounds racially motivated. Something as innocuous as "It'll be a dark day in America if ObamaCare is not stopped" could be interpreted as a reference to the man's skin color. It's a smart tactic because it restrains free speech and keeps the opposition on the defensive.
No decent person wants to be characterized as a bigot. So if such a charge is made, the victim of the accusation is forced to deny the slur and lose sight of the message he was trying to convey. Since it's impossible to prove a negative, the victim is often relegated to a series of contrite utterances where none should be needed. While good people are wasting time assuring the accusers that they are pure of heart, the issue that was germane to the discussion has disintegrated into a puff of fraudulent smoke.
The most potent weapon in a democracy is free speech; if we lose it because we were conned into adopting a morbid fear that our words are tantamount to subliminal racism, then tyranny is closer than we think. To quote our first president: "If free speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
Bob Weir is a former detective sergeant in the New York City Police Department. He is the executive editor of The News Connection in Highland Village, Texas. E-mail Bob.
3.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/04/san_francisco_tea_party_outali.html
San Francisco Tea Party Out-Alinskys the Left
Gini Wolters
Although nearly 1,000 people filled San Francisco's Union Square for a Tax Day Tea Party, their voices reverberating off the canyon of skyscrapers, San Francisco's media elite was MIA. No surprise, San Francisco Chronicle blogger Harmon Leon was unable to shed his uber-left bias to do any objective reporting about the 2nd annual Tea Party organized by the Bay Area Patriots, "the original San Francisco Tea Party" group, in his City Brights blog. For example, if Mr. Leon bothered to do real research -- that is, talk to the tea partiers -- he might have learned that conservatives are devouring pocket-sized copies of "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model" by David Horowitz.
Mr. Leon would have discovered that conservatives are getting dialed in to the philosophy and tactics of Saul Alinsky and the left ... including its usual tricks of deception (tea partiers are racist homophobes), ridicule (Mr. Leon repeatedly called tea partiers "Tea Baggers") and demonization (blah, blah, blah). While it's common knowledge that Barack Obama was a disciple of Alinsky and even taught Alinsky's methods in Chicago, what's not so readily apparent is Alinsky's radicals' end goal: destruction of society from the inside out. Horowitz's book lays out the game plan in simple, concise terms and has become required reading for all conservatives and tea partiers.
In addition, if Mr. Leon had used his powers of observation, he would have noticed the creative ways Bay Area Patriots make their political points. For instance, at every Bay Area Patriots event, we do something unique: We invite veterans and immigrants and everyday people to come on stage and speak out, standing on a 6' x 6' piece of Astroturf -- a poke at Nancy Pelosi and David Axelrod's assertion that any opposition to President Obama is somehow artificial, manufactured, or "Astroturf." (Axelrod himself invented Astroturf politics in Chicago, creating political causes and campaigns out of thin air based on manufactured outrage.)
To dramatize the enormity of our debt, the Bay Area Patriots presented a group of young singers against the backdrop of America's Budget Deficettes--a chorus line of top-hatted women holding two-foot-tall cards enumerating $13,000,000,000,000. (Does Congress know there are 12 zeroes in a trillion?) There was a poignant Moment of Being Silenced, when tea partiers stood eerily quiet, their mouths taped shut with a swath of blue tape, vividly demonstrating how this administration and Democrat-controlled Congress has tried to shut up the opposition and shut down dissent. We fleshed out the itinerary with political satirist Eric Golub, an appearance by Melanie Morgan, local candidates, and musical interludes, including a blistering parody of "American Pie," written and led by Bay Area Patriots' founder/organizer Sally Zelikovsky.
For the finale, we used a 70-foot-long foam chain, accompanied by Pink Floyd's "The Wall," to show how big government and radical far-left policies shackle us and limit opportunity, freedom, and prosperity. Even Mr. Leon was flummoxed by the Bay Area Patriots' finale: "Claiming that the government is ‘Big Brother' has always been a liberal thing--that's a staple in our bag of tricks. How dare the right wing take away our beloved government/Big Brother comparison!"
Lastly, we were prepared for the loony left's plants, and used bright pink "Infiltraitor" signs with arrows to smoke out the tea party crashers. Again, in print, Leon admitted we beat the left at its own game: "The Tea Baggers even used the opportunity to squash any attempt at ‘funny' with their counter-counter-protest signs."
From Mr. Leon's comments, it appears the left isn't used to conservatives fighting back. But the Bay Area Patriots who packed Union Square last week proved they could and would protest the administration's far left agenda, and do it peacefully, intelligently, creatively, and with a sense of FUN. And they could and would do it on the left's "home turf" of San Francisco. Get used to it, Mr. Leon: The Tea Party movement is here to stay, whether the left likes it or not.
Misled by a liberal media and Obama's slick, manufactured "Change you can believe in" campaign, even life-long Dems are waking up. The agenda of this regime looks more like "Chains you won't believe."
Conservatives understand this is a historical moment in our country. People who have never been politically engaged are attending protests, forming conservative groups, getting involved in the electoral process, and studying the Constitution. We're also studying the Alinsky tactics of the left, and paying close attention to the radicals' most important weapon, deception. As David Horowitz says in "Rules for the Revolution":
The Founders devised a system of checks and balances to temper the passions of the people and prevent factions from going to war. It is because this is the reality of American democracy that revolutionary warfare, which is not about compromise, must be conducted through deception. Thus the rules for the organizers of revolutions, laid down by Alinsky, are rules for deception.
Instead of deception, conservatives will rely on other tools to win the war. Tools like the Constitution, faith, integrity, and a sense of humor. Game on.
Gini Wolters lives in Marin County and has helped Bay Area Patriots plan several events in Marin and San Francisco, including this year's Tax Day Tea Party at Union Square. She sheepishly admits she was a Democrat for 33 years.
