Anyone that can watch this video, which is absolute and incontrovertible proof of the Democrats complicitness in the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and still say that the current crisis is due to "the failed economic policies of George Bush" should immediately have their right to vote revoked.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media?
Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media? | NewsBusters.org
Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.
Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail. (h/t D. Keith Howington of www.dehavelle.com)
Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.
But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign soundbyte.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Kissinger Unhappy About Obama
Henry Kissinger believes Barack Obama misstated his views on diplomacy with US adversaries and is not happy about being mischaracterized. He says: "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality."
So much for that lie, Mr. Obama
Friday, September 26, 2008
Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?
This video is extremely hard to follow because it moves so quickly but it is too important to be ignored. Turn down the volume and pause where you need to.
This should be a 60-minute (not "60 Minutes") special on EVERY network but we all know they don't want to cover this.
I hope this video creator comes out with something that people can slow down and pay attention to. Apparently it is the 10-minute time limit on YouTube that forced him to try to cram all of this in.
Unbelievably damaging stuff.
Dirty politics from Camp Obama
Earlier this week, I wrote about the dirty tricks campaign against journalist Amir Taheri following his revelation that, in a private meeting in Iraq last July with Iraqi leaders, Barack Obama tried to persuade them to delay the agreement being hammered out with the US government on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to this account, which quoted Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshya Zebari (pictured), Obama had thus privately sought to undermine an American government foreign policy initiative – an explosive revelation. Taheri subsequently dismissed as tendentious Camp Obama’s response which he said deliberately confused two separate agreements under discussion; and he also revealed that, following publication of his story in the New York Post, he had been subjected to death threats, menacing calls about his tax status and passport, and a cyber-attack which disabled two of his email accounts.
Then Camp Obama tried another tactic. It told Jake Tapper of ABC News that Obama’s July meeting in Iraq
was also attended by Bush administration officials, such as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the Baghdad embassy’s legislative affairs advisor Rich Haughton, as well as a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
Those who attended this meeting said Taheri’s story was absolutely untrue and that
Obama stressed to al Maliki that he would not interfere with President Bush's negotiations concerning the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, and that he supports the Bush administration's position on the need to negotiate, as soon as possible, the Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with, among other matters, U.S. troops having immunity from local prosecution.
And so, Tapper thundered:
What actually demands an explanation is why the McCain campaign was so willing to give credence to such a questionable story with such tremendous international implications without first talking to Republicans present at Obama’s meeting with al-Maliki, who back Obama’s version of the meeting and completely dismiss the Post column as untrue.
Actually, it is Tapper and Camp Obama from whom explanation should be demanded. Sharp-eyed readers will already have spotted the flaw in their response. Taheri’s story referred to a ‘private’ meeting. Tapper’s story – and Camp Obama’s response quoting all those people who were reportedly also present – refers to an entirely different meeting.
Taheri wrote his report having spoken to a number of people in Iraq following Obama’s July visit. He has told me that Obama made these comments at a meeting in Baghdad with Foreign Minister Zebari before the meeting with al Maliki and the cast of thousands referred to in Tapper’s article. Dismayed by what he knew Obama had said to Zebari, Maliki actually tried to pre-empt Obama from saying the same thing to him – which would have put him in a difficult position by undermining his negotiations with the US government -- by getting his press spokesman to describe the forthcoming meeting with the US senators, in which Obama was pointedly not singled out, as a courtesy call where no substantive political matters would be discussed. In other words, alert to the political damage Obama might do to the negotiations with the US, Maliki tried to shut him up.
What is really extraordinary about this whole affair is that, in any event, Obama had said the same thing to Zebari the previous month on the Foreign Minister’s trip to the US. This had even been reported in the US media. On 16 June, the New York Times reported, after Obama’s conversation with Zebari in the US:
While the Bush administration would like to see an agreement reached before the summer political conventions, Mr. Obama said today he opposed such a timetable. ‘My concern is that the Bush administration, in a weakened state politically, ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some way might be binding on the next administration, whether it's my administration or Senator McCain's administration,’ Mr. Obama said.
On July 3, the New York Times reported these remarks by Zebari at a press conference in Baghdad:
Mr. Zebari said that on his recent trip to the United States, in addition to President Bush, he met with the presumptive presidential nominees, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat. He said that Mr. Obama asked him: ‘Why is the Iraqi government in a rush, in a hurry? This administration has only a few months in office.’ Mr. Zebari said he told Obama that even a Democratic administration would be better off having something concrete in front of them to take a hard look at.
Yet even while it was reporting what Obama had said, the US media had not seen fit to question the fact that Obama was trying to undermine US negotiations with Iraq. The implications went totally unremarked – until Taheri, who was previously unaware of these NYT reports, obtained his scoop from Baghdad.
In his latest put-down (not yet published) of the mounting attacks on the integrity of his reporting, Taheri sums up the nub of this whole affair:
1. The Bush administration is negotiating an ensemble of agreements regarding the status of US troops, the timetable for their withdrawal, and the future strategic cooperation between the two nations.
2. Senator Obama opposes these negotiations and urges an alternative set of talks in which the Congress is involved. (That would be a novel way of doing business in a system based on separation of powers.) He then tells the Iraqi Foreign Minister in private that his government had better postpone the agreements until there is a new administration in Washington.
3. The Iraqis are bewildered. They wonder whether there are two governments in the US at the same time. They also wonder what is the use of reaching an agreement that the next man in the White House could scrap in a few months' time. The negotiating process is slowed down and the prospect of an agreement, and thus a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, postponed for at least another year.
4. Although we are all fond of television-style courtroom dramas, the issue here is not who said what to whom and where and when. The issue is that Obama intervened in a process of negotiations between his government and a foreign power. He admits it himself as do all media accounts of the episode, although Senator Hagel, more royalist that the king, does not. My article was not a news story. It was an op-ed. The opinion I wanted to express was simple: no one would trust the United States if the leader of its opposition rejected agreements negotiated by its government in advance and without knowing what they looked like. The issue is that Obama has done, and admits that he has done, something that he should not have done: trying to second-guess an incumbent president.
The fact that the mainstream media is silent about this, while mud is thrown instead at Taheri, indicates once again the frightening hold gained by the quasi-religious cult of Obamania over our public discourse.
Media Not Reporting Failed Financial Agencies Are Big Donors to Obama
Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
In a 2005 video Daniel Mudd, at the time the interim CEO of the catastrophically failed mortgage lender Fannie Mae, affirmed his fealty and that of Fannie Mae to the Congressional Black Caucus. The top three campaign donation recipients were Democrats, number two of which was Barack Obama, yet the media is laying mum on these facts. One wonders what would be going on in the media if John McCain were a top recipient of campaign donations from a market crashing, government bail-out getting organization like Fannie Mae?
The three top campaign donation recipients from Fannie Mae were all Democrats. Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) got $165,000, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was given $126,349, and failed presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (D-MA) took $111,000 from the folks at Fannie Mae. Is this information getting out there?
Most of the top Fannie executives were also Democrats each of whom worked closely with Democratic presidents and Barack Obama. Franklin Raines, Clinton White House budget director, ran Fannie Mae and pocketed $50 million. Jamie Gorelick was a Clinton Justice Department Official (famous for adding to our intelligence failures helping cause the attacks on 9/11) was paid $26 million. Jim Johnson, who most recently served on Obama’s VP search committee, was the CEO of Fannie Mae and has also made millions. These Clinton/Obama associates sat at the head of a failing financial agency all the while raking in millions and donating hundreds of thousands to top Democrats.
So what, you may ask? Well, there is a reason that these Fannie Mae officials donated to Democrats. It was because Democrats continued to stymie Republican efforts to fix these failing lending agencies. Democrats protected these rotten lending practices and the Fannie Mae executives knew who were the sugar daddies that needed greasing.
McCain has his priorities straight - CNN.com
Yes, this really appeared on cnn.com. This is a wonderful commentary about the situation and one that the American people would do well to notice.
Commentary: McCain has his priorities straight - CNN.com
from the article
...I think McCain deserves applause for having his priorities straight. For the past several days, the media and members of both parties have been scaring the daylights out of the American people by calling this the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
This week, President Bush warned that our current situation threatens not just the lending industry but also the entire U.S. economy.
After all the doom and gloom, pundits were then somehow surprised when McCain decided to temporarily suspend his presidential campaign and return to his day job in Congress, where he tried to work out a bailout deal with his colleagues. Well at least most of his colleagues.
Despite having decried the economic crisis in near-apocalyptic terms in an attempt to lay blame on President Bush and, by association, McCain, the junior senator from Illinois didn't feel the urgency to show up for work and try to do what he could to address it. Obama certainly has standing and more than his share of influence. This is, after all, the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, he also looks like someone who is so focused on what he hopes will be his next job that he has lost interest in his current one.
McCain showed real leadership this week. And frankly, if we were more accustomed to seeing that sort of thing from our elected officials, we might be less cynical and better able to recognize it on the rare occasions when it surfaces...
Murtha sued over remarks
It's about damned time !!
The Tribune Democrat, Johnstown, PA - Murtha sued over remarks
In May 2006, six months after 24 people were killed in a small Iraqi town, U.S. Rep. John Murtha made a startling accusation.
American soldiers, he contended, had killed innocent civilians “in cold blood.”
Now, less than six weeks before the longtime Johnstown Democrat is up for re-election, a Marine involved in the now-infamous Haditha incident is suing Murtha for slander.
Justin Sharratt of Canonsburg, Washington County, left the Marine Corps last year. But he claims Murtha’s statements have caused “permanent, irreversible damage to his reputation.”
“What Murtha did is outrageous, and I am seeking punitive damages,” said Noah Geary, a Pittsburgh attorney representing Sharratt.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in Pittsburgh.
It includes Murtha’s statements from nationally televised interviews in 2006, including an exchange during a CNN interview with anchor Wolf Blitzer.
“There was an (improvised explosive device) attack, it killed one Marine, and then they overreacted and killed a number of civilians without anybody firing at them,” Murtha told Blitzer.
“That’s what you’re going to find out.”
At this point, though, seven of the eight servicemen charged in the incident have been cleared.
Geary said Sharratt was charged with three counts of unpremeditated murder but later was exonerated.
Sharratt, 24, was honorably discharged from the Marines, Geary said.
The lawsuit claims Murtha violated Sharratt’s constitutional rights to presumption of innocence and due process of law.
While Geary acknowledged that the congressman never mentioned his client by name, he said media reports did identify Sharratt. And the effects have been long-lasting, the attorney said.
“People see that on TV,” Geary said. “It becomes truth – it becomes a fact.”
He added that “Justin has had people approach him, giving him a hard time” in reference to Haditha.
And the suit says Sharratt has lost “significant employment opportunities” and “significant associational opportunities.”
Murtha, through a spokesman, offered no comment Thursday.
But when a different Haditha Marine filed a lawsuit against him in 2006, Murtha said he simply wanted to focus attention on troops who were “caught in the middle of a tragic dilemma” in war-torn Iraq.
“When I spoke up about Haditha, my intention was to draw attention to the horrendous pressure put on our troops in Iraq and to the cover-up of the incident,” Murtha said at the time.
The 2006 lawsuit is ongoing.
It was filed by Frank D. Wuterich, the only Marine not yet cleared in the Haditha incident.
Wuterich has pleaded not guilty to voluntary manslaughter charges, The Associated Press reported.
Haditha has become a political issue in western Pennsylvania.
Diana Irey, a Republican Washington County commissioner, often spoke of the Haditha Marines during her unsuccessful 2006 campaign against Murtha.
Republican William Russell, challenging Murtha this year, has resurrected the theme.
In fact, Russell’s campaign Web site features a “personal video message” from Justin Sharratt’s father, Darryl. And Russell’s only television ad has focused on Murtha’s Haditha comments.
Geary denied that Sharratt’s lawsuit is connected in any way to the Russell campaign.
Instead, he said, the legal action must be filed now because a statute of limitations for slander lawsuits is about to expire.
“There’s no political motivation whatsoever,” Geary said. “This is purely a legal endeavor.”
Nevertheless, Russell issued a statement on Sharratt’s lawsuit Thursday.
“I sincerely hope that Congressman Murtha will use this opportunity to admit his mistake and take responsibility for the harm his false accusations have done to Justin Sharratt and his family,” Russell said.
“Justin’s right to justice goes beyond politics.”
Murtha has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit.
Can someone please explain...
Why Barack Obama and the Democrats (and for the matter, the media) would even WANT the current financial crisis to be solved? Obama's only advantage comes from running down the economy. If things begin to get fixed before the election, it can only be bad news for him. Sort of the same way he handled trying to conduct foreign policy in Iraq and use it to his political advantage.
Couric Diminishes Gov. Palin
CBS New anchor Katie Couric ordered staff to drop all references to "Governor" or "Gov." from her interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. When a staff member pointed out that in other venues, Couric and CBS News had referred to Governor Palin's opponent, Joe Biden, using his title of "Senator" or the abbreviation, Couric, according to a CBS News editorial aide, sought approval from CBS News management to drop the "Governor" reference during her broadcast interview with Palin that began on Wednesday night.
I can't imagine the sounds that will come from New York and Washington, D.C. as the brains of the mainstream media pundits explode on November 4th when they realize that John McCain is President-elect and Governor Sarah Palin will be the VP.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths
American Thinker: Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths
"... the community organizer ... must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.'
-- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals"THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT --- An analysis of the Alinsky Model."
-- Hillary Clinton, BA Honors Thesis, Wellesley College, 1969.
"(Barack) Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing...."
-- The Nation
A psychopath is a person without conscience; someone who constantly breaks the moral rules of the community. Saul Alinsky was a "community organizer" who found a career that fit that personality disorder. In the Orwellian upside-down world of the Left, community organizers disorganize communities. That is the meaning of revolution, to overturn whatever exists today in the raw pursuit of one's own power.
Alinsky boasted about his close alliance with Frank Nitti, Al Capone's second in command in the Chicago Mob during the 1930s. Al Capone's Mob were domestic terrorists, and not for any noble cause either. They poisoned the Chicago politics of their era. Alinsky's close alliance with Frank Nitti tells us something crucially important today. Alinsky was also a lifelong ally of the Stalin-controlled Communist Party, at a time when Stalin was known to have murdered tens of millions of people. He was proud of building a bridge between organized crime and the power hungry Left. That tacit alliance may continue today.
Alinsky's personality fits the definition of a psychopath -- someone who has no guilt or shame toward others. But Alinsky also discovered how to teach psychopathic behavior to college students. That is the key to his success: To persuade hundreds of thousands of ignorant young people that it is much more moral to be immoral. Or, as Bill Ayers famously said, "Bring the Revolution home; kill your parents."
Bill Ayers is now a highly influential professor of education. That is not an accident; it reflects a deliberate program of radical agitation and propaganda through the school systems. If you want to know who brought down American education, Bill Ayers is part of the answer.
A lot of the Boomer Left is marked by psychopathic behavior, in politics and in the rest of life. That is why the actions of the Left are so shocking to many of us.
Alinsky's disciples -- including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- have a warlike political style. They learned politics as war from the Master. Obama is so well-trained in Alinsky tactics that he used to teach workshops on it. That is why Obama can knowingly violate Federal law against usurping the presidential power to negotiate with Iraq before ever getting elected. Actual election to head of state by the voters means nothing, just as it means nothing to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, who have negotiated with Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood in clear violation of law while serving in Congress...
Obama's $100K Englewood garden grant being probed
Obama's $100K Englewood garden grant being probed :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: The Watchdogs
A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.
The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.
Media covering for Obama
Washington Times - BLANKLEY: Media covering for Obama
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08 for the first time, the major media are consciously covering for one candidate for president and consciously knifing the other. This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
McCain temporarily suspends campaign to work on financial crisis.
Two simple words :
COUNTRY FIRST
There will be plenty of people on both sides of the aisle that will try to vilify McCain for this move. I don't care what they say - this is the right thing to do. Hopefully, he will get off work early enough on Friday to head down to Mississippi and kick Obama's ass in the debate but, if not, who cares?
Palin Meets World Leaders In NYC
This is almost laughable. Can you detect the message the AP is trying to get across with this story? Their disdain for this woman actually seeps out of them when they write.
It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the Republican vice presidential candidate, the mayor-turned-governor who has been outside North America just once.
Palin sat down with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The conversation was private, the pictures public, meant to pad her resume for voters concerned about her lack of experience in world affairs.
The self-described "hockey mom" also asked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for insights on Georgia, Russia, China and Iran, and she'll see more leaders Wednesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings.
It was shuttle diplomacy, New York-style. At several points, Palin's motorcade got stuck in traffic and New Yorkers, unimpressed with the flashing lights, sirens and police officers in her group, simply walked between the vehicles to get across the street. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, three hours behind Palin in seeing Karzai, found herself overshadowed for a day as she made her own rounds.
John McCain's presidential campaign has shielded the first-term Alaska governor for weeks from spontaneous questions from voters and reporters, and went to striking lengths Tuesday to maintain that distance as Palin made her diplomatic debut.
The GOP campaign, applying more restrictive rules on access than even President Bush uses in the White House, banned reporters from the start of the meetings, so as not to risk a question being asked of Palin.
McCain aides relented after news organizations objected and CNN, which was supplying TV footage to a variety of networks, decided to pull its TV crew from Palin's meeting with Karzai.
Overheard: small talk.
Palin is studying foreign policy ahead of her one debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, a senator with deep credentials on that front. More broadly, the Republican ticket is trying to counter questions exploited by Democrats about her qualifications to serve as vice president and step into the presidency at a moment's notice if necessary.
There was no chance of putting such questions to rest with photo opportunities Tuesday.
But Palin, who got a passport only last year, no longer has to own up to a blank slate when asked about heads of state she has met.
She also got her first intelligence briefing Tuesday, over two hours.
Randy Scheunemann, a longtime McCain aide on foreign policy, was close at hand during the sessions. Another adviser, Stephen Biegun, also accompanied her at each meeting and briefed reporters later in the day.
Karzai and Palin discussed some of the security challenges that still remain in Afghanistan, including cross-border insurgencies. They also talked about the need for more U.S. troops there, which both McCain and Democrat Barack Obama say is necessary, Biegun said.
With both Karzai and Uribe, Palin discussed the importance of energy security. With Uribe, the conversation also touched on the proposed U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement that McCain and Palin support but Obama opposes.
Her meeting with Kissinger, which lasted more than an hour, covered a range of national security and foreign policy issues, specifically Russia, Iran and China, Biegun said.
"Gov. Palin, in these meetings, is cognizant that she is a candidate for office, that she's not, that there is a president of the United States and she is in the middle of a campaign for president of the United States," Biegun said. "So rather than make specific policy prescriptions, she was largely listening, having an exchange of views and also very interested in forming a relationship with people she met with today."
Before Palin's first meeting of the day, with Karzai, campaign aides had told reporters in the press pool that followed her they could not go into meetings where photographers and a video camera crew would be let in for pictures.
Mr. Bush and members of Congress routinely allow reporters to attend photo opportunities along with photographers, and the reporters sometimes are able to ask questions at the beginning of private meetings before they are ushered out.
At least two news organizations, including AP, objected to the exclusion of reporters and were told that the decision to have a "photo spray" only was not subject to discussion. After aides backed away from that, campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the reporter ban was a "miscommunication."
On Wednesday, McCain and Palin are expected to meet jointly with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. Palin is then to meet separately with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Palin, 44, has been to neighboring Canada and to Mexico, and made a brief trip to Kuwait and Germany to see Alaska National Guard troops.
Biden Says Never Wanted To Partition Iraq
The man is incapable of telling the truth...
Biden Says Never Wanted To Partition Iraq | Sweetness & Light
Compare this with what he wrote just two years ago in the New York Times:
Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq
By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. AND LESLIE H. GELB
Published: May 1, 2006
...Iraq’s new government of national unity will not stop the deterioration. Iraqis have had three such governments in the last three years, each with Sunnis in key posts, without noticeable effect. The alternative path out of this terrible trap has five elements.
The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues. Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.
Decentralization is hardly as radical as it may seem: the Iraqi Constitution, in fact, already provides for a federal structure and a procedure for provinces to combine into regional governments.
Besides, things are already heading toward partition: increasingly, each community supports federalism, if only as a last resort. The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won’t and don’t want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can’t defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.
Some will say moving toward strong regionalism would ignite sectarian cleansing. But that’s exactly what is going on already, in ever-bigger waves. Others will argue that it would lead to partition. But a breakup is already under way. As it was in Bosnia, a strong federal system is a viable means to prevent both perils in Iraq.
Mind you, Mr. Biden’s latest claims can’t be explained away as a gaffe.
This is just a flat out lie.
And, by the way, Bosnia is partitioned — by any definition of the word.
If Ohio polling looks like Chicago, 'thank' Brunner
If Ohio polling looks like Chicago, 'thank' Brunner Cincinnati Enquirer Cincinnati.Com
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.
But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.
Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."
Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.
And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain.
Two Hamilton County voters have sued, accusing her of "the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters."
The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had a line at the top next to a box: "I am a qualified elector."
Brunner sent a memo telling county election officials to reject those applications for absentee ballots if the box was not checked. "Failure to check the box leaves both the applicant and the board of elections without verification that the applicant is a 'qualified elector'," she wrote.
But that's contrary to state law and Brunner doesn't have the authority, according to the lawsuit and an opinion from Hamilton County's Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters.
Ohio law allows voters to request an absentee ballot on the back of a grocery sack if they want to, as long as they include their name, address, date of birth, signature and either a driver's license number, last four Social Security numbers or a valid picture I.D.
There is nothing in the law about checking a box to verify a qualified voter. The voter's signature is enough, because that's what is checked to send ballots, said Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Greg Hartmann, who ran against Brunner in 2006 and is now county chairman for the McCain-Palin campaign. "It's just bald partisanship," he said. "She's trying to disqualify likely McCain voters."
The Deters opinion said "it is equally reasonable that the squares are intended simply as bullet points in an inartfully designed application."
Brunner said, "While state law does not require a check box, the McCain-Palin campaign designed its form to require that voters check a box to affirmatively state they are qualified electors."
Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester didn't buy it. "This is not a time to give people the appearance that voters are being suppressed," he said.
Majority Floor Leader Sen. Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, said, "Take the politics out and you'd think the state's chief elections official would err on the side of allowing people to vote."
State law requires local officials to notify voters if their applications are rejected. That will cause confusion, especially for elderly absentee voters, Hartmann said. It's also costly and time consuming in an election year.
Since the Florida debacle in 2000, most states have made voting easier. Ohio now lets anyone get an absentee ballot. This year, Ohio could again decide a close election - and Brunner is inviting the kind of lawsuits and suspicions that destroy public trust.
She said Hamilton County "may face other lawsuits or even challenges to the rights of those whose applications they would process" if her memo is ignored.
Brunner's web site says she "wants to ensure that Ohio elections are free, fair, open and honest; and to encourage the highest level of participation in our democracy." So why reject 1,500 voters in Hamilton County and thousands more in Ohio?
An honest mistake? With Brunner's partisan record, not likely.
Laying litigation landmines to lawyer the outcome if Democrats don't win? That fits like a tinfoil hat with her irresponsible attack on Ohio's voting machines.
Raw partisanship? Ring the jackpot bell.
"Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we've got Democrats in charge of the machines," Barack Obama said on Sept. 3.
I think he was talking about Brunner - the partisan secretary of state who is doing her best to bring Chicago elections to Ohio.
Contact Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson at 513-768-8301 or pbronson@enquirer.com
A Partisan Paper of Record
It is so refreshing to see a Republican candidate finally stand up to this rag and expose them for what they really are. It is up to us to get this story out there for everyone to see and know.
JohnMcCain.com - McCain-Palin 2008
A Partisan Paper of Record
Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.
In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis -- weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual -- since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.
Further, and missing from the Times' reporting, Mr. Davis has never -- never -- been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.
Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with...Paul Begala.
Again, let us be clear: The New York Times -- in the absence of any supporting evidence -- has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain's long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.
To the central point our campaign has made in the last 48 hours: The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.
Therefore this "report" from the New York Times must be evaluated in the context of its intent and purpose. It is a partisan attack falsely labeled as objective news. And its most serious allegations are based entirely on the claims of anonymous sources, a familiar yet regretful tactic for the paper.
We all understand that partisan attacks are part of the political process in this country. The debate that stems from these grand and sometimes unruly conversations is what makes this country so exceptional. Indeed, our nation has a long and proud tradition of news organizations that are ideological and partisan in nature, the Huffington Post and the New York Times being two such publications. We celebrate their contribution to the political fabric of America. But while the Huffington Post is utterly transparent, the New York Times obscures its true intentions -- to undermine the candidacy of John McCain and boost the candidacy of Barack Obama -- under the cloak of objective journalism.
The New York Times is trying to fill an ideological niche. It is a business decision, and one made under economic duress, as the New York Times is a failing business. But the paper's reporting on Senator McCain, his campaign, and his staff should be clearly understood by the American people for what it is: a partisan assault aimed at promoting that paper’s preferred candidate, Barack Obama.
Statement by Senator John McCain, May 25, 2006:
Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.
Out of bounds! Obama falsely accuses McCain of blocking stem-cell research
Two points of clarification necessary before proceeding:
First, I completely disagree with John McCain stance on embryonic stem-cell research, but that doesn't give Obama the right to lie about McCain's record.
Second, we need to get people discussing what is really the controversy when it comes to this issue. Conservatives are not against stem-cell research. Stem- cell research has shown great promise to cure a great many ailments. However, we are against EMBRYONIC stem-cell research which creates and destroys human life for the purpose of medical research. There are many other sources of stem-cells for this research that don't require the killing of a baby to complete.
Now, off my my soapbox and on with the story...
By Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers Tue Sep 23
Throw the flag on: Barack Obama .
Call: Pulling opponent by the face mask.
What happened: Obama is accusing John McCain of blocking stem-cell research, using a charged appeal from the mother of a diabetic child to slam McCain falsely as someone who’s blocking a cure.
“Stem-cell research could unlock cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s, too,” says an Obama radio ad that’s airing in selected states. “But John McCain has stood in the way. He’s opposed stem-cell research. Picked a running mate who’s against it. And he’s running on a platform even more extreme than George Bush’s on this vital research. John McCain doesn’t understand that medical research benefiting millions shouldn’t be held hostage by the political views of a few.”
The ad then hits home with an emotionally charged appeal from a woman who’s identified as the mother of a child with diabetes.
“For Maddy and millions of others, stem-cell research can unlock cures,” the woman says in the ad. ” Barack Obama understands that. But John McCain just doesn’t.”
Why that’s wrong: McCain doesn’t oppose stem-cell research. He supports it.
He’s voted to lift President Bush’s restrictions on federal financing and to expand federal financing of stem-cell research. At some political peril, he stood by that stand during the Republican presidential primaries, when it threatened to cost him support from social conservatives.
“Stem-cell research has the potential to give us a better understanding of deadly diseases and spinal cord injuries affecting millions of Americans,” McCain said in April 2007 as he voted to support federal financing...
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Biden Slips, Suggests FDR Was President When Market Crashed
Biden Slips, Suggests FDR Was President When Market Crashed - America’s Election HQ
WASHINGTON — Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today’s leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis.
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,”‘ Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.”
Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World’s Fair...
Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools
Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools - WSJ.com
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.
AP Photo
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.
The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.
The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.
Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.
Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.
The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yeah, right.
Do Barack Obama and Joe Biden speak to each other?
A nice collection of stories today that have Joe Biden directly contradicting the Obama campaign on a few different issues. I guess this is how you please everybody: If you like "clean coal" - Obama's your guy, if not - Biden's got you covered. If you want the government to bail out AIG - Obama's with you, if not - Biden's got you covered. If you think it's ok to pick on a man because he can't physically use a keyboard due to war injuries - Obama agrees, if not - Biden's got you covered.
Obama on Biden's Initial Opposition to AIG Bailout: "Joe Should Have Waited"
"What has been clear during this entire past ten days is John McCain has not had clarity and a grasp on the situation," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview that ran this morning.
Lauer was talking about how Obama hit Sen. McCain for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout -- saying he opposed it one day then announce he supported it the next day.
But, as Lauer pointed out, scarcely three minutes after McCain said he opposed the AIG bailout last week, "in an interview with Meredith Vieira, Joe Biden, your running mate was asked the exact same question, 'should the federal government bailout AIG?' And he said, 'No, the federal government should not bailout AIG. And I think that in that situation," Obama said, "I think Joe should have waited as well."
Biden Says Ad Mocking McCain Was ‘Terrible’
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama’s running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was “terrible” and would not have been done had he known about it.
...Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the “CBS Evening News,” Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it.
“I thought that was terrible, by the way,” Biden said.
Asked why it was done, he said: “I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we’d have never done it.”
Biden: "We're not supporting clean coal"
“No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make them clean. We’re not supporting clean coal.”
That's strange, Obama seems to feel differently, this is DIRECTLY from the Obama campaign web site.
Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology
Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.
Of course, it all depends on your audience. Telling them what they want to hear is a great way to get votes but a lousy way to lead a country.
Biden: ‘It’s Nice To Be Back In Coal Country’
CASTLEWOOD, Va. – In his first visit to Southwest Virginia, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, speaking at the United Mine Workers’ annual fish fry here on Saturday, was quick to tout his ties to coal.
“I hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pa.,” Biden said. “It’s nice to be back in coal country. … It’s a different accent [in Southwest Virginia] … but it’s the same deal. We were taught that our faith and our family was the only really important thing, and our faith and our family informed everything we did.”
All things to all people - how can you lose?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Smear videos against Palin linked to Obama campaign
National Defense Examiner: Smear videos against Palin linked to Obama campaign
A series of videos designed to spread lies about the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin has been connected to a professional Public Relations firm. Those videos also share production qualities used in pro-Obama videos produced by Obama media campaign strategist David Axelrod.
...also compared the smear videos to videos known to have been produced by David Axelrod's media company in support of the Obama campaign. The Jawa Report presents strong evidence that the female voice-over used in the smear videos is the same voice used in all of the Obama campaign videos from Axelrod's company. In addition, the investigators who routinely review jihadist videos for clues have determined that the video and production quality of the smear videos was high and likely done by a professional production company, not a “grassroots” effort.
...Based upon the evidence it appears that Axelrod likely orchestrated the smear campaign providing his media company resources to create the smear videos for the PR firm which launched the viral campaign. It was all meant to look like it came from some where other than the Obama campaign, a prime example of “astroturfing”.
Update: With in minutes of the revelation of this information at The Jawa Report the smear videos were taken down by the poster on Youtube. Anticipating this, the Jawans made a copy and reposted it.
Evil Republicans' Risky Scheme...
I thought I'd take a shot at doing some analysis of how people would have fared if they had the opportunity to invest their hard-earned social security money in the evil, risky, Republican scheme known as "privatization".
Surely, after recent events, this would show the problems with the plan and how the Democrats "saved" retirement for millions of Americans.
So I entered some data in a spreadsheet (many of you know what a numbers geek I am) and plotted out what has happened since this plan could have taken effect back when President Bush's first fiscal budget when into effect October 1st, 2001.
My calculations involved investing the employee's share (6.2% of their income) for someone making $50,000 per year in an S&P 500 Index fund (considered by many to be representative of "the market"). I did not perform any calculations for the employer's share (another 6.2%) and assumed this would stay in the current social security system. This makes the total "risk" no more than 50% of the funds contributed.
After enduring the "worst economy since Hoover", rising unemployement, an "illegal and expensive war", the collapse of the real estate market and the total failure of some of the biggest financial companies in the world, I was certain that all of this perosn's money would have been flushed down the drain.
What I found was nothing short of amazing. From October 1, 2001 to today's market open, this hypothetical person would have contributed $21,958.33 to their personal account. Their balance today would have been $23,679.20 - a GAIN of $1,720.87. Not much of a gain, mind you - but the amazing thing is this:
This paltry gain in one of the worst economic and stock market environments in our country's history still BEAT the gain that this worker received through the "safe and protected" current version of the Social Security system.
How bad does the current system have to be in order to actually perform WORSE than money invested in the stock market during these horrific events?
Click the graph below for a larger image.
Surely, after recent events, this would show the problems with the plan and how the Democrats "saved" retirement for millions of Americans.
So I entered some data in a spreadsheet (many of you know what a numbers geek I am) and plotted out what has happened since this plan could have taken effect back when President Bush's first fiscal budget when into effect October 1st, 2001.
My calculations involved investing the employee's share (6.2% of their income) for someone making $50,000 per year in an S&P 500 Index fund (considered by many to be representative of "the market"). I did not perform any calculations for the employer's share (another 6.2%) and assumed this would stay in the current social security system. This makes the total "risk" no more than 50% of the funds contributed.
After enduring the "worst economy since Hoover", rising unemployement, an "illegal and expensive war", the collapse of the real estate market and the total failure of some of the biggest financial companies in the world, I was certain that all of this perosn's money would have been flushed down the drain.
What I found was nothing short of amazing. From October 1, 2001 to today's market open, this hypothetical person would have contributed $21,958.33 to their personal account. Their balance today would have been $23,679.20 - a GAIN of $1,720.87. Not much of a gain, mind you - but the amazing thing is this:
This paltry gain in one of the worst economic and stock market environments in our country's history still BEAT the gain that this worker received through the "safe and protected" current version of the Social Security system.
How bad does the current system have to be in order to actually perform WORSE than money invested in the stock market during these horrific events?
Click the graph below for a larger image.
The 5 Richest Senators
The 50 Richest Members of Congress - Roll Call
I'm confused. This can't be right. As I scan the list of the richest Senators, I am somewhat taken a back by the fact that the partyo fo "the working man" seems to be filled with ultra-rich elitists. Someone needs to recalculate.
The 50 Richest Members of Congress
September 22, 2008, 12:00 a.m.
By Paul Singer, Jennifer Yachnin and Casey Hynes
Roll Call Staff
..Roll Call’s annual attempt to rank the riches of Members of Congress is hampered by one fundamental flaw: It is based on the lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms, which are extraordinarily unreliable sources of information.
The disclosure rules allow Members to report assets in broad categories, so there is no way to tell the difference between a $20 million investment and a $5 million investment. The top category on the Members’ forms is “over $50 million,” so it is impossible to accurately account for anything worth more than that — like a professional sports team, for example. There is also a gaping loophole for assets owned by the Members’ spouse or dependent children; anything worth more than $1 million in value can be reported as “over $1 million.” There is no way to tell whether that is $1.2 million or $1.2 billion.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
$230.98 millionThe Massachusetts Senator claims the mantel of richest Member in the 110th Congress. Kerry’s actual holdings, however — including those of wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, widow to ketchup heir Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) — are likely much greater.
In an April 2008 article, Forbes.com estimated Heinz Kerry’s net worth at $1 billion.
Kerry’s disclosure forms list the value of more than 180 assets — including Heinz family trusts and investment funds — only as “over $1 million,” rather than the more specific ranges including $1 million to $5 million. Senators are allowed to list assets in the “over $1 million” category only if the items are held independently by a spouse or dependent child.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
$80.40 millionA descendant of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the West Virginian’s vast assets remained stable in 2007, as his net worth increased by a little more than 1 percent.
Rockefeller’s fortunes are stored primarily in three blind trusts with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wachovia Corp. and United National Bank, valued at more than $50 million, $25 million to $50 million, and $5 million to $25 million, respectively.
Another family trust is listed at simply “over $1 million.”
The Senator lists at least $5.5 million in debt on two loans, down from $6.5 million in 2006, when he listed an additional $1 million loan from United National Bank in Charleston, W.Va.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
$55.33 millionLautenberg, who made millions from the payroll processing company he created five decades ago, reported that his total minimum assets jumped about 24 percent, from $45 million in 2006, but that number is still not very revealing. Lautenberg’s two biggest assets are two blind trusts that he set up for himself, each worth $5 million to $25 million. Together they count for $10 million of his assets for this list, though they could be worth five times that amount.
The major increase over last year appears to be in his wife’s assets. She has several family trusts in her name, mostly holding real estate, and between 2006 and 2007 she received additional assets from her mother, Lautenberg’s office said.
So in 2006, Lautenberg reported that through an entity called LCBS Corp. his wife held “over $1 million” of Mira Loma Associates, a company holding residential real estate in Riverside, Calif. In 2007, Mira Loma was listed twice at “over $1 million” — once as part of LCBS and once as a separate asset in Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg’s name. Several of her family trusts also purchased real estate and other assets worth more than $5 million in 2007.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
$52.34 millionTogether with her husband, financier Richard Blum, Feinstein claims a diversified portfolio that grew by $1.8 million, or an increase of just under 4 percent, since 2006.
The Californian lists assets with her husband that include ownership of all or part of numerous limited partnerships.
Among those, the Blum Family Partners, owned entirely by Blum, claims “over $1 million” in stock in RAE Systems, a manufacturer of chemical and radiation detection equipment. The fund also includes “over $1 million” in a real estate investment trust.
In addition, Feinstein lists a $5 million to $25 million investment in Carlton Hotel Properties in San Francisco and owns condos in both Tahoe City, Calif., and on Kauai in Hawaii, both valued at $1 million to $5 million.
Feinstein also lists at least $2 million in debt to Bank of America for two loans made to Blum Capital Partners.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.)
$47.62 millionMuch of Kennedy’s wealth stems from family trusts, and the Massachusetts Senator reported almost no change in 2007, with an increase of less than 1 percent.
Kennedy lists one family trust valued from $25 million to $50 million, as well as four trusts worth at least $5 million each and a blind trust totaling at least $1 million.
The Bay State lawmaker also owns a rental property in Hyannisport, Mass., valued at at least $1 million and lists a plot of undeveloped land in Lafayette, La., owned by his wife, worth from $500,000 to $1 million.
Kennedy lists $1 million in mortgage debt from Northern Trust Co. for his Hyannisport property.
The End of a Lie
With Morton Sobell's recent admission that both he and his comrade Julius Rosenberg were Soviet spies, “the end has arrived for the legions of the American left wing that have argued relentlessly for more than half a century that the Rosenbergs were victims, framed by a hostile, fear-mongering U.S. government.” For decades, the Left has painted the Rosenbergs, along with Alger Hiss and other Soviet spies, as martyrs for civil liberties, sentenced only for their political beliefs and opposition to the bi-partisan Cold War anti-Soviet foreign policy. This is not an issue out of the distant past; rather, the fight over whether they were innocent or guilty is “a crucial part of the ongoing dispute between right and left in this country.”
This is a long read but well worth it for those who would like to learn what the lunatic left has done to this country in its defense of people like these traitors.
How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis
Bloomberg.com: News by Kevin Hassett
...For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
Different World
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.
That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''
Mounds of Materials
Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.
But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
I'm puzzled (not really) by the mainstream media's lack of coverage of these massive campaign contributions to Barack Obama from the folks that created this monumental mess.
Obama steps in it...AGAIN!!!
You just have to love it when you put out an ad criticizing John McCain for saying something and then the person you claim knows more McCain and should be trusted says EXACTLY the same thing! He'll never learn - the way to lead is to lead, not stand by, do nothing and criticize the real leaders.
Palin draws crowd of 60,000 in The Villages
Palin draws crowd of 60,000 in The Villages | news-press.com | The News-Press
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told wildly cheering, flag-waving, chanting supporters that John McCain is "the only great man in this race" and promised Sunday he will fix the nation's economy if voters give the GOP four more years in the White House.
Can someone please explain...
...how Sarah Palin can draw a crowd of 60,000 people to an appearance and the press photographers present can't get a single picture of the crowd???
Click here to see what they managed to get. You would think since Joe Biden is averaging 2,000 people, that someone would want a picture of 60,000!!! Guess not.
Wonder why?
Friday, September 19, 2008
Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism - WSJ.com
This is what happens when you skim through everything you can find, trying to sling mud at your opponent. You get caught taking things, obviously out of context, and trying to tie them to racism. Will he pull the ads? Of course not - and the media will never call him on it.
Obama should be ashamed - but that's not possible when you have no shame...
Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism - WSJ.com Op-Ed by Rush Limbaugh
I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.
Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.
Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language television commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:
"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with . . . the intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much."
Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!"
And then a voice says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . . . and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain . . . more of the same old Republican tricks."
Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. Obama's connections to unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the attempt to tie me to Mr. McCain. But Mr. McCain and I have not agreed on how to address illegal immigration. While I am heartened by his willingness to start by securing the borders, it is no secret that we have fundamental differences on illegal immigration.
And more to the point, these sound bites are a deception, and Mr. Obama knows it. The first sound bite was extracted from a 1993 humorous monologue poking fun at the arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Here's the context:
"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."
My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers. I was criticizing the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed the treaty. There was no racial connotation to it and no one thought there was at the time. I was demeaning the arguments of the opponents.
As for the second sound bite, I was mocking the Mexican government's double standard -- i.e., urging open borders in this country while imposing draconian immigration requirements within its own borders. Thus, I took the restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and appropriated them as my own suggestions for a new immigration law.
Here's the context for that sound bite: "And another thing: You don't have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail."
At the time, I made abundantly clear that this was a parody on the Mexican government's hypocrisy and nobody took it otherwise.
The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions. Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society.
So, which party does OPEC like more??
Take a look at this graph of the history of the price of oil for the past ten years and then tell me which party has better policies for controlling the price of gasoline.
(click on the image for a larger version)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Democratic Congress May Adjourn, Leave Crisis to Fed, Treasury
The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.
Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven't ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.
One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that ``no one knows what to do'' at the moment...
...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the decision of Congress to adjourn. Lawmakers can always be recalled to Washington ``if there is a need to do so,''
This pretty much says it all. "We don't know what to do so we're going home". I happen to agree that the best thing for Congress to do is stay out of this mess BUT the time for them to stay out of it was years ago when they CREATED this mess. You don't get to muck up the entire economy based on some pipe dream 'big houses for everyone' and run out of town when it hits the fan.
In the last three months, this DEMOCRAT controlled congress has faced down two major crises, the need for offshore drilling and the mortgage meltdown, by doing what Democrats do best - cutting and running - they went home.
If only we could get them to stay there...
Biden: Wealthy Americans Must Pay More Taxes to Show Patriotism
Biden: Wealthy Americans Must Pay More Taxes to Show Patriotism - America’s Election HQ
WASHINGTON — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans...
...“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people,” Biden said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Here we go...
I have a question. If it so "patriotic" for wealthy Americans to pay higher taxes, why isn't Biden calling on everyone to be patriotic?
Biden says what he means without really meaning to. "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” Take from the rich and give to the poor. Robin Hood all over again, except, let's be more accurate. It's STEAL from the rich...
Another 'progessive' once said "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". That was Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto and father of Communism.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Get Your Class War On
Get Your Class War On - WSJ.com
Consider the current economic catastrophe, which has been building for a year. Just as it has taken down Countrywide, Bear Stearns, Indymac, Freddie, Fannie, Lehman, Merrill and Lord knows who else in the weeks to come, it has also pulverized the reigning conservative shibboleths of the past 28 years.
There is simply no way to blame this disaster, as Republicans used to do, on labor unions or over-regulation. No, this is the conservatives' beloved financial system doing what comes naturally. Freed from the intrusive meddling of government, just as generations of supply-siders and entrepreneurial exuberants demanded it be, the American financial establishment has proceeded to cheat and deceive and beggar itself -- and us -- to the edge of Armageddon.
This was a very disappointing article for me to read as it appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I felt compelled to write the columnist and share my thoughts. I've posted them here if you care to see them:
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:35 PM
To: 'thomas@wsj.com'
Subject: Get Your Class War OnMr. Frank,
As I was reading your article, I was thinking to myself “here’s a guy that almost gets it but doesn’t know he gets it” and then I ran into this statement:
“...this is the conservatives' beloved financial system doing what comes naturally. Freed from the intrusive meddling of government, just as generations of supply-siders and entrepreneurial exuberants demanded it be, the American financial establishment has proceeded to cheat and deceive and beggar itself -- and us -- to the edge of Armageddon.”
I am very disappointed that the Wall Street Journal would employ someone who so poorly understands what has been happening in the financial services industry. Greed, corruption and multi-million dollar CEO packages are a problem, but they are not THE problem. If the problem was in the millions, Wall Street would barely notice and business would continue as usual. But this is not the case.
The downfall of these organization was caused, not by being “free from the intrusive meddling of government”, but BECAUSE of the intrusive meddling of government. Billions and billions of dollars of loans that should not have been made to people who were not qualified to receive them. Loans that would have NEVER been made if the government wasn’t forcing the financial institutions to make unwise loans or face the public outcry of racism and not supporting the ‘working class’ of America.
For decades, centuries even, banks have done just fine when they are allowed to assess their own risks and take responsibility for the risks they choose to expose themselves to. It wasn’t until these government-forced, low-income, variable rate, subprime loans started defaulting that we ran into the problems we have today. No, the government didn’t invent the loans – but it created the environment that forced the banks to invent something that would allow people who wouldn’t normally qualify for a mortgage to get through the process.
Do the banks share some of the responsibility? Absolutely, and a good portion of it. But the problem arose when problems like these always do – when government sticks its nose into something it knows nothing about and makes decisions based on votes rather than sound financial judgment.
You got it partially right, Mr. Frank, this is due to a class war, you are just wrong about by whom that war is being fought.
Sincerely,
Author :)
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