Archive for September, 2008

Memo To Senator McCain: Turn Sarah Palin Loose

Posted on September 30, 2008. Filed under: Blogroll, Life, Links, Music, People, Politics, Raves, Video | Tags: Bill Bennett, Dennis Miller, Dennis Prager, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, John Gibson, John McCain, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, McCain, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, Mike Gallagher, Monica Crowlely, Morning in America, Neal Boortz, Palin, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan "Morning in America", Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Senator John McCain, Talk Radio, The Young Divas, turn loose sarah palin, Turn Me Loose |

The Young Divas – Turn Me Loose

Memo To: Senator McCain

Subject: Turn Sarah Loose

It is time to turn Governor Sarah Palin loose on the conservative base with interviews on talk radio.

Start with the diva of conservative talk radio, Laura Ingraham.

Follow this with interviews with the following conservative and libertarian talk show hosts:

Bill Bennett

Mike Gallagher

Neal Boortz

Glenn Beck

Rush Limbaugh

Sean Hannity

Mark Levin

Michael Reagan

Dennis Miller

Monica Crowlely

John Gibson

Hugh Hewitt

Michael Medved

Dennis Prager

Michael Savage

Dr. Laura Schlessinger

If you do this you will win.

The choice is yours.

Sunny & The Sunliners “Talk To Me” (OLDIE)

Cream – Sunshine of your Love

Hugh Hewitt got Sarah call and Bill Bennett replayed today on his show, Morning in America:

Sarah Palin on the Hugh Hewitt Show

Great interview.

Private Palin call your Mother you little stinker!

Governor Palin call Laura Ingraham Thursday!

Your are on a roll, go down the above list.

Ronald Reagan “Morning in America”

Background Articles and Videos

Sarah Palin: Babies, Guns, Jesus

“…RUSH: This is Sarah Palin and her accomplishments. Obama cannot make a speech like this.PALIN: In serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side, I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council and then elected mayor of my hometown where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first! (cheers and applause) I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. (cheers and applause) Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor, I stood up to the old politics as usual — to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. (cheers and applause) When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska — and we are now… (cheers and applause) We’re now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.RUSH: She’s doing it.

PALIN: I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration, and I championed reform, toned the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.

RUSH: Sarah Palin: babies, guns, Jesus. Hot damn! …”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_082908/content/01125111.guest.html

Palin Will Spend More Time With Couric, Cont’d [Byron York]

“…Some Republicans believe the McCain campaign made a fundamental mistake in the Palin rollout by focusing on those traditional broadcast networks. (The only other interview Palin has done was with Sean Hannity on Fox News.) Palin is the person who almost single-handedly repaired John McCain’s relations with the conservative base, and a base media strategy might have been a more effective one. If, a week or so after the Republican convention, Palin had done a lot of talk radio — Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, Levin, Bennett, Hewitt, etc. — she would have had widespread exposure to the voters most favorably disposed to her. Of course the campaign press corps would have complained, but they would also probably have been forced to use snippets from Palin’s talk-radio interviews, which means that what Palin said in a friendly atmosphere would ultimately make its way to an even wider audience, one that includes independents and undecided voters. After that radio immersion period — starting, say, about now — Palin would do interviews with everyone.

P.S. One more thought. I know I stressed talk radio above, but it would probably have been wiser for the McCain team to have fashioned a rollout combining talk radio, the blogosphere, and local news outlets in key states. Debuting Palin on a network newscast seems like, well, an old-fashioned kind of strategy. It certainly wasn’t a fresh approach. …”

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTQ1MDEzYmM1MWQ2NTg4MTYwN2Q1NTVkMDE0MjU2Njk=

Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Larry Kudlow

Charlie Rose – Sarah Palin

CNN Brown: ‘Free Sarah Palin

Chicago Trib’s news priorities: Nude Palin trumps economy

By Michelle Malkin

Financial crisis? What financial crisis? How about that nude Sarah Palin painting by a PDS-infected artist who used his naked daughter as the model?

Ick: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/30/chicago-tribs-news-priorities-nude-palin-trumps-economy/

LOL

Red State Update: Palin-Biden Debate (In Anticipation Of)

Background Articles and Videos

THE REAL SCANDAL

HOW FEDS INVITED THE MORTGAGE MESS

“…PERHAPS the greatest scandal of the mort gage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards – done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.

At the crisis’ core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards – no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness?

From the current hand-wringing, you’d think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards – at the behest of community groups and “progressive” political forces.

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” – claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications – but the overwhelming reason wasn’t racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances. …”

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_scandal_243911.htm

Bailout Fails!

Go Viral: STOP THE BAILOUT OR…. DEPRESSION?

Ron Paul Sept 25 2008 part 1

Ron Paul Sept 25 2008 part 2

Ron Paul: Bailouts NOT constitutional on Glen Beck

Kill the bailout: The House floor debate is on; Bill fails

“…220 against, 195 for, 19 not voting…

1:50pm Eastern…the Crap Sandwich fails …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/29/kill-the-bailout-the-house-floor-debate-is-on/

Privatizing Gains, Socializing Losses… Part 1

Privatizing Gains, Socializing Losses… Part 2

Dennis Lockhart on current mortgage-credit crisis – PART 1

Dennis Lockhart on current mortgage-credit crisis – PART 2

Dennis Lockhart on current mortgage-credit crisis – PART 3

Dennis Lockhart on current mortgage-credit crisis – PART 4

Dennis Lockhart on current mortgage-credit crisis – PART 5

Dennis P. Lockhart

“Dennis P. Lockhart (born February 1, 1947) is President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He assumed office on March 1, 2007.

From 2003 to 2007, Lockhart served on the faculty of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. From 2001 to 2003, Lockhart was managing partner at the private equity firm Zephyr Management, L.P.. Prior to this position, he worked for 13 years at Heller Financial, where he served as executive vice president and director of the parent company and as president of Heller International Group.

Lockhart held various positions, both domestic and international, with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup) between 1971 and 1988. Early in his career with Citibank, he served in Saudi Arabia, Greece and Iran. From 1978 to 1986, he served in Atlanta as senior corporate officer of the Southeast office of Citibank. From 1987 to 1988, he was head of the firm’s Latin American debt-to-equity swap investment program. He was also a member of the board of directors of several companies

Lockhart earned his B.A. from Stanford University in 1968 and his M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1971. His daughter, Dorsey Lockhart, is a Presidential Management Fellow at the State Department in Washington, D.C. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_P._Lockhart

Background Articles and Videos

Sturmabteilung

“The Sturmabteilung (help·info), abbreviated SA, (German for “Assault detachment” or “Assault section”, usually translated as “stormtroop(er)s”), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the NSDAP – the German Nazi party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s.

SA men were often called “brownshirts“, for the colour of their uniforms, and to distinguish them from the Schutzstaffel (SS), who wore black and brown uniforms (compare the Italian blackshirts). Brown-coloured shirts were chosen as the SA uniform because a large batch of them was cheaply available after World War I, having originally been ordered for German troops serving in Africa.

The SA was also the first Nazi paramilitary group to develop pseudo-military titles for bestowal upon its members. The SA ranks would be adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief among them the SS. They were very important to Hitler’s rise to power until they were superseded by the SS after the Night of the Long Knives. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

“ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members. With a membership of over 350,000, ACORN is organized into more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States, as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. The organization was born out of the American Civil Rights Movement. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke, George Wiley, and Gary Delgado.^[1] Maude Hurd has been National President of ACORN since 1990.

ACORN groups work through direct action, negotiations, and with public officials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now

ACORN

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.

http://www.acorn.org/

ACORN: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

“…The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley’s National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 70s invaded welfare offices across the U.S. — often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law “entitled” them. In the late 1960s, ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke was a NWRO organizer and a protegé of Wiley. Rathke also organized draft resistance for the militant group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the same period.

In 1970 Rathke – along with the aforementioned Wiley (best known for his effective use of the so-called “Cloward-Piven strategy,” which called for swamping the welfare rolls with new applicants and thereby creating an economic crisis) and Gary Delgado (a lead organizer for Wiley’s NWRO) – formed a new entity called Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The group’s name was later changed to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, but the acronym ACORN remained. Instead of focusing only on welfare recipients, ACORN’s mandate included all issues touching low-income and working-class people.

Rathke and his ACORN co-founders enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in a program (at Syracuse University) patterned after Saul Alinsky’s activist tactics.

Today ACORN claims 175,000 dues-paying member families, and more than 850 chapters in 70 U.S. cities in 38 states. (The organization is also active in Canada and Mexico). It owns two radio stations, a housing corporation, and a law office, and maintains affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. ACORN also runs schools where children are trained in class consciousness; a network of “boot camps” for training street activists; and operations that extort contributions from banks and other businesses under threat of racial violence and trumped-up civil rights charges. …”

“…On June 2, 2008, Wade Rathke stepped down from his role as ACORN’s chief organizer.

“…Also in 2008, ACORN publicly acknowledged that Dale Rathke — the brother of Wade Rathke — had embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN and affiliated groups in 1999 and 2000. ACORN further admitted that for eight years its executives had kept this information secret from almost all of their organization’s board members and from law-enforcement authorities. Wrote journalist Stephanie Strom in July 2008:

“Dale Rathke remained on Acorn’s payroll until a month ago, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him. ‘We thought it best at the time to protect the organization, as well as to get the funds back into the organization, to deal with it in-house,’ said Maude Hurd, president of ACORN. ‘It was a judgment call at the time, and looking back, people can agree or disagree with it, but we did what we thought was right.’”

According to Strom, Wade Rathke ”said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a ‘weapon’ into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.”

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968

Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them.

By Stanley Kurtz

“What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.

This is a story we’ve largely missed. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn. …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=&w=MA==

Written Testimony Of James TerryChief Public AdvocateConsumers Rights League

Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and

House Administration Subcommittee on Elections

Joint Hearing on

“Federal, State and Local efforts to Prepare for the General 2008 Election”

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:00 am

2141 Rayburn House Office Building

“…As part of CRL’s mandate, we monitor policy debates, news trends and the activities of organizations that style themselves as consumer advocates. Unfortunately, due to their long track record of questionable or corrupt practices with respect to housing and electoral activities, we are constantly forced to act as a watchdog for abuses by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

While all of the reported allegations noted in my statement are found in the public domain, such reports often go unnoticed by the national media. I therefore thank the Committee up front for focusing on these important issues confronting our country. …”

“…A Troubling and Long Pattern of Voter Registration Fraud “…The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.

In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.

A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.

When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.

Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.

Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.

In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn’s radical agenda amounts to “undisguised authoritarian socialism.” wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, “Acorn’s Nutty Regime for Cities.”

Acorn opposed welfare reform and opposes securing American borders to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Acorn was heavily involved a few years back in opposing Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to privatize failing New York schools. …”

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302914868143810

Kill the bailout: More ACORN funding?! (vid link added)

By Michelle Malkin

“…Just heard from several readers that Lindsay Grahamnesty told Fox that the Mother of All Bailouts includes a reported $100 million more in funding for the left-wing housing entitlement thugs and heavily tax-subsidized fraudsters at ACORN. Under the original bailout proposal, apparently, a large portion of any repayment of the $700 billion would go to Barack Obama’s good friends at ACORN with a smaller allocation to debt repayment. Readers heard him say it was 20 percent.

Told you not to trust Hank Paulson. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/25/kill-the-bailout-more-acorn-funding/

ACORN Watch: Targeting your kids

ACORN Watch, Pt II: Obama hid $800,000 payment to ACORN through “Citizen Services, Inc.” “…There’s much more to the story of Obama’s amended campaign finance reports than what Obama and the Obamedia will tell you. I will fill you in on what’s missing in a moment. What we have here, essentially, is Obama using a non-profit group called Citizens Services Inc. as a front to funnel payments to ACORN for campaign advance work. Obama officials say it’s no big deal. Nothing to see here. Move along. But where there’s left-wing laundering smoke, there’s fire. CSI has been the subject of a little-noticed complaint to the FEC by a Democrat who smelled something rotten going on between CSI, ACORN, and a left-wing 527, Communities Voting Together.

But first, the headline: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/22/acorn-watch-pt-ii-obama-hid-800000-payment-to-acorn-through-citizen-services-inc/

Power and Control: The Best Congress Fannie Mae Could Buy

By M. Simon

“…Which brings us to the Fannie Mae Foundation. A sweet little set up for handing out cash to a nice little outfit called ACORN among others. Here are a few of the grants to ACORN.

ACORN Housing Corporation – Dallas
Dallas, TX $20,000 approved in 1993
Support of a housing counseling program.

ACORN Housing Corporation – Little Rock
Little Rock, AR $1,000 approved in 1997
Ninth Maxwell Awards of Excellence honorable mention grant for a 9-unit affordable homeownership project using sweat equity.

ACORN Housing Corporation – Washington, DC
Washington, DC $3,386 approved in 1994
Support of computer equipment necessary to operate the Desktop Home Counselor.

ACORN Housing Corporation of Illinois
Chicago, IL $3,386 approved in 1994
Support of the purchase of computer equipment required to operate the Desktop Home Counselor.

ACORN Housing Corporation of Illinois
Chicago, IL $35,000 approved in 1994
Support of the placement of Americorps members with homeownership counseling programs.

ACORN Housing Corporation-National
Chicago, IL $100,000 approved in 2004
General operating support of an organization that helps families of limited means to secure and protect decent housing by providing housing counseling services, building homes, and educating policy makers in Chicago, IL; Phoenix, AZ; and Brooklyn, NY

OK so ACORN helps people who were barely qualified or totally unqualified get housing. So what would they be doing? Finding landlords who would rent to them? Well no. Landlords want to get paid. Fannie Mae had no such scruples. Ever hear of NINJA mortgages? Funny name, huh? It stand for No Income, No Job, No Assets. Just the kind of reliable folk honest lenders are looking for. People with a credit score of ∅.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2008/09/best-congress-fannie-could-buy.html

ACORN Watch: Voter fraud and mortgage scams on your dime

By Michelle Malkin

“…Barack Obama’s taxpayer-subsidized old friends at ACORN have been very, very busy lately. And ACORN Watch is here to give you the rundown on all the latest shenanigans on your dime.

* In Milwaukee, election officials are investigating fake names registered by ACORN workers– a favorite voter fraud 101 ploy of ACORN workers. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/07/acorn-watch-voter-fraud-and-mortgage-scams-on-your-dime/

ACORN – CSI – OBAMA. Someone else noticed!

“…It appears that Internet based information sites are not the only venues who have been tracking the goings on between Obama, CSI and ACORN. Recently the New York Times reported a mild suggestion of conspiracy between ACORN staff, employees of CCI (Citizens Consulting, Inc. – yet another 1024 resident) and Tides Foundation, to not talk about the Rathke ACORN embezzlement affair. It was spotted in the
Pittsburgh Tribune Review Wednesday in an Op-Ed titled: “Tides of ‘transparency’”, and subtitled appropriately: “keep your yaps shut.” Quotes the editorial:

“..is quite an irony for a bunch of leftists who have been known to yap at others for their lack of transparency.”

In today’s issue of the Tribune-Review there is a headline:

GOP: CAMPAIGN TRIED TO HIDE TIES WITH ACORN
Obama to mend spending report

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

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/22/acorn-%E2%80%93-csi-%E2%80%93-obama-someone-else-noticed/

Obama’s Ties To ACORN More Substantial than first believed

Rick Moran

“…Obama’s connection to this group has been shadowy – some work he did back in 1995 representing an effort by the group to get the courts to force Illinois to adopt the motor voter law. But Stanley Kurtz has uncovered even more ties that Obama has to this radical group:

The extent of Obama’s ties to Acorn has not been recognized. We find some important details in an article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago – The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board. The odd thing about this article is that Foulkes is forced to protect the technically “non-partisan” status of Acorn’s get-out-the-vote campaigns, even as he does everything in his power to give Acorn credit for helping its favorite son win the critical 2004 primary that secured Obama the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.

Before giving us a tour of Acorn’s pro-Obama but somehow “non-partisan” election activities, Foulks treats us to a brief history of Obama’s ties to Acorn. While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns – his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.

Not surprisingly it turns out that Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger – two radical clergy closely associated with Obama – have extensive ties to ACORN . Their views fit nicely within the ACORN anti-capitalist agenda that they have been pushing for years….”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/obamas_ties_to_acorn_more_subs.html

‘Community Organizing’ Deserves to be Ridiculed

September 6th, 2008 by Matthew Vadum

“…Then there’s the vote fraud factory known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN. ACORN describes itself as “the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.” ACORN, Sol Stern writes, “promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor.”

Obama previously worked for ACORN, directing its voter mobilization arm, Project Vote, a successful voter registration campaign that helped propel Democrat Carol Moseley Braun into the U.S. Senate by adding an estimated 125,000 voters to the rolls. Project Vote claims to conduct “non-partisan” voter registration drives, counsels potential voters on their rights, and litigates on behalf of the poor and “disenfranchised.”

Its greatest legislative accomplishment is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as Motor Voter. In his book Stealing Elections, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund argues that the law leads to voter fraud:

Perhaps no piece of legislation in the last generation better captures the ‘incentivizing’ of fraud… than the 1993 National Voter Registration Act…Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship. States also had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election official. Finally, states were limited in pruning ‘dead wood’ – people who had died, moved or been convicted of crimes – from their rolls. … Since its implementation, Motor Voter has worked in one sense: it has fueled an explosion of phantom voters.”

In 1995, Obama sued on behalf of ACORN for the implementation of Motor Voter laws in Illinois and won. That secured Obama an invitation to train ACORN staff. Obama later returned the favor when, as a member of the Woods Fund board, he approved frequent grants to ACORN. …”

http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/?p=273

Obama’s Three Strikes

By J.R. Dunn

“…A terrorist bomber, what may be the largest vote-fraud operation in history, and a political party calling for a socialist revolution in the United States. Obama has certainly been a busy little bee — though not too busy, it seems, to cover his tracks in all three cases. As well he might — anybody with such a history has a few questions to answer. And Obama knows this full well, considering the effort he’s put into ducking those exact questions since his campaign began.

But those questions must be asked and answered before November 4^th. Which, needless to say, is a job for Superwoman. Sarah Palin’s relentless hammering brought the Ayers story back to the surface. She must now tie the three strands together: Ayers, ACORN, the New Party, and pound at it until it can no longer be ignored. (Of course, this will be an extremely upsetting experience for Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, but that can’t be helped.)

If the three can be bundled, and the resulting package adequately presented to the American people, Barack Obama is through. American voters have made it clear time and again that they have no use for the political extremes of either left or right. Obama plainly suffers, at best, from a weakness for crackpot left-wing politics, and at worst from a yearning to create a revolutionary situation in American society. The first reveals an immature personality, one easily led and given to romantic concepts of how the world works. The second is evidence of serious maliciousness.

We require neither in the oval office.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obamas_three_strikes_1.html

Is America Ready for Obama? Is America Ready for a Socialist?

“…But, his socialist foundation was probably shaped most during those early days at the Socialist (Marxist) conferences he attended in New York City:

Obama wrote that the wealth and stark racial divisions of Manhattan in the early 1980s had a profound effect on him…
He went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn and started lecturing his relatives until they worried he’d become “one of those freaks you see on the streets around here.”

So, the real question that USA Today should be asking- but won’t -is not if America is ready for a “rookie” in the White House, but rather, if America is ready for a socialist in the White House!”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1768917/pos

Obama and His Socialist Agenda

Rick Moran

“We all knew that Barak Obama was liberal. But just how devoted he is to the nanny state has been a pretty well kept secret by both the Senator and his campaign. In fact, if you read most mainstream media accounts of where the Senator stands on a host of issues, you might think he was a candidate of the center or slightly left of Hillary Clinton. There has been much more discussion of Obama’s “themes” of empowerment and unity than there has been of specific policy proposals.

But Obama let his true colors show yesterday in a speech in Washington, D.C. about urban poverty. His “solutions” will sound familiar to those who listened to Lyndon Johnson’s poverty gurus and their fellow travelers under Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Promising massive government assistance with the help of private businesses (help that never seems to be asked for when the programs hit the streets), Obama goes Johnson one better by promising to empower unions to organize (read “intimidate”) just about everyone:

When I’m President, I will raise the minimum wage and make it a living wage by making sure that it rises every time the cost of living does. I’ll start letting our unions do what they do best again – organize our workers and lift up our middle-class. And I’ll finally make sure every American has affordable health care that stays with you no matter what happens by passing my plan to provide universal coverage and cut the cost of health care by up to $2500 per family.

And this 1960′s-style rhetoric about poverty should be a dead giveaway for those knowledgeable about how the left speaks in code words to mask their true intent:

The philosophy behind the project is simple – if poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence; failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.

If Obama and his socialist friends were to focus on what “actually works,” they would make school choice the law of the land, crack down on drugs and gangs, lower taxes in urban areas to encourage the growth of the private sector, and a host of other free market solutions that have been advocated for decades. Instead, we get the same old tired bromides about government intervention. …”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/obama_and_his_socialist_agenda.html

BARACK OBAMA, ACORN, & VOTER FRAUD……STEALING THE ELECTION IN BATTLEGROUND STATES FOR OBAMA!!

ACORN voter fraud in OHIO – October 2008

ACORN Obama and the Bailout

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 1 OF 2

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 2 OF 2

Rep. Waters Speaks About Obama at ACORN

What is a Community Organizer?

Lou Dobbs – Electoral Fraud Threat to Democracy

ACORN Obama and the Bailout

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 1 OF 2

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 2 OF 2

Rep. Waters Speaks About Obama at ACORN

What is a Community Organizer?

Lou Dobbs – Electoral Fraud Threat to Democracy

Obama complicit in voter fraud? — Obama’s ACORN connection

Acorn / Voter Fraud / Obama and Community Organizers

More ACORN Allegations

ACORN Vote Fraud

Representative from ACORN

ACORN Convention Member Speak Out

ACORN National Convention 2008, Detroit

ACORN Grassroots Democracy Campaign

Advocacy Group Partners With Countrywide

Shocking!—Democrats Trying to Give Bailout Money to Obama’s Owner ACORN

Devastating Video, Obama talks about job Ayers gave him

More ACORN Allegations

ACORN Vote Fraud

Representative from ACORN

ACORN Convention Member Speak Out

ACORN National Convention 2008, Detroit

ACORN Grassroots Democracy Campaign

Advocacy Group Partners With Countrywide

Shocking!—Democrats Trying to Give Bailout Money to Obama’s Owner ACORN

Devastating Video, Obama talks about job Ayers gave him

Ayers’ Weathermen planned “re-education”, genocide

By Michelle Malkin

“…Left-wing, taxpayer-subsidized ACORN fraudsters have been infiltrating the public schools.

Watch out: Your kid could be recruited to help assist and “organize” the “community” of homeless people, criminals, and illegal aliens signing up more dead people and fake people to vote for Obama. …”

Community Reinvestment Act

“The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law that requires banks and thrifts to offer credit throughout their entire market area and prohibits them from targeting only wealthier neighborhoods with their services, a practice known as “redlining.” The purpose of the CRA is to provide credit, including home ownership opportunities to underserved populations and commercial loans to small businesses. It has been subjected to important regulatory revisions. …”

“…Criticism

“…Critics claim that government policy encouraged risky lending[7] and the development of the subprime debacle through legislation like the CRA. Economics professor Stan Liebowitz writes that banks were forced to loan to un-credit worthy consumers with “no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.” The chief executive of Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, is said to have “bragged” that to approve minority applications “lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.”[8] Robert Gordon of the Center for American Progress disagrees, and quotes statistics that he claims show “independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.” He faults then-Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan for “cheering the subprime boom” in the banking industry.[9] Economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo counters Gordon, stating that independent mortgage companies are “middlemen” between banks, including those regulated by the CRA, and consumers and that in any case the CRA had caused tens of billions in defaults on mortgages by unqualified borrowers.[10] Economist Yaron Brook concluded succinctly, “The Government Did It:” through the stick of the CRA [and] the carrot of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the fed created the mortgage market debacle. [11] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Background Articles and Videos

Doomsday Event

”A doomsday event is a specific occurrence which has an exceptionally destructive effect on the human race.^[1] The final outcomes of doomsday events may range from a major disruption of human civilization, to the extinction of human life, to the destruction of the planet Earth, to the annihilation of the entire universe.

A 2006 poll by SciFi.com revealed that virtually all Americans believed that some sort of doomsday scenario could realistically impact the human race, and that many feel that such a scenario is likely to be man-made.^[2]

Background Articles and Videos

Michael Bloomberg – Origins of the Economic Crisis

Who’s responsible for the Freddie/Fannie mess?

Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial mess

Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

Did Someone Say Amnesty?
By W. James Antle III

“…Once again, House Republicans may be the key. Rumors circulated Thursday that only 45 to 50 of them are committed to voting for the bailout in its current form. The Democratic leadership is said to want 100 or so GOP votes in the lower chamber for cover if they are going to support the deal without pushing it further to the left. The conservative Republican Study Committee released a letter publicly opposing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s plan. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, an RSC alumni, has been muddying the waters in the Senate.

This debate does have a Tom Tancredo, however — a damn-the-torpedoes high-profile hardliner. Ron Paul has been all over television and had a commentary up at CNN’s website opposing even the concept of a bailout with the zeal of Tancredo’s opposition to amnesty. A devotee of Austrian economics, Dr. No prescribes tough medicine for what ails the economy: the liquidation of all bad investments in the name of risking recession now to prevent a credit-fueled calamity later. Paul would let the market get rid of the “misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand.”

Such a radical fix wasn’t always so outside of the conservative mainstream. Ronald Reagan accommodated Paul Volcker’s tight monetary policy even at the expense of the 1982 recession. Unemployment zoomed to 10.8 percent but prosperity returned after the Reagan-Volcker policy mix licked stagflation. But Republicans who haven’t forgotten this also remember how many members of their party were thrown out of office in the November 1982 elections.

Which brings us to the final advantage bailout proponents have over those seeking an immigration compromise: there is a much greater sense of urgency surrounding the economy as well as a popular expectation that the government must Do Something about it. Politicians are reluctant to stand pat while retirement portfolios vanish and mortgage foreclosures rise. Even if the long-term consequences of their actions are uncertain, they are fairly confident the short-term electoral consequences of inaction will be bad.

Opponents can still try to rally a skeptical public against the impending bailout as a costly giveaway that won’t actually solve the underlying problem, an amnesty for the financially reckless. It’s worked before.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13950

Kill the bailout: Call your GOP representative; Update: the deal details trickle out; No deal tonight; Paulson and the Dems bawl

“…Make the call: 202-224-3121.

Hope, however slim, lives:

Confident but not yet celebrating, congressional leaders agreed Thursday on a multibillion-dollar bailout plan for Wall Street aimed at staving off a national economic catastrophe. President Bush brought the two men fighting to succeed him to a historic White House huddle on how to sell a deal to lawmakers who were still resisting.

Private talks on Capitol Hill ended at midday with the announcement that an agreement in principle had been reached on a $700 billion financial rescue package that the Bush administration wants. Few details were immediately available.

There were signs that the conservative-leaning House Republican Caucus was not on board. Both of Congress’ Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, issued statements saying there was not yet an agreement. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/25/kill-the-bailout-call-your-gop-representative/

Henry Paulson

“…AKA Henry Merrit Paulson, Jr.

Born: 28-Mar-1946
Birthplace: Palm Beach, FL

Gender: Male
Religion: Christian Science
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Business, Government
Party Affiliation: Republican

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: US Secretary of the Treasury

http://www.nndb.com/people/788/000117437/

Henry Paulson

“Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is the United States Treasury Secretary and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. …”

“…Leader of U.S. government economic bailout efforts of 2008

Paulson was the designated leader of the Bush administration’s efforts in 2008 to federalize the cost of bad loans made by financial institutions.

Through unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Treasury, Paulson led government efforts to avoid a severe economic slowdown. He pushed through the conservatorship of government agency mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Working with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he influenced the decision to create a credit facility (bridge loan & warrants) of US$85 billion to American International Group so it would avoid filing bankruptcy.

In late September of 2008, Paulson, along with Ben Bernanke and Christopher Cox, led the effort to help financial firms by agreeing to use US$700 billion dollars to purchase bad debt they had incurred.^[27] Discussing his decision to take action, Paulson said: “It just happened dramatically. There was only one way that we could reassure the markets and deal with a very significant and broad-based freezing of the credit market. There was no political calculus. It was overwhelmingly obvious.”^[28]

On September 19, 2008, Paulson called for the U.S. government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more to rescue financial firms from nonperforming mortgages that threaten the stability of those firms.^[29] Due to his leadership and public appearances on this issue, the press labeled these measures the “Paulson financial rescue plan” or simply the Paulson Plan.^[30]

Conflict of interest

There has been some criticism of Paulson, with suggestions that Paulson’s plan may potentially have some conflicts of interest. This since Paulson is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a firm that may benefit from the plan. ^[31]^[32] Unlike the previous bailouts and managed liquidations of Goldman competitors Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros. and those of AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, in which shareholder value was largely wiped out, Goldman’s stock would likely rise under the Paulson plan, benefiting his former partners, because it would take distressed assets off of their balance sheet. ^[33]

The proposed bill would give him unprecedented powers over the economic and financial life of the U.S.. Section 8 of Paulson’s plan states: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”^[34]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson

Sarbanes-Oxley Act

“The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted 2002-07-30), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals, which cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of the affected companies collapsed, shook public confidence in the nation’s securities markets. Named after sponsors Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 334-90 and by the Senate 99-0. President George W. Bush signed it into law, stating it included “the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”^[1]

The legislation establishes new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management, and public accounting firms. It does not apply to privately held companies. The Act contains 11 titles, or sections, ranging from additional Corporate Board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the new law. Debate continues over the perceived benefits and costs of SOX. Supporters contend that the legislation was necessary and has played a useful role in restoring public confidence in the nation’s capital markets by, among other things, strengthening corporate accounting controls. Opponents of the bill claim that it has reduced America’s international competitive edge against foreign financial service providers, claiming that SOX has introduced an overly complex and regulatory environment into U.S. financial markets.^[2]

The Act establishes a new quasi-public agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. The Act also covers issues such as auditor independence, corporate governance, internal control assessment, and enhanced financial disclosure. …”"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Mark-to-Market

” accounting and finance, mark to market is the act of assigning a value to a position held in a financial instrument based on the current market price for that instrument or similar instruments. For example, the final value of a futures contract that expires in 9 months will not be known until it expires. If it is marked to market, for accounting purposes it is assigned the value that it would fetch in the open market currently. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market

All’s fair

Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The crisis and fair-value accounting

“…SO CONTROVERSIAL has accounting become that even John McCain, a man not known for his interest in balance sheets, has an opinion. The Republican candidate for the American presidency thinks that “fair value” rules may be “exacerbating the credit crunch”. His voice is part of a chorus of criticism against mark-to-market accounting, which forces banks to value assets at the estimated price they would fetch if sold now, rather than at historic cost. Some fear that accounting dogma has caused a cycle of falling asset prices and forced sales that endangers financial stability. The fate of Lehman Brothers and American International Group will have strengthened their conviction.

In response America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have not budged an inch. So, for example, banks will have to mark their securities to the prices Lehman receives as it is liquidated. The two accounting bodies already act cheek by jowl, and America will probably soon adopt international rules. Are they guilty of obstinately pursuing an abstract goal that is causing mayhem in financial markets? …”

“…Yet not all criticism of fair value can be so easily dismissed. The credit crunch has raised three genuinely awkward questions. The first of these concerns “procyclicality”. Bankers say that in a downturn fair-value accounting forces them all to recognise losses at the same time, impairing their capital and triggering firesales of assets, which in turn drives prices and valuations down even more. Under traditional accounting, losses hit the books far more slowly. Some admire Spain’s system, which requires banks to make extra provision for losses in good times, so that when loans turn sour their profits and thus capital fall by less. …”

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12274096

September 25, 2008: “Bailouts and Uncertainty” featuring Arnold Kling (Podcast)

http://www.cato.org/dailypodcast/podcast-archive.php?podcast_id=741

This’s WHY Democrats Wanted to Get Rid Of John McCain—Bailout Plan and ACORN

Shocking!—Democrats Trying to Give Bailout Money to Obama’s Owner ACORN

Coulter on “Bailout Plan”

Hannity Colmes Newt Gingrich Oppose This BailOut CALL Capitol Now 1-202-224-3121

The Bailout: the Mood on Main and Wall Streets

Obama/Bailout: “We have to act..Jobs..Homes..at Risk” $700B

Obama After White House Meeting

Barack Obama & Friends Caused U.S. Economic Crisis

Senator Reid Slams McCain for Derailing Bailout Negotiations

Sen. Schumer Calls John McCain Odd

President Bush Addresses Nation on Economic Crisis

Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout

Paulson:’We Had No Choice’

Charlie Rose – HENRY PAULSON, JR

Senator Jim Bunning Comments on Federal Bailout

Newt Lays It Out – Part 1 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Newt Lays It Out – Part 2 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Newt Lays It Out – Part 3 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Wall Street “Socialism”, the new moral hazard

Charlie Rose – Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Bill Moyers Housing Market Meltdown 1 of 2

Bill Moyers Housing Market Meltdown 2 of 2

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Richard Herring on Mortgage-backed Securities

Joseph Gyourko on Fannie, Freddie, and the Housing Bust

Franklin Allen on Past Crises

Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

Jeremy Siegel on the Resilience of American Finance

Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation

“NO BAILOUT” “YOU BROKE IT YOU BUY IT” Wall Street Protest

The Bailout and the USA economy

The Bailout continued

LOL

Red State Update: Bailout

Red State Update: Washington Fights Over Bailout Plan

Democrats responsible for Economic Disaster…

Solution to Our Economic Problems…

Background Articles and Videos

Ron Paul and Peter Schiff – America Financial Meltdow

Lobbying for a bailout – Lou Dobbs

CNN McCain bailout fate

Senator Jim Bunning Comments on Federal Bailout

Hannity Colmes Newt Oppose This BailOut CALL Capitol

Shocking!—Democrats Trying to Give Bailout Money to Obama’s Owner ACORN

Newt Lays It Out – Part 1 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Newt Lays It Out – Part 2 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Newt Lays It Out – Part 3 of 3 – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the bailout plan is a disaster.

Wall Street “Socialism”, the new moral hazard

Charlie Rose – Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Barack Obama & Friends Caused U.S. Economic Crisis

Bill Moyers Housing Market Meltdown 1 of 2

Bill Moyers Housing Market Meltdown 2 of 2

Ron Paul on the Global Financial Crisis

Ron Paul talks about Bernanke’s testimony

Majority of Americans oppose $700 billion bailout, poll finds

BY TOM INCANTALUPO

“…A Bloomberg-Los Angeles Times poll of more than 1,400 Americans conducted over the weekend found 55 percent of respondents opposed the use of taxpayer dollars to rescue private financial firms, even if their collapse hurts the economy. Another 33 percent were in favor and 14 percent weren’t sure.

Skepticism about the rescue plan among voters and Congress led President George W. Bush to speak about the $700-billion program in a televised address last night. The administration has said the proposal would alleviate what is being called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by having the government acquire bad, mortgage-related assets from financial institutions, enabling them to make new loans for businesses and consumers.

As many respondents see it, though, the proposal asks taxpayers to rescue greedy and reckless executives at major lenders who should have known that their financial houses of cards, built on subprime and other unreliable loans, would one day collapse. …”

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-libzreax0925,0,1707264.story

To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT) …”

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/mortgage_protest.htm

Bailout: Opposition to Bush proposal among GOP lawmakers

“…Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, told NPR this morning that he wouldn’t vote for the proposal as it stands.

“I believe it will be reconfigured,” he says. One of Shelby’s biggest concerns is the lack of specifics about the plan’s overall cost. He says doing “nothing’s always an alternative.”

“I think they might pass something, but I don’t think we should just pass a three-page proposal and give this kind of power, unfettered power, to the secretary of the treasury — and with more to come probably,” Shelby says.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., an outspoken critic of the bailout, says he plans to slow down the bill.

“There’s no question we’ve got a big mess here. But I’ll tell you the one sure thing is this mess was caused by the government. They broke it. I don’t trust them to fix it at this point,” he tells Fox News. “I see this as a trillion dollar band-aid that’s designed to get people past the next election, but it is not going to solve our problem. I think it’s going to make it worse by expanding our national debt, lowering the value of our dollar.” …”

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/09/bailout-opposit.html

Kill the bailout: Newt Gingrich gets on board

By Michelle Malkin

“I said it yesterday.

Newt Gingrich said it today.

Hans Bader sums it up succinctly: The Bush/Paulson bailout is “Inflationary, Unnecessary, and Unconstitutional.”

Yes, it’s time for ideological purity.

Kill it. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/23/kill-the-bailout-newt-gingrich-gets-on-board/

A Political “Solution”: Part II

by Thomas Sowell

“…But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been “shilling” for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie “fundamentally strong” and said there is no need for “panicking” about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him. …”

http://townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/09/24/a_political_solution_part_ii

Laugh Line of The Day

By Michelle Malkin

“…From Bush’s address to the nation tonight, urging taxpayers to fork over a trillion dollars to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to distribute to whichever failing banks he chooses, at home or abroad, in order to rescue them from their bottomless pit of toxic debt:

“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise.” …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/24/laugh-line-of-the-day/

Why Bailouts Scare Stocks

by Alan Reynolds

“…Owners of common stock are supposed to be last in line during an actual bankruptcy, getting leftover scraps after creditors pick a firm’s assets to the bone. But in anything short of that, patient stockholders stand a decent chance of eventually seeing some recovery in the share price, if and when the firm gets back on its feet.

And in the recent crises, bankruptcy was involved only in the case of Lehman – the one time the feds kept their hands off.

From Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chief Ben Bernanke on down, top officials have shown too little confidence in markets and too much confidence in themselves. As a result, anyone who’s still holding stock in a financial firm now faces a big new risk premium – because these companies are now subject to compulsory mergers on unfavorable terms (as with Bear Stearns, where the feds initially tried to force stockholders to take just $2 a share) or quasi-nationalization.

This new risk of forced mergers or a government takeover artificially depresses the stock prices of vulnerable firms. And Standard and Poors incorporates equity prices into its credit ratings – so the risk can also bring a downgraded credit rating. And a credit-rating drop triggers regulations that oblige the company to increase its capital – while simultaneously making it nearly impossible to raise capital.

Heavy-handed federal bailouts started this mutually reinforcing spiral rolling downhill by scaring anyone still holding stock in similar firms. And other regulations make it more likely to end badly. …”

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9650

‘Wall Street’ No Longer Exists

by Alan Reynolds

“…Since the 1933 regulatory wall has collapsed as definitively as the Berlin Wall, all the giant financial conglomerates now face oversight and regulation by the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Innocents who seek security in regulation need to recall, however, that not one of those august agencies exhibited timely foresight or concern about the default risk among even prime mortgages in some locations, or about any lack of transparency with respect to bundling mortgages into securities. People do not become wiser, more selfless or more omniscient simply because they work for government agencies.

Wall Street was always a metaphor, of course, but so are words like “bailout” and “toxic” debt. Nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was a bailout for creditors (who received windfall gains), not for stockholders or executives. The federally enforced shotgun marriage between J.P. Morgan and Bear Stearns at the initially ridiculous price of $2 a share was no bailout for Bear. The 11.3% federal loan to AIG, contingent on the potential expropriation of 80% of shareholder value, is no bailout either.

By contrast, what was done to stop a run on the money-market funds is a real bailout which could encourage them to hold risky paper and also make it tougher for commercial banks to attract deposits. The proposal to buy up mortgage-backed securities is a bailout too, though the beneficiaries are not just the tattered remains of Wall Street. The bailout consists of shifting the risk of loss to taxpayers. Actual losses could not reach $700 billion unless the securities were literally worthless, which would mean the value of the underlying real estate fell to zero.

What was “toxic” for investment banks is not equally toxic for the Treasury Department because the government does not even bother to keep a balance sheet, much less abide by mark-to-market accounting rules. A powerful motive for converting investment banks into commercial banks is to get around those onerous balance-sheet rules that required fire-sale pricing of securities that were virtually unmarketable during a panicky scramble for liquidity. Strict adherence to those rules made patience a vice and a “buy and hold” approach impossible. This confirms what many of us have long been saying about the foolishness of letting arbitrary bookkeeping rules dominate economic reality.

Turning Wall Street into a bunch of commercial banks is a solution of sorts to a problem aggravated by foolish mark-to-market regulations, not by the inevitable demise of the 1933 wall between investment banks and commercial banks. Something good may yet come out of all this, because that wall never made much sense in the first place. …”

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9660

The Financial Bailout (and the New Resolution Trust Corp.) Must Restore the Markets and Protect the Taxpayer

by David C. John

“…The House and Senate must have two objectives when putting together their versions of the financial bailout proposal made by the Treasury and Federal Reserve: They must (1) restore the markets and (2) protect the taxpayers. Congress should act clearly and decisively to address the turmoil in the financial markets and not burden this legislation with other issues, problems, or projects.

These objectives should be resolved in the regular order of business. This legislation must not become a Christmas tree. If it does, it will likely backfire, and the intentions of either or both objectives will fail. Sadly, the Senate’s version is already on the wrong track, and the House’s is likely to follow suit. …”

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2072.cfm

No bailout necessary

Earl Thompson

“…Our country’s leading financial officials (the heads of our Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank) have proposed to bail out an enormous array of overpaid wall street phonies in order to become a foreclosing creditor for 700 billion dollars worth of real estate debt — even though they know nothing whatever about collecting or foreclosing on non-performing real estate debt. They cannot possibly do their traditional jobs, which they have normally done quite respectably, under such an administrative burden. The mess would continue, perhaps even worsen.

All the Fed Chairman has to do is do is spend half that amount of fresh Federal Reserve Notes on U.S. Government Bonds and stop making a fool of himself by begging Congress for a favor that would just create a nightmare for him, and ergo the rest of us. What that simple inflationary monetary shock would do is immediately increase the U.S. price-level by just about 20%. The dollar would sink that much in the world’s money markets and this would (1) stimulate our economy out of its current recessionary threat; (2) raise the value of real estate by 20% and immediately end the wave of current real estate foreclosures; and (3) immediately restore liquidity and financial flexibility to our banks and financial institutions so as to end our current financial woes on the spot. …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/no_bailout_necessary.html

More on the diversity racket and the home loan debacle

By Michelle Malkin

“…Referencing my column yesterday on illegal immigration and the mortgage mess, Hans Bader at Open Market shares his experience. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails with similar stories. Tip of the iceberg:

When I and my wife, a legal alien, bought our house, the mortgage company told me that if my wife were an illegal alien, rather than legal, we would have qualified for certain loan programs with big banks. But because she was a legal alien waiting for her green-card (which she had recently applied for), we didn’t qualify.

Mark Krikorian, an activist against illegal immigration, argues that “we’re in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the “Diversity Recession” (if this doesn’t work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus ‘creditworthiness’ was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn’t everyone entitled to credit?” …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/25/more-on-the-diversity-racket-and-the-home-loan-debacle/

A Bailout We Don’t Need

By James K. Galbraith

“…Is this bailout still necessary?

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They’re called “loans.”

With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn’t, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.

Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund — a cosmetic gesture — and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary — as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can’t save everyone, and those investors aren’t poor. …”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403033.html

Glenn Beck Explains Fannie & Freddie & Racism & Extortion

Kudlow & Company, September 22, 2008

Bernie Sanders “You’re a socialist, Larry [Kudlow]” w Allard

Dodd and Kyle on the Bailout Package (part 1)

Dodd and Kyle on the Bailout Package (part 2)

Bernanke Warns Congress of Possible Recession

Dick Armey Discusses the Dodd/Frank Bailout Bill

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Richard Herring on Mortgage-backed Securities

Joseph Gyourko on Fannie, Freddie, and the Housing Bust

Franklin Allen on Past Crises

Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

Jeremy Siegel on the Resilience of American Finance

Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation

See I.O.U.S.A. themovie, visit the YouTube site

IOUSA Live – Panel Discusses our Fiscal Crisis

Buffett on Fannie / Freddie and Oil

Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout

Housing Bailout For Deadbeats Gamblers Liars Thieves

Part 1 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

New York Investing meetup organizer Daryl Montgomery discusses the origins of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the first episode of a multi-part series. The New York Investing meetup is an organization of 1800 independent traders and investors that provides unbiased stock market education and analysis. We also have a blog,”The Helicopter Economics Investing Guide” which can be found at:

http://nyinvestingmeetup.blogspot.com

Part 2 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 3 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 4 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 5 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

The Big Lie – The U.S. GDP Figures

Ron Paul vs. Ben Bernanke

Constitution Rally4Republic

LOL

Democrats responsible for Economic Disaster…

Solution to Our Economic Problems…

We’ve been lied to AGAIN…

Background Articles and Videos

Biden living up to his gaffe-prone reputation

“…Obama knew what he was getting when he picked Biden as his running mate: A veteran of six terms in the Senate, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, an Irish Catholic with working-class roots, a guy who had twice been tested in the arena of presidential politics.

And a human verbal wrecking crew. This is the fellow who nearly derailed his nascent presidential campaign last year by calling Obama bright and clean and articulate and who noted that you needed a slight Indian accent to walk into a Dunkin’ Donuts or 7-11 in Delaware.

The guy who, reading his vice-presidential acceptance speech from a TelePrompter, bungled McCain’s name, calling him “George” (“Freudian slip, folks, Freudian slip,” he explained).

The guy who, on the day Obama announced him as his running mate, referred to his party’s presidential nominee as “Barack America” and noted that his own wife, Jill, a college professor, was “drop-dead gorgeous” but who, problematically, possessed a doctorate.

The guy who has said he is running for president (not vice president) and who confused army brigades with battalions. Who referred to his Republican vice-presidential opponent as the lieutenant governor of Alaska.

Aides to Obama said that Biden’s propensity to misspeak could pose problems, particularly in the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 2. They are watching his performance on the trail warily, but so far have not tried to rein him in. …”

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/11/america/biden.php

Biden cites FDR’s leadership during 1929 market crash — but Hoover was in office at the time

Associated Press

“…”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.

FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term. The Democratic challenger appealed to the “forgotten man” by promising a “new deal” to solve the Depression era.

Democrats usually like to remind the public that a Republican was president during the 1929 stock market crash. During the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry’s campaign repeatedly cited Hoover as the last president until George W. Bush to oversee a loss of jobs during his time in office. …”

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/29639939.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUJ

The Gaffe Twins strike again

By Michelle Malkin

“…Geez, I thought McCain was off to bad starrt this week.

Then along came the Gaffe Twins again.

Joe Biden’s trashing his campaign’s moronic e-mail attack ad: “Terrible.” …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/23/the-gaffe-twins-strike-again/

Video: On clean coal, Biden takes bold stand against, um, Obama’s position; Update: McCain launches coalition to protect coal jobs

“…That’s twice now in about 18 hours that Biden’s undermined his own campaign. Are they just not cc’ing him on the memos anymore? Has the surging tide of Palinmania caused even Obama HQ to forget that he’s part of this campaign? Or is this all part of some dastardly Axelrodian plan to have him gaffe his way off the ticket, clearing the way for Her Majesty to come aboard and bring that stubborn 42 percent with her?

Not the only new gaffe of the morning either, do note. Exit question: Maybe this is all part of Al Gore’s master environmental strategy of China not having to go green until the U.S. does? …”

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/23/video-on-clean-coal-biden-takes-bold-stand-against-um-obamas-position/

Rush Launches “Operation S.O.B.”

“…Biden, on the trail with a fresh new set of gaffes under his belt, has Rush saying, “We’ve got to keep this guy on the Obama campaign”.

We’ve all seen the the wild internet rumors. We’ve all seen the viral email, Rush more than anyone. He says his inbox is overflowing with this email:

“On or about October 5th, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket,
citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed
to occur after the VP debate on 10/2.
There have been talks all weekend about how to proceed with this info.
Generally, the feeling is that we should all go ahead and get it out there
to as many blog sites and personal email lists as is possible. I have
already seen a few short blurbs about this – the ‘health problem’ cited in
those articles was aneurysm. Probably many of you have heard the same
rumblings.” …”

http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/rush-launches-new-operation-sob/

Joe Biden”Hillary better pick than me” someone tell obama.

JOE BIDEN SAYS OBAMA AD MOCKING MCCAIN WAS “TERRIBLE”

Joe Biden: Be Patriotic Pay Higher Taxes

Joe Biden puts down a gun owner

Biden Gaffe: Asks a Gentleman in a Wheelchair to Stand Up

Joe Biden: The Next President Is “Barack AMERICA!”

Match Made in Heaven: Biden VP to a Clean Obama

Joe biden racist gaffe to indian people

Sen. Biden Brags: “My State Was A Slave State”

Joe Biden On Barack Obama

Joe Biden on Renewables and Coal in Maumee, OH

Coal

Barack Obama and Joe Biden Gaffe Machines

CHARMIN CHATTY CATHY

1988 Road to the White House with Sen. Biden

Rush Rick Roll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

U. S. Television Chronology, 1875-1970

http://jeff560.tripod.com/chronotv.html

The Origins of Television

LOL

Red State Update: Biden Picked as Obama’s VP

Background Articles and Videos

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/10/03/do_facts_matter

Do Facts Matter?

by Thomas Sowell

“…The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain– which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years– including the present year– denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration “right-wing ideology” of “de-regulation” that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter? …”

Bank Mess Started With Gov’t Intervention

By THOMAS SOWELL

“…Blaming the lenders is the party line of congressional Democrats as well. What we need is more government regulation of lenders, they say, to protect the innocent borrowers from “predatory” lending practices.

Before going further down that road, it may be useful to look back at what got us into this mess in the first place.

It was not that many years ago when there was moral outrage ringing throughout the media because lenders were reluctant to lend in certain neighborhoods and because banks did not approve mortgage loan applications from blacks as often as they approved mortgage loan applications from whites.

All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in places where they would not otherwise put their money.

Banks’ Dilemma

The practice of not lending in some neighborhoods was demonized as “redlining” and the fact that minority applicants were approved for mortgages only 72% of the time, while whites were approved 89%, was called “overwhelming” evidence of discrimination by the Washington Post. …”

“…Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that they were not lending to, given the economic realities.

Forced Lending

The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they didn’t want to send money, and where neither they nor politicians wanted to walk.

Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody’s face, the government intervention that brought on this disaster in is supposed to save the day.

Politics is largely the process of taking credit and putting the blame on others — regardless of what the facts may be. Politicians get away with this to the extent that we gullibly accept their words and look to them as political messiahs.”

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=301532605156669

Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them.

By Stanley Kurtz

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=&w=MA==

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

ACORN groups work through direct action, negotiations, and with public officials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now

ACORN

http://www.acorn.org/

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 1 OF 2

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 2 OF 2

Rep. Waters Speaks About Obama at ACORN

What is a Community Organizer?

Lou Dobbs – Electoral Fraud Threat to Democracy

Obama complicit in voter fraud? — Obama’s ACORN connection

Acorn / Voter Fraud / Obama and Community Organizers

More ACORN Allegations

ACORN Vote Fraud

Representative from ACORN

ACORN Convention Member Speak Out

ACORN National Convention 2008, Detroit

ACORN Grassroots Democracy Campaign

Advocacy Group Partners With Countrywide

Shocking!—Democrats Trying to Give Bailout Money to Obama’s Owner ACORN

Community Reinvestment Act

“The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law that requires banks and thrifts to offer credit throughout their entire market area and prohibits them from targeting only wealthier neighborhoods with their services, a practice known as “redlining.” The purpose of the CRA is to provide credit, including home ownership opportunities to underserved populations and commercial loans to small businesses. It has been subjected to important regulatory revisions. …”

“…Criticism

“…Critics claim that government policy encouraged risky lending^[7] and the development of the subprime debacle through legislation like the CRA. Economics professor Stan Liebowitz writes that banks were forced to loan to un-credit worthy consumers with “no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.” The chief executive of Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, is said to have “bragged” that to approve minority applications “lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.”^[8] Robert Gordon of the Center for American Progress disagrees, and quotes statistics that he claims show “independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.” He faults then-Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan for “cheering the subprime boom” in the banking industry.^[9] Economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo counters Gordon, stating that independent mortgage companies are “middlemen” between banks, including those regulated by the CRA, and consumers and that in any case the CRA had caused tens of billions in defaults on mortgages by unqualified borrowers.^[10] Economist Yaron Brook concluded succinctly, “The Government Did It:” through the stick of the CRA [and] the carrot of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the fed created the mortgage market debacle. ^[11] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Subprime Pols

Government has been the principal factor preventing the “affordable housing” that politicians talk about so much.

By Thomas Sowell

“…In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the “affordable housing” that politicians talk about so much.Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans.The Community Reinvestment Act lets politicians pressure lenders to lend to people they might not lend to otherwise — and the same politicians are quick to cry “exploitation” when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk.

The huge losses of sub-prime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micromanage the economy.

Yet with all the fingerpointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state, and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them.

While financial markets are painfully adjusting and both lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky “creative” financing in the future, politicians show no sign of changing.

Why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered? …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjgwYzI4Njg3OWMxOGUzYmY0ZDMwYzYwNzkzYjc1NDI=

The Right Stuff…

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, September 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Subprime Crisis: President Bush’s financial team is now proving its mettle — and its expertise. Led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, it crafted a reasonable, workable response to the subprime meltdown.

“…Like so many others, we believe that government should largely remove itself from functioning markets. But in a case such as this, where a market has been seriously damaged due to regulatory excess, an obligation exists to help undo the damage.

That’s the case now with the subprime crisis and housing collapse, both largely due to decades of congressional incompetence.

With world credit markets seized up and little to show for piecemeal U.S. efforts to deal with the growing financial panic, Paulson and others on the Bush financial team late last week shifted course, crafting a systematic answer to the markets’ meltdown.

This was leadership writ large. Paulson spent decades on Wall Street as a trader and top executive at one of its flagship firms, Goldman Sachs, and his experience and market wisdom showed.

His controversial decision to create a new financial entity, modeled broadly on the 1980s-era Resolution Trust Corp., may just spell an end to this financial crisis. Congress, which has mostly sat on the sidelines during this crisis, should approve it right away.

Unlike the RTC, which owned actual properties, the new agency that Paulson’s Treasury is creating will buy up the impaired mortgage-backed securities and hold them for resale when the market turns favorable again.

For ailing financial markets, this was welcome tonic. At this point they care less about details of the agency than limiting the contagion of the subprime crisis so it will no longer contaminate global banks and investors’ balance sheets. Mission accomplished. …”

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306716096379423

Dispelling The ‘Deregulation’ Myth

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, September 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Politics: A dubious and dangerous idea seems to be gaining strength — that government caused the financial crisis by giving capitalism free rein. If anything, it hasn’t done enough of that.

“So why did banks and investment houses get into so much trouble? It will take a long and exhaustive post-mortem to answer that question fully, but one point is already clear: They made mistakes that had nothing to do with the 1999 law.

Commercial banks threw lending standards out the window in their rush to get new business. Like S&Ls of the 1980s, they would have gone wild without Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Washington, if anything, egged them on, but not because of free-market dogma. Banks and mortgage brokers were pumping up the homeownership numbers in America, and politicians were eager to take credit for that.

Wall Street, meanwhile, became a victim of its own innovation. It created new classes of derivative investments that spread — and, through leverage, amplified — the risk from the subprime mortgages produced by the banks. A new multitrillion-dollar market emerged almost overnight, lacking in transparency and reliable price signals. With their asset values in doubt, investment banks lurched toward insolvency.

If regulators failed here, it wasn’t because of policies adopted years before. It was more of the same story that has played itself out over and over in modern finance: Innovation races ahead of the rules. Crises tend to take almost everyone by surprise — including the major players as well as the regulators.

Careful study in the aftermath can lead to smart policies that cushion the blows of future shocks, but it doesn’t prevent them entirely. Nor should it. Capitalism needs some room for trial and error, bringing out new ideas and testing them in adversity.

In this respect, Gramm-Leach-Bliley has turned out to be smart policy indeed. By repealing the rule against banks owning investment firms, it has led to at least two crucial mergers — JPMorgan Chase absorbing Bear Stearns and Bank of America merging with Merrill Lynch. Morgan Stanley may be the next investment house to find shelter in a well-capitalized commercial bank.

You can spot the theme here: By taking down an outmoded firewall, the law is helping the financial industry cope with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. Far from being the cause, this instance of deregulation, or whatever you call it, is part of the cure.”

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306716557967194

Congress Lies Low To Avoid Bailout Blame

BY TERRY JONES

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 9/18/2008

“…Until now, Congress has been surprisingly passive. As Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid put it, “no one knows what to do” right now.

Funny, since it was a Democrat-led Congress that helped cause the problems in the first place.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently barked “no” at reporters for daring to ask if Democrats deserved any blame for the meltdown, you saw denial in action.

Pelosi and her followers would have you believe this all happened because of President Bush and his loyal Senate lapdog, John McCain. Or that big, bad predatory Wall Street banks deserve all the blame.

“The American people are not protected from the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,” Pelosi said recently, as she vowed congressional hearings.

Only one problem: It’s untrue.

Yes, banks did overleverage and take risks they shouldn’t have.

But the fact is, President Bush in 2003 tried desperately to stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from metastasizing into the problem they have since become.

Here’s the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003: “The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.”

Bush tried to act. Who stopped him? Congress, especially Democrats with their deep financial and patronage ties to the two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie. …”

“…In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.

That’s how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew to become monsters, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. mortgage loans. At the time of their bailouts this month, they held $5.4 trillion in loans on their books. About $1.4 trillion of those were subprime.

As they grew, Fannie and Freddie grew heavily involved in “community development,” giving money to local housing rights groups and “empowering” the groups, such as ACORN, for whom Barack Obama once worked in Chicago.

Warning signals were everywhere. Yet at every turn, Democrats in Congress halted attempts to stop the madness. It happened in 1992, again in 2000, in 2003 and in 2005. It may happen this year, too.

Since 1989, Fannie and Freddie have spent an estimated $140 million on lobbying Washington. They contributed millions to politicians, mostly Democrats, including Senator Chris Dodd (No. 1 recipient) and Barack Obama (No. 3 recipient, despite only three years in office).

The Clinton White House used Fannie and Freddie as a patronage job bank. Former executives and board members read like a who’s who of the Clinton-era Democratic Party, including Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Jim Johnson and current Rep. Rahm Emanuel.

Collectively, they and others made well more than $100 million from Fannie and Freddie, whose books were cooked Enron-style during the late 1990s and early 2000s to ensure executives got their massive bonuses.

They got the bonuses. You get the bill.”

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

Analysis: Washington’s Trillion Dollar Wall Street Bailout

James Pethokoukis

“…Is a bailout necessary?
Look, the financial system probably couldn’t take another week like the one we just went through. Stocks plunging, credit markets freezing. As economist Robert Brusca puts it, “The proposed US government rescue plan comes at the end of a week of almost unprecedented turmoil on world financial markets amid a crisis of confidence in banks.”

The government had to get ahead of the curve and quit reacting on a case-by-case basis. If you look at banking crises in Japan and Sweden, for instance, all roads eventually led to a government bailout with taxpayer money at risk. The rule in these cases seems to be the sooner, the better. If you want more evidence, markets around the world and here in the United States are soaring on this news. Strategist Richard Bernstein of Merrill Lynch, in a research note, says the bailout plan is “an opportunity for the government to solve the on-going problems through one system-wide solution.” …”

“…As long as we have markets and humans there will be bubbles, whether in stocks, homes, Beanie Babies, tulips, or whatever. But as far as the housing/credit bubbles go, I think it could have been avoided. Alan Greenspan cut rates too low and left them there for too long, creating an extreme financial situation that Wall Street tried to profit from. Uncle Sam also fed into that market distortion by making greater homeownership a national goal, using both tax policy and the regulation like the Community Reinvestment Act to, essentially, push capital into homes. And were regulators as tough as they could have been? Obviously not. …”

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/9/19/analysis-washingtons-trillion-dollar-wall-street-bailout.html

More on the diversity racket and the home loan debacle

By Michelle Malkin

When I and my wife, a legal alien, bought our house, the mortgage company told me that if my wife were an illegal alien, rather than legal, we would have qualified for certain loan programs with big banks. But because she was a legal alien waiting for her green-card (which she had recently applied for), we didn’t qualify.

Mark Krikorian, an activist against illegal immigration, argues that “we’re in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the “Diversity Recession” (if this doesn’t work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus ‘creditworthiness’ was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn’t everyone entitled to credit?” …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/25/more-on-the-diversity-racket-and-the-home-loan-debacle/

The Mother of All Bailouts = The Death of Fiscal Conservatism

“…Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just wrapped up his press conference announcing the Mother of All Bailouts. He said a “bold” approach was needed to achieve “stability” in the market.

Let me translate that.

“Bold” = Massively massive, taxpayer-funded rescue.

“Stability” = Privatizing profits and socializing losses on a scale we have never seen before in our lifetimes.

I have had it with Pollyanna conservatives who continue to parrot the “fundamentals of the market are great!” line.

The fundamentals of the market suck. The fundamentals of capitalism have been sabotaged.

Yes, yes, crony Democrats are to blame for much of how we got here. You don’t need to recite all the talking points back to me. I’ve been writing about the Fannie/Freddie debacle for years.

But it is September 19, 2008. And this is a Republican White House presiding over the Mother of All Bailouts. Every step along the way since stimuluspalooza began last summer, we’ve heard that every bailout step was just a one-off. Each step was supposed to calm the markets. Each new government intervention and allocation of taxpayer dollars was supposed to achieve “stability.” Each new package of goodies rewarding irresponsible behavior and bad financial decisions was supposed to prevent new ones. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/19/the-mother-of-all-bailouts-the-death-of-fiscal-conservatism/

Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage Crisis.

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Joseph Gyourko on Fannie, Freddie, and the Housing Bust

Franklin Allen on Past Crises

Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

Jeremy Siegel on the Resilience of American Finance

Richard Herring on Mortgage-backed Securities

Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation

Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout

Housing Bailout For Deadbeats Gamblers Liars Thieves

Part 1 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

http://nyinvestingmeetup.blogspot.com

Part 2 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 3 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 4 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 5 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

The Big Lie – The U.S. GDP Figures

Patrick Byrne and Don Harrold – Part One

Patrick Byrne and Don Harrold – Part Two

Patrick Byrne on Naked Short Selling

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P1

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P2

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P3

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P4

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P5

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P6

Rush On Franklin Raines

Hey Barack, Who’s Franklin Raines

LOL

Solution to Our Economic Problems…

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Bill Clinton…

Barack Obama is a freaking Socialist…

Background Articles and Videos

Sarah Palin appeals to the White Trash Vote

Chgo Sun-Times: ‘Sarah Palin Makes Me Sick’

By Michael M. Bates

“…So we know Mitchell’s primary symptom, but what’s the underlying cause? As it turns out, it’s an all too common complaint among the many suffering from Palin Derangement Syndrome:

“Frankly, Sarah Palin scares me.”

Don’t feel lonely, Mary. It’s going around these days.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch says of Palin, “She scares the hell out of me.” Actor Matt Damon calls the GOP vice presidential candidate “terrifying.” New Republic editor Noam Scheiber writes:

The reason Palin scares me has more to do with mechanics than demographics: Palin is such a sensation, and draws such large crowds, that anything she says–particularly attacks on Obama–immediately become part of the campaign conversation.

”Rock matriarch” – I guess that’s a nice way of putting it – Sharon Osbourne admits, “I’m scared of that woman with the glasses and gun! Ugh!”
And at a Web site that boasts “the latest in green gossip,” we learn that singer Pink “is terrified of Sarah Palin, says she ‘hates women.’”

The fear and terror engendered by Sarah Palin among Obamatons make Adrian Monk look like John Wayne. Then again, this could be an opportunity. Over at the official Barack Obama site, there’s a group designated Pagans for Obama. Perhaps the campaign could institute a group named Sissies for Obama. …”

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/michael-m-bates/2008/09/13/chgo-sun-times-sarah-palin-makes-me-sick

Miserable provocateur rails against conservative women again

By Michelle Malkin

“…Stare into the curdled face of Sandra Bernhard. Listen to her hiss. Off her meds? There are no meds to cure this hatred.

Sandra who, you say?

She’s that snarling, has-been friend of Madonna who does “comedy” or something.

And she last made headlines two years ago when she sold MAC lipstick by bashing conservative women as “little freaked out, intimidated, frightened, right-wing Republican thin-lipped bitch[es].” MAC defended her as a “provocateur.”

Hey, it worked last time. So, here she is again — going after Sarah Palin by imagining her gang-raped and lambasting her as a “turncoat bitch” and a “whore.” Of course. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/19/miserable-provocateur-rails-against-conservative-women-again/

Sandra Bernhard dishes Sarah Palin at Theater J

Damon Condemns Palin

Sarah Palin, Tina Fey on SNL

SNL Palin Fey Interview Couric http://www.videosara.com

“American women are so fortunate to live in the greatest country on Earth.”

By Michelle Malkin

“…Amen, Mrs. Schlafly!

Amen:

The feminist tirades against Sarah are mostly so tiresome, but one line of their complaints is really funny. After 40 years of telling wives and mothers to get out of the home (which Betty Friedan called “a comfortable concentration camp”), put their children in day care (tax-funded, of course) and join the workforce, these same feminists now tell Sarah to stay home with her children.

Sarah doesn’t need feminist approval for her lifestyle; the only person whose OK she needs for her double career as mother and politician is her husband’s, and he seems very happy with Sarah.

Sarah Palin is an exemplar of a successful, can-do woman, and the feminists simply don’t know how to deal with her. I hope she will usher in a new era where conventional wisdom recognizes that feminist negativism is ancient history and American women are so fortunate to live in the greatest country on Earth. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/21/american-women-are-so-fortunate-to-live-in-the-greatest-country-on-earth/

Obama unstained by Chicago Way

By John Lass

“…Yes, an excellent job. Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley’s spider. Almost, but not quite.

“I know there are those like John Kass who would like me to decry Chicago politics more frequently, and I’ll leave that to his editorial commentary,” Obama said.

Not the politics, just the corruption, I said then, wishing silently that he had decried it all, that he’d stood up years ago and pointed to the list of sleazy deals, pointed an angry finger at the Duffs, the white, Outfit-connected drinking buddies of Daley who received $100 million in affirmative action contracts through City Hall.

That’s an easy political commercial for the Republicans: Mobbed-up white guys party at the old Como Inn with Daley, and they get $100 million in city affirmative action contracts and Daley doesn’t know how it happened and Obama endorses the mayor in the name of reform.

Obama had nothing to do with the Duff deal. But he kept mum. He has endorsed Daley, endorsed Daley’s hapless stooge Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board. These are not the acts of a reformer, but of a guy who, as we say in Chicago, won’t make no waves and won’t back no losers. …”

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/obama_unstained_by_chicago_way.html

The View Get Heated Over Sarah Palin

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild gets schooled on CNN

Clinton Pal Goes for McCain

“…In recent months, she has been vocal about her distaste for Barack Obama, speaking openly about her distance with the current Democratic Party—although she vowed to stick with the party over the long-term. “I’m not becoming a Republican, I am a Democrat. I will remain a Democrat,” she said.

She said she has already informed family and business associates that she is taking the next few weeks off to do “whatever this campaign wants me to do” to elect McCain.

While many Clinton supporters have expressed outrage at the suggestion that they would support Palin just because she’s a woman, Rothschild was open to it. “For that reason, I love Sarah Palin,” Rothschild said about the Alaska governor’s gender. “I think she’s pretty cool. Of course we disagree on some issues.”

Asked about her disagreement with Palin over abortion rights—Rothschild supports them and Palin does not—she expressed frustration at what she described as the Democratic Party using the issue as a political “noose around women’s necks.” …”

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/17/clinton-pal-goes-for-mccain/

Reactions To Sarah Palin Nod

LOL

Red State Update: Sarah Palin Picked As McCain’s VP

Red State Update: Oprah Disses Sarah Palin

Oprah DOESN’T support women…

Sarah Palin RNC Acceptance Speech 1

Sarah Palin RNC Acceptance Speech 2

Sarah Palin RNC Acceptance Speech 3

Sarah Palin RNC Acceptance Speech 4

Sarah Palin RNC Acceptance Speech 5

Obama Religion Guns Flub,Controversy,Threaten to Define Him

Obama Says Sarah Palin Has Zero Experience. Let’s See…

“…Barack Obama said that Sarah Palin has ZERO experience. Let’s see if you agree… “

Dear Mr. Obama

Debby Boone – You Light Up My Life (1977)

Time for a Second American Revolution!

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

~William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth, Part II, (Act IV, Scene II)

“Although I profoundly believe in the basic principles of democracy as the only effective method which we have yet discovered of making peaceful change possible, and am therefore much alarmed by the evident growing disillusionment about it as a desirable method of government, much assisted by the increasing abuse of the word to indicate supposed aims of government-I am becoming more and more convinced that we are moving towards an impasse from which political leaders will offer to extricate us by desperate means.”

~Friedrich A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty

Background Articles and Videos

McCain’s Scapegoat

“”The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.”

Wow. “Betrayed the public’s trust.” Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn’t change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It’s also un-Presidential.

Take “naked” shorting, in which an investor sells a stock short — betting that it will fall in price — without first borrowing the shares he is selling from an investor who owns them. The SEC has never condoned the practice, and since 2005 it has clamped down on short selling in any stock that shows evidence of naked shorting. The SEC further tightened its rules against naked shorting just hours before Mr. McCain excoriated Mr. Cox for doing nothing.

The rules announced Wednesday will increase penalties and close loopholes that exempted broker-dealers from the rules against naked shorting. They also make it clear that deliberately selling short a stock whose shares cannot be borrowed is fraud under the Securities Exchange Act. That’s all to the good, we suppose; fraud is fraud. But regular short selling is not fraud. It adds valuable information to the market about what investors believe to be the price direction of a stock. Demonizing short-sellers as a band of criminals, or barring short-selling outright in financial stocks, as regulators in the U.K. did Thursday, removes information from the market.

Then there’s Mr. McCain’s tirade against the “uptick rule,” a Depression-era chestnut that investors could only short stock after a rise in that stock’s price. The SEC staff studied the effect of the uptick rule on prices for years, in a controlled experiment involving thousands of stocks. It found the rule had no effect. Other studies, including those that examined the uptick rule’s effect on stocks disclosing bad news, also found that it “protected” no one. The SEC’s permanent staff has long supported repeal and the SEC’s commissioners voted to do so unanimously in June 2007. …”

“…In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution. He’ll never beat Mr. Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178318884054675.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

The Rescue Mission
By the Editors

“…With his call for the creation of such an agency, McCain is finally on the right track. His harangues against boardroom greed and vague calls for more regulation were not adequarte for the moment. We were dismayed to hear him attack short-sellers in his speech Thursday. Short-sellers were among the first to blow the whistle on firms that gambled recklessly on home prices.

For allegedly failing to crack down on short-sellers, McCain also called on Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox to resign. We will always admire Cox for his achievements in Congress. But as SEC chairman, he granted exemptions that allowed the big five investment banks to play fast and loose with their capital requirements. As a result, three of those five banks no longer exist. If they and they alone had to deal with the consequences, this wouldn’t be a problem. But these institutions grew too big to fail, and now taxpayers are on the hook for $29 billion worth of Bear Stearns’s bad assets. McCain is right to demand that the chief regulator during a financial crisis be held accountable, even though he is wrong about the reasons why.

Compared to McCain, Obama’s speeches on the financial crisis have offered little substance. McCain seized the opportunity Thursday to point out that Obama’s planned tax hikes would come at the worst possible time for the fragile U.S. economy. So far, that economy has weathered the storm admirably thanks to relatively low tax rates. McCain’s tax plan is obviously more pro-growth than Obama’s, but it needs more middle-class relief to have real mainstream appeal.

A mortgage trust of the sort McCain has proposed looks increasingly like the least bad option for taxpayers. Congress should act on this idea before it adjourns for fall — before taxpayers become the unwitting owners of any more troubled financial firms. …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGM2OTUyYzczNTQwNDFjNzliZTFhMjQ0NjViZjVkNTM=

SEC chairman rebuke distances McCain from Bush

“…”Chris Cox is the most capable person I’ve ever known,” James C. Miller III, director of the Office of Management and Budget in the second Reagan White House, told The Washington Times. “I wish Senator McCain would focus on the getting President Bush’s other appointees to the SEC confirmed by the Senate.”

“…Mr. Miller said Mr. Cox had been forced to operate without other Senate-confirmed members of his commission for some time. “Chris heads a commission, not a dictatorship, and for a time was without a quorum for a long time,” he said.

One Republican official managed to defend Mr. McCain and Mr. Cox.

”It shows McCain is not afraid to take on fellow Republicans at any time,” said Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member and former California Republican Party chairman. “On the other hand, I don’t see how Chris Cox is responsible. …”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/19/sec-chairman-rebuke-distances-mccain-from-bush/

Congress Lies Low To Avoid Bailout Blame

BY TERRY JONES

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 9/18/2008

“…Until now, Congress has been surprisingly passive. As Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid put it, “no one knows what to do” right now.

Funny, since it was a Democrat-led Congress that helped cause the problems in the first place.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently barked “no” at reporters for daring to ask if Democrats deserved any blame for the meltdown, you saw denial in action.

“The American people are not protected from the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,” Pelosi said recently, as she vowed congressional hearings.

Only one problem: It’s untrue.

Yes, banks did overleverage and take risks they shouldn’t have.

But the fact is, President Bush in 2003 tried desperately to stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from metastasizing into the problem they have since become.

Bush tried to act. Who stopped him? Congress, especially Democrats with their deep financial and patronage ties to the two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie. …”

“…In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.

That’s how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.

Warning signals were everywhere. Yet at every turn, Democrats in Congress halted attempts to stop the madness. It happened in 1992, again in 2000, in 2003 and in 2005. It may happen this year, too.

They got the bonuses. You get the bill.”

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

Analysis: Washington’s Trillion Dollar Wall Street Bailout

James Pethokoukis

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/9/19/analysis-washingtons-trillion-dollar-wall-street-bailout.html

The Mother of All Bailouts = The Death of Fiscal Conservatism

Let me translate that.

“Bold” = Massively massive, taxpayer-funded rescue.

“Stability” = Privatizing profits and socializing losses on a scale we have never seen before in our lifetimes.

I have had it with Pollyanna conservatives who continue to parrot the “fundamentals of the market are great!” line.

The fundamentals of the market suck. The fundamentals of capitalism have been sabotaged.

Yes, yes, crony Democrats are to blame for much of how we got here. You don’t need to recite all the talking points back to me. I’ve been writing about the Fannie/Freddie debacle for years.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/19/the-mother-of-all-bailouts-the-death-of-fiscal-conservatism/

McCain Misfires

“…John McCain has just demonstrated his vulnerability as a presidential candidate. Speaking from prepared remarks at an Iowa rally today, he said that he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. This outburst demonstrates McCain’s ignorance, his impetuousness and his vindictive streak. Not bad for one remark.

McCain blames Cox for creating open season for “short sellers,” speculators who bet that a stock may go down. It’s true that short sellers helped to sink financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, and that they are now attacking the stock prices of the two remaining big investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. It is also true that last year Cox made short selling easier. But McCain’s threat to fire the SEC chairman is still outrageous.

The most basic reason is that a presidential candidate should not go about publicly pressuring the chairman of a regulatory agency. Government agencies are supposed to be professional and technocratic. They are not supposed to be political footballs. The more politicians brow-beat agency bosses, the less their technocratic decisions will be respected. McCain is damaging the machinery of government, dragging it into the mire of partisan discord. This is not consistent with his image as a good-government crusader.

Next, McCain’s comment is outrageous because his view of short sellers is crass. Betting that a stock will go down is just as legitimate a way to make money as betting that it will go up. Short sellers help to deflate bubbles before they get too much air in them. They dig into the books of companies and frequently are the first to blow the whistle on fraud. In normal times, at least, short sellers help markets to price stocks as they should be priced, thereby promoting the allocation of scarce capital to the firms that use it best. When Cox abolished a roadblock in the way of short sellers last year, he was doing the right thing.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/09/mccains_outrageous_outrage.html

John McCain singles out a fellow Republican for blame in Wall Street meltdown

Don Frederick

“…McCain did note that the chairman is a presidential appointee, though he avoided mentioning the particular president who put in office the fellow he so disdains. But other omissions were more telling.

Aside from not naming the chairman — Chris Cox (above) — McCain neglected to tell his cheering audience that this benighted public servant brought a sterling, and solidly Republican, resume to his job when he assumed it in August 2005. Cox was a one-time legal aide in Ronald Reagan’s White House who, staring in 1989, represented an affluent House district in California for many years (its core was Newport Beach). In Congress, he was a major player in formulating GOP policy, including a generally hands-off regulatory approach to business that McCain also advocated.

Here’s more on Cox’s background: After whisking through the University of Southern California in three years, he earned both a master’s in business administration and a law degree from Harvard. While still in the House, the Almanac of American Politics wrote that his “intellect and range of interests are impressive.”

Cox was confirmed for the SEC post on a voice vote — with nary an objection heard — by the Senate. The chamber’s members included McCain and Barack Obama (though we do not know whether either were on the floor at this moment).

No reaction yet from Cox to McCain’s attack on him. But boy, wouldn’t we love to know who he ends up voting for later this year (maybe he’ll pass on the presidential part of his ballot). …”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/john-mccain-sin.html

Six in 10 Oppose Wall Street Bailouts

But majority of Americans support the government helping people stay in their homes

“…A new Gallup Poll, conducted March 24-27, shows that 6 in 10 Americans oppose the federal government taking steps to help prevent major Wall Street investment companies from failing.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/106114/Six-Oppose-Wall-Street-Bailouts.aspx

Never Sell America Short
We’ve been through worse, and we can fix what ails us now.

By Larry Kudlow

“…A gathering consensus also seems to be forming around a new version of the Resolution Trust Corporation, which effectively disposed of bad savings-and-loan assets in the early 1990s. A new RTC could purchase underwater assets that proliferate through the financial system and are clogging the credit and loan arteries of our banks.

We clearly are in an emergency moment. But the government should opt for smart regulatory action rather than broad-based interference that could stifle the free economy. On Thursday afternoon, as rumors spread that Paulson was talking President Bush into a new RTC, the stock market soared 400 points. That’s what I call an endorsement.

The pessimists are now talking about the end of capitalism or a permanent decline of America. I don’t believe that for one moment. Specific regulatory reforms can get us out of this fix. And most of all, policymakers must maintain the low-tax, low-inflation, open-trade formula that has propelled this nation’s economy and produced so much prosperity for so long.

I say, never sell America short.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWNjZjZkZWQ0NzkxNDAwNzNjMWUzYmMzY2M4YWU2ODU=

Exposing Naked Short Sellers; Stopping Manipulative Traders

Senator Tester questioning Cox

Does Short-selling Need the SEC’s Oversight?

Ackman on Short Selling

SEC Chairman Cox on Naked Short Selling Anti-Fraud Rule

Naked Short Selling LEGAL from 2005 till this week?! P1

Naked Short Selling LEGAL from 2005 till this week?! P2

SEC Extends Short Selling Limits

Naked Short-Selling Ban Ends Tonight; Abusive Trading?

SEC Revs Up Short-Sale Crackdown – March 6

Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, the Rate Cuts and Inflation

Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage Crisis.

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Joseph Gyourko on Fannie, Freddie, and the Housing Bust

Franklin Allen on Past Crises

Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation

Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout

Housing Bailout For Deadbeats Gamblers Liars Thieves

Part 1 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 2 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 3 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 4 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 5 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Patrick Byrne and Don Harrold – Part One

Patrick Byrne and Don Harrold – Part Two

Patrick Byrne on Naked Short Selling

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P1

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P2

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P3

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P4

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P5

Bud Burrell on FSN about short selling, hedgefunds …P6

Rush On Franklin Raines

Hey Barack, Who’s Franklin Raines

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (commonly known as the SEC) is an independent agency of the United States government having primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry/stock market. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as 15 U.S.C. § 78d and commonly referred to as the 1934 Act). In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes.

The SEC is composed of five commissioners, of which no more than three can be from a single political party. Currently the SEC commissioners are; chairman Christopher Cox (R), Kathleen L. Casey (R), Troy A. Paredes (R), Luis A. Aguilar (D) and Elisse B. Walter (D).^[1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Securities_and_Exchange_Commission

SEC Biography: Chairman Christopher Cox

"Christopher Cox is the 28th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was appointed by President Bush on June 2, 2005, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on July 29, 2005. He was sworn in on August 3, 2005.

During his tenure at the SEC, Chairman Cox has made vigorous enforcement of the securities laws the agency's top priority, bringing ground breaking cases against a variety of market abuses including hedge fund insider trading, stock options backdating, fraud aimed at senior citizens, municipal securities fraud, and securities scams on the Internet. He has assumed leadership of the international effort to more closely integrate U.S. and overseas regulation in an era of global capital markets and international securities exchanges. He has also championed transforming the SEC's system of mandated disclosure from a static, form-based approach to one that taps the power of interactive data to give investors qualitatively better information about companies, mutual funds, and investments of all kinds. In addition, as part of an overall focus on the needs of individual investors, Chairman Cox has reinvigorated the agency's initiative to provide important investor information in plain English.

For 10 of his 17 years in Congress, Chairman Cox served in the Majority Leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was Chairman of the House Policy Committee; Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security; Chairman of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security; Chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland Security (the predecessor to the permanent House Committee); Chairman of the Task Force on Capital Markets; and Chairman of the Task Force on Budget Process Reform.

In addition, he served in a leadership capacity as a senior Member of every committee with jurisdiction over investor protection and U.S. capital markets, including the House Energy and Commerce Committee (as Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee); the Financial Services Committee; the Government Reform Committee (as Vice Chairman of the full Committee); the Joint Economic Committee; and the Budget Committee.

Among the significant laws he authored were the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which protects investors from fraudulent lawsuits, and the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which protects Internet users from multiple and discriminatory taxation. His legislative efforts to eliminate the double tax on shareholder dividends — the subject of a thesis he authored at Harvard University in 1977 — led to the enactment in May 2003 of legislation that cut the double tax by more than half.

http://www.sec.gov/about/commissioner/cox.htm

'Serious Times' For Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac's New Regulator

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

"..."These are very serious times for the mortgage market," James B. Lockhart III, director of the nascent Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, said in an interview after briefing more than 400 employees at a meeting in the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington. "We [will] need more people, not less.”

President Bush created FHFA this week when he signed a sweeping housing rescue bill into law. The agency merges three existing federal entities into a new, tougher regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The agency will also oversee the nation’s 12 Federal Home Loan Banks, which, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were chartered by Congress to improve the nation’s housing capacity.

FHFA combines the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OHFEO), which has been overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with the Federal Housing Finance Board, which regulates the home loan banks and a small unit of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Authority over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been greatly expanded. Lockhart, the director of OHFEO, became the head of FHFA when the president signed the housing bill Tuesday morning. Bush can now nominate a new director of FHFA and ask the Senate to confirm him or her to a five-year term. But congressional observers don’t expect any change at the top until a new president takes office next year.

The existing employees of the three agencies will be formally transferred to the FHFA no later than July 30, 2009. But Lockhart said that is likely to happen much sooner, perhaps this fall. …”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102927.html

Federal Housing Finance Agency

“…The Federal Housing Finance Agency is an independent federal agency created as the successor regulatory agency resulting from the statutory merger of the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), absorbing the powers and regulatory authority of both entities, with expanded legal and regulatory authority, including the ability to place government sponsored enterprises into receivership or conservatorship.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The enabling law establishing the FHFA is the Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008, which is Division A of the larger Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Public Law 110-289, signed on July 30, 2008 by President George W. Bush. One year after the law was signed, the OFHEO and the FHFB shall go out of existence. All existing regulations, orders and decisions of OFHEO and the Finance Board remain in effect until modified or superseded. James B. Lockhart III, the director of OFHEO, is the director of the new FHFA.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]

On the day of the law’s signing, James Lockhart stated:^[8] …”

Conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

“…On September 7, 2008, FHFA director Lockhart announced he had put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the conservatorship of the FHFA.[11][3] The action is “one of the most sweeping government interventions in private financial markets in decades”.[12] U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson , appearing at the same press conference, stated that placing the two GSEs into conservatorship was a decision he fully supported, and said that he advised “that conservatorship was the only form in which I would commit taxpayer money to the GSEs.” He further said that “I attribute the need for today’s action primarily to the inherent conflict and flawed business model embedded in the GSE structure, and to the ongoing housing correction.”.[13]

In the announcement, Mr. Lockhart indicated the following items in the plan of action for the conservatorship:

On September 8, 2008, the first day of the conservatorship, business will be conducted normally, with stronger backing for the holders of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), senior debt and subordinated debt.
The Enterprises will be allowed to grow their guarantee MBS books without limits and continue to purchase replacement securities for their portfolios, about $20 billion per month, without capital constraints.
As the conservator, the FHFA will assume the power of the Board and management.
The present CEOs have been dismissed, but will stay on to help with the transition.
Appointed as CEOs are Herb Allison, for Fannie Mae and David M. Moffett for Freddie Mac. Allison is former Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch and for the last eight years chairman of TIAA-CREF. Moffett is the former Vice Chairman and CFO of US Bancorp. Their compensation will be significantly lower than the outgoing CEOs. They will be joined by equally strong non-executive chairmen.
Other management action will be very limited. The new CEOs agreed it is important to work with the current management teams and employees to encourage them to stay and to continue to make important improvements to the Enterprises.
To conserve over $2 billion annually in capital the common stock and preferred stock dividends will be eliminated, but the common and all preferred stocks will continue to remain outstanding. Subordinated debt interest and principal payments will continue to be made.
All political activities, including all lobbying, will be halted immediately. Charitable activities will be reviewed.
There will be financing and investing relationship with the U.S. Treasury via three different financing facilities, to provide critically needed support to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the liquidity of the mortgage market. One the three facilities is a secured liquidity facility which will be not only for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and also for the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks that FHFA also regulates. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Housing_Finance_Agency

Naked short selling

“Naked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of selling a stock short without first borrowing the shares or ensuring that the shares can be borrowed as is done in a conventional short sale. When the seller does not then obtain the shares within the required time frame, the result is known as a “fail to deliver.”

In the United States, naked short selling is covered by various SEC regulations. In 2005, “Regulation SHO” was enacted to curb the practice, requiring that broker-dealers have grounds to believe that shares will be available for a given stock transaction, and requiring that delivery take place within a limited time period.^[1]^[2] As part of its response to the crisis in the North American markets in 2008, the SEC issued a temporary order restricting fails to deliver in the shares of 19 financial firms deemed systemically important.^[3] Effective September 18, 2008, following the the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history by Lehman Brothers, the SEC made permanent and expanded the rules to remove exceptions and to cover all companies.^[4]

Some commentators have contended that despite existing regulations, naked shorting is widespread and that the SEC regulations are poorly enforced, although the SEC has denied these claims. However, the SEC and others have also defended the practice in limited form as beneficial for market liquidity. Its critics have contended that the practice is susceptible to abuse, can be damaging to targeted companies struggling to raise capital, and has led to numerous bankruptcies.^[4]^{[citation needed] …”}

“…Extent of naked shorting

Regulators downplay the extent of naked shorting in the US. At a North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) conference on naked short selling in November 2005, an official of the New York Stock Exchange stated that NYSE had found no evidence of widespread naked short selling, and alleged “fear mongering that there’s this rampant naked shorting that’s gone unregulated.”^{[citation needed]} Cameron Funkhouser, NASD senior vice president of market regulations, noted that although companies have alleged stock manipulation through the Berlin stock exchange, the NASD has seen not one instance of naked short selling [on the Berlin stock exchange]“. An official of the SEC said that “While there may be instances of abusive short selling, 99% of all trades in dollar value settle on time without incident.”^[7] Of all those that do not, 85% are resolved within 10 business days and 90% within 20.^[7]

The SEC’s short selling FAQ also cites common misconceptions about the practice, such as the belief that naked shorting causes “phantom” shares to enter the market, as one source of confusion over the practice’s market effect. Naked short selling, the SEC said, would not increase a company’s shares outstanding shares nor result in “counterfeit shares.”^[2] Short seller David Rocker contended that failure to deliver securities “can be done for manipulative purposes to create the impression that the stock is a tight borrow.” In such a situation, the failure to deliver would be on the part of “longs,” not “shorts.”^[8]

Statistics on failures to deliver securities are sometimes used as evidence of naked short selling in specific stocks. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated in January 2008 that “fails-to-deliver can occur for a number of reasons on both long and short sales. Therefore, fails-to-deliver are not necessarily the result of short selling, and are not evidence of abusive short selling or ‘naked’ short selling.”^[9]

However, Robert J. Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs, has claimed that naked short selling has cost investors $100 billion and driven 1,000 companies into the ground.^[10] Ralph Lambiase, head of the Connecticut Securities Agency and the NASAA, declared his disappointment at how the industry was handling the issue as a whole.^{[citation needed] …”}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling

Deep Capture

http://www.deepcapture.com/

Background Articles and Videos

Leadership Speaker Series: George Soros (Part 1 of 2)

“…CPL director David Gergen interviews George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. …”

Leadership Speaker Series: George Soros (Part 2 of 2)

“..CPL director David Gergen interviews George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. …”

Neil Cavuto’s interview of George Soros Part 1

Neil Cavuto’s interview of George Soros Part 2

Charlie Rose – George Soros / Arianna Huffington

“…Segment 1: Billionaire philanthropist George Soros talks about his new book, The Age of Fallibility.

Segment 2: We conclude with Arianna Huffington, editor of the blog The Huffington Post. Her new… “

George Soros

“George Soros (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,^[2] Hungarian IPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]) (born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz) is a Hungarian-born American financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist.^[3]

Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

George Soros Web Site

http://www.georgesoros.com/

George Soros says more banks will go under; speaks of a “meltdown” and the 1930s
By Newsnight interviews George Soros
Sep 17, 2008, 08:33

“…Soros: “Well I’m afraid we are not through it at all. In some ways we are heading into the storm rather than coming out of it. And right at this minute we are at the very precarious moment because the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers has thrown the financial markets into turmoil.”

Newsnight: What do you think will happen? More banks go under?

Soros: Well, certainly more banks but maybe not the size of Lehman. But right now an even larger company, American International which is an insurance company is under pressure and a rescue is being prepared and the question is whether it will be successfully put together.

Newsnight: So was it right then to step in? Do you think AIG should be rescued? Do you think Lehman should have been rescued?

Soros: Whether Lehman should have been rescued depends on whether the financial system survives it or not. If the financial system survives it, then it was the right thing to do to let them go bust. If there is a meltdown, then it wasn’t because one thing is clear that you musn’t allow the financial system to collapse as it did in the 1930s. They’ve been reluctant to put taxpayers money at risk but if necessary, I’m sure they will do it.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_28248.shtml

GUIDE TO THE GEORGE SOROS NETWORK

“George Soros is one of the most powerful men on earth. A New York hedge fund manager, he has amassed a personal fortune estimated at about $7.2 billion. His management company controls billions more in investor assets. Since 1979, his foundation network – whose flagship is the Open Society Institute (OSI) — has dispensed an estimated $5 billion to a multitude of organizations whose objectives are consistent with those of Soros. (The President of OSI and the Soros Foundation Network is Aryeh Neier, who, as Director of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy, personally created the radical group Students for a Democratic Society in 1959.) With assets of $859 million as of 2005, OSI alone donates scores of millions of dollars annually to these various groups, whose major agendas can be summarized as follows:

promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
promoting socialized medicine in the United States
promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization”
bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike …”

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=589

Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute

“…Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include the following. (Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the “Groups” section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org): …”

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Organizations%20Funded%20Directly5.htm

From the great editors at the Investor Business Daily:

The Soros Threat To Democracy

“…George Soros is known for funding groups such as http://MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire’s backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute, which gave him “legal and media advice”?

That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

That’s not the only case. Didn’t the mainstream media report that 2006’s vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?

Turns out that wasn’t what happened, either. Soros’ OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.

So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI’s glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI’s 2006 annual report.

Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too.

Do people know last year’s Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — for the terrorists.

OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called “Secure Flight,” which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.

They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer? …”

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/ibd-the-george-soros-threat-to-democracy

IBD Editorials

George Soros & MoveOn.org

In this exclusive series, IBD takes a look at George Soros, MoveOn.org and the impact they’re having on the Democratic Party and American politics.

The Soros Threat To Democracy

Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire’s backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.

George Soros: The Man, The Mind And The Money Behind MoveOn

The Left: The smear ad published against Gen. Petraeus has drawn attention to its sponsor, MoveOn.org. But the fingerprints of the group’s chief financial backer, George Soros, were all over it. Who is this man and what is he up to?

A Party Bought And Paid For

Election 2008: MoveOn.org once crowed that it had bought and owned the Democratic Party. With the Senate now blasting its tactics, that’s an open question. But not, apparently, for Democrats running for president.

http://ibdeditorials.com/series4.aspx

The Evolving Agenda of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance

“…The Democracy Alliance, as we observed in the January 2008 issue of Foundation Watch (”Billionaires for Big Government: What’s Next for George Soros’s Democracy Alliance?”), is slowly maturing and becoming more focused in its objectives.

Could it be that the Democracy Alliance has finally adopted a firm business plan?

Since its founding in 2005, the DA, a liberal donors’ collaborative that aims to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups–a kind of “vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement, has focused on fairly well-established pressure groups, watchdogs and think tanks, get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations, and political action committees (PACs). These bread-and-butter liberal groups have included:

Media Matters for America
Center for American Progress
People for the American Way
New Democratic Network
Progressive Majority
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Center for Progressive Leadership
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
EMILY’s List
America Votes
Sierra Club
Center on Budget and Policy …”

“…The Democracy Alliance’s “Letter of Interest” invited applications for the 2009/2010 giving cycle from all nonprofit groups on the left, but expressed special interest in organizations that do the following types of work:

* Building power and capacity in key constituencies: engagement and issue advocacy work with key constituencies, primarily Latinos and young people, as well as African Americans and unmarried women.
* New media and technology: content generators, aggregators and distributors that disseminate and amplify progressive messages.
* Law and legal systems: working to advance and protect progressive values and policies at all levels of the legal system.
* Early stage idea generators: focusing on progressive idea generation and development at the early and middle stages of the idea cycle including journals, academic networks, books, and non-traditional think tanks..
* Content generation: focusing on traditional and new media vehicles that are capable of developing and effectively promoting progressive ideas.
* Civic engagement coordination: achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in mobilization and participation work through collaboration and coordination and creating economies of scale.
* Civic engagement tools: increasing capacity and availability of data services, including online organizing services for civic engagement groups.
* Election reform: focusing on structural reforms of our democratic process that will increase voter participation among progressive constituencies.
* Youth leadership development: building on the youth development part of the leadership pipeline that includes looking for organizations targeting young people that work at scale.
* Mid-career nonprofit leadership development: building on the mid-career development part of the leadership pipeline that includes looking for organizations working at scale. …”

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4920

George Soros’ Social Agenda for America

Drug Legalization, Euthanasia, Immigrant Entitlements and Feminism

“Summary: The February issue of Foundation Watch examined the philanthropy of the billionaire financier George Soros. It found that Soros-funded groups supported increased government spending and tax increases, and opposed the death penalty and President Bush’s judicial nominees. In this article author Neil Hrab looks at Soros grants in four other policy areas: drug legalization, euthanasia, immigrant entitlements, and feminist organizing. …”

http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/x3770435801.pdf

Is Global Warming Alarmist James Hansen a Shill for George Soros?

By Jake Gontesky

“…The claims against anthropogenic global warming skeptics are often the same: they’re all shills for big oil or other industry wishing to poke holes in the ‘consensus theory’ of global warming (which isn’t a consensus at all). Under the so-called “politicization of science” program, George Soros’ (the favorite fundraiser of many democrats) has reportedly given as much as $720,000 to Hansen to help package his alarmist claims and get them pushed by the mainstream media (The Soros Threat to Democracy):

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?

That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.

So he got some big paychecks from Soros – but was there a quid pro quo? The evidence certainly indicates as much:

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

Did Soros’ funding pay off? You be the judge. Do a quick google search on James Hansen to read any of the thousands of mainstream media stories touting Hansen’s claims of censorship by the Bush administration. This wouldn’t be the first time credibility questions have been raised regarding Hansen and his alarmist claims [see "When does 1,400 Media Interviews = Muzzled" (03/20/07)].

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jake-gontesky/2007/09/26/global-warming-alarmist-james-hansen-shill-george-soros

Friedrich Hayek

“Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (May 8, 1899 – March 23, 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought in the mid-20th century. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century.^[1] One of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, he also made significant contributions in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”^[2] He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.^[3] He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back to towards classical liberalism after the 1980s. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Karl Popper

“Sir Karl Raimund Popper (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) was an Austrian and British^[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is known for repudiating the classical observationalist/inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsification instead; for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, “the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy”^[2] and for his vigorous defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the “open society” possible. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

Capitalism Doesn’t Work, Mr. Gates?
I just have to smile when billionaires turn cold shoulders to the blessings capitalism bestows.

By Larry Kudlow

“…

The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2008 Index of Economic Freedom reveals how free-market economics is spreading like wildfire while state-run socialism is on the decline. And it’s no wonder why. The free-market countries are prospering mightily while the least-free economies are mired in poverty. We’re talking North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Iran. Also noteworthy is Venezuela. As the neo-socialist Hugo Chavez attempts to adopt Fidel Castro’s failed economic model, he’s sinking his nation toward Cuba-type poverty.

Economist Mark Perry, on his Carpe Diem blog site, reports that both the U.S. share of world GDP and its global stock market capitalization are shrinking. But this isn’t a bad thing at all. It doesn’t mean that America is heading downwards. On the contrary, it means that newly freed economies are heading up.

The reality here is that the rising tide of global capitalism is lifting all boats that employ it. Capitalism works. It’s a good thing. It’s the key to unlocking a nation’s prosperity. In fact, free-market capitalism is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised by man.

Another billionaire, George Soros, the Davos partygoer who finances near every left-wing political-action group on both sides of the Atlantic pond, recently wrote in the Financial Times that the era of capitalism is coming to an end. Soros, of course, has been predicting this for at least twenty years — through the greatest world boom in history. And how was it that Soros made his money? Trading currencies in the technologically advanced world financial markets, the very same markets that were spawned by 20th century free-market capitalism.

So I just have to smile when billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros turn cold shoulders to the blessings capitalism bestows. Or when their buddy, Warren Buffett, broadcasts the importance of hiking tax rates on successful earners and investors.

Look fellas, the command-and-control, state-run economics experiment was tried. It was called the Soviet Union. If you hadn’t noticed, it was a miserable failure. …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzMyNDA1MWQyMWMwOTQ3YTk4NDM1ZDNlZWU0MTlkMWU=

McCain and Leadership in a Time of Financial Crisis

By Ed Lasky

“…Since Barack Obama seems to have hung up the hope and change mantra for now to adopt the populist demagoguery that has sunk Democratic presidential hopefuls in the past, McCain should practice some jujitsu and turn Obama’s argument against him.

Barack Obama is the hedge-fund candidate in terms of findraising according to the New York Times. He and his fellow Democrats — including New York Senators Schumer and Clinton — are the darlings of Wall Street. Obama has enjoyed outsized donations from hedge fund managers and Wall Streeters.The granddaddy of all hedge fund monsters is George Soros, who was also Barack Obama’s early presidential race sugardaddy. Soros has also been talking down the economy while profiting from the mortgage meltdown. Soros is the chief donor to a wide variety of 527 groups (including MoveOn.Org) that have been working to assure Obama’s election.
Obama raised almost $400,000 dollars from the employees of the now kaput Lehman Brothers-topping all other candidates, though Senators Clinton, Schumer and Dodd did quite nicely .

Two other leading donors to the left are Herbert and Marion Sandler, who have worked with Soros to promote left-wing causes. This husband and wife founded Golden West Financial, a savings and loan that was a huge player in the mortgage market. Did they see the writing on the wall when they sold their company to Wachovia for billions of dollars before the mortgage meltdown?

Why do you think Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other leading lights of the Democratic Party castigate oil companies and not hedge fund managers? The paydays of Wall Street players dwarf those of oil companies. Their profit ratios can be astronomical compared to those of oil companies. They can wreck the financial markets that are the lubrication for the rest of the economy.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/mccain_and_leadership_in_a_tim.html

Gloves off: Now, Obama calls for prosecuting GOP donor; Update: AIP responds

By Michelle Malkin

“…I noted this morning that the Obama campaign’s Chicago-style thug effort to shut down the independent ad on Bill Ayers is part of the larger effort to intimidate conservative donors and curtail the free speech of The One’s critics.

It’s getting uglier, people.

Obama’s lawyer has sent a second letter to the Justice Department calling for the head of Dallas billionare Harold Simmons, who funded the Ayers ad that the Obama campaign doesn’t want the public to see.

Feel the chill:

Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly attacking the Dallas billionaire funding a harsh attack ad, Harold Simmons.

“We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits,” he wrote.

He called the group’s activities “patently illegal.”

Bauer made the case that Simmons’ group [is not] fulfilling its [...] nonprofit charter because it hasn’t spent any money on anything other than attacking Obama. Simmons’ spokesman, Christian Pinkston, told me yesterday that plans to, and dismissed the complaints as an effort to lawyer away charges the campaign can’t rebut.

I posted AIP’s rebuttal here yesterday. And as I’ve noted today and will note again: Obama has some nerve whining about campaign finance integrity after getting caught hiding $800,000 in ACORN payments.

What’s going on? Simple: The Left has its George Soros sugar daddy and can’t stand that conservatives have their own committed benefactors. They’ve got a massive non-profit infrastructure funded with taxpayers and operating flagrantly in an illegal, partisan manner (hello, ACORN Watch!). They want the playing field all to themselves. And they are fighting for that turf by any means necessary.

Can they do it?

No, they can’t. Not if you don’t let them. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/26/gloves-off-now-obama-calls-for-prosecuting-gop-donor/

Charlie Rose: February 23, 2001

“…A conversation with George Soros, the international philanthropist and chairman of Soros Fund Management, about his new book, “Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism”. Soros discusses… “

Charlie Rose: August 2, 1994

“…First, philanthropist George Soros, founder of the world’s most successful hedge fund, shares some of his ideas for revitalizing America’s inner cities. Then, Hugh Price talks about what he hopes …

Authors@Google: George Soros

“…George Soros appears in conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing his new book “The Age of Fallibility: Consequence of the War on Terror” as part of the Authors@Google series. … “

Soros Compares President Bush To Nazis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DuafAqAHrc&feature=related

George Soros Part 1

“…George Soros Part 1 Interview on April 8, 2008…”

George Soros Part 2

“…George Soros Part 2 Interview on April 8, 2008…”

George Soros Part 3

“…George Soros Part 3 Interview on April 8, 2008…”

George Soros on Housing Prices June 2006

O’Reilly: George Soros is funding Media Matters,John Edwards

O’Reilly calls Democratic support group dangerous, evil

“…George Soros, Paul Begala, and David Brock are O’Reilly’s “American Axis of Evil” for planning to spend money against Republican John McCain. Does anyone recall him in this high dudgeon over the Swift Boat ads?…”

Liberals & big business falsified Iraq war casualty figures

Ron Paul on Mortgage Bailout & Financial Armageddon

Jerry Bowyer on Kudlow & Company – March 17th – Segment 1

Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, the Rate Cuts and Inflation

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation

Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout

Part 1 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 2 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 3 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 4 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Part 5 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins

Rush On Franklin Raines

Hey Barack, Who’s Franklin Raines

Advice

Jim Johnson

Crisis

Enough Is Enough

Background Articles and Videos

Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s new map for war and peace

The Pentagons New Map – Thomas Barnett lecture

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4689061169761152025

Neoconservatism

“Neoconservatism is a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of the social liberalism, moral relativism, and New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, representing a realignment in American politics, and the transition of some liberals to the right of the political spectrum; hence the term, which refers to being ‘new’ conservatives.^[1]^[2]

The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had “moved to the right”.^[3]^[4] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.^[5] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by “the notion that liberalism” had failed and “no longer knew what it was talking about.”^[1]

The first major neoconservative to embrace the term and considered its founder is Irving Kristol, an American Jew from an orthodox Jewish family^[6], and father of William Kristol who became the founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Irving Kristol had been an active supporter of Trotskyism, but wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article “Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed ‘Neoconservative.’”^[3] Kristol’s ideas had been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine.^[7]. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled “The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan’s Foreign Policy”.^[8]^[9] The Reagan Doctrine was considered anti-Communist and in opposition to Soviet Union global influence and considered central to American foreign policy until the end of the Cold War, shortly before Bill Clinton became president of the United States. Neoconservative influence on American foreign policy later became central with the Bush Doctrine.

Prominent neoconservative periodicals are Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Neoconservatives are associated with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Heritage Foundation, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

Neocons aiding ’08 Republicans

“Most Americans disapprove of the Iraq war and of exporting democracy by force, yet neoconservative proponents of those policies advise the leading Republican presidential hopefuls.

“There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don’t know what to make of,” said Richard V. Allen, former Reagan White House national security adviser.

Advisers to Sen. John McCain of Arizona include Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), while former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s policy team includes Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets advice from Dan Senor, who counseled L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq.

Critics say neoconservatism casts American foreign policy as a new and benevolent form of imperialism, and conflicts with the traditional conservative, who prefers U.S. military power be reserved for defending against direct threats to America‘s vital interests. …”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/06/neocons-aiding-08-republicans/

The Neocons’ Palin Project

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“…In fairness to Palin, on issues like NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, her answers reflect the views of the man who chose her. She has no option at present but to follow the line laid down by Scheunemann.

But make no mistake. Sarah Palin is no neocon. She did not come by her beliefs by studying Leo Strauss. She is a traditionalist whose values are those of family, faith, community and country, not some utopian ideology.

Wasilla, Alaska, is not a natural habitat of neoconservatives.

And her unrehearsed answers to Gibson’s questions reveal her natural conservatism. Asked if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, Palin asked for clarification. “In what respect, Charlie?”

Gibson: “Do we have the right of an anticipatory self-defense?”

Yes, said Palin, “if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against (the) American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.”

Exactly. The intelligence must be legit and the threat “imminent.” …”

http://townhall.com/Columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/09/16/the_neocons_palin_project?page=2

American Enterprise Institute

“The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. According to the institute its mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate.”^[1] AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy.^[2] More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions.^[3] Former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar, and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a senior fellow.^[4]

AEI is often cited as a right-leaning counterpart to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.^[5]^[6] In 1998, AEI and Brookings established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.^[7] In 2006, the two organizations jointly launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.^[8]

AEI has connections with the neoconservative movement in American politics.^[9] Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the movement’s founder, is a Senior Fellow at AEI. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

Project for the New American Century

“The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded in early 1997 as “a non-profit educational organization” by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal is “to promote American global leadership.”^[1] Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that “American leadership is both good for America and good for the world” and support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”^[2] It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S President George W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration’s development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.^[3]^[4] ….”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Flight of the Neocons
From liberal hawks to “National Greatness” conservatives
Michael C. Moynihan | May 2008 Print Edition

“…To Heilbrunn, the legacy of neoconservatism is one of long-term disaster for the Republican Party, an ideological digression that “quite possibly not only destroyed conservatism as a political force for years to come but also created an Iraq syndrome that tarnishes the idea of intervention for several decades.” This sounds right. The surge has undeniably mitigated the violence in Iraq, but it seems likely that—barring a continued military presence in Iraq for “100 years,” as John McCain posited—the neocons’ nation-building project will be a millstone around the movement’s neck. The Iraq fiasco will also obscure the fact that many of their Cold War–era arguments with the left were prescient. They were right about the ineffectiveness of Great Society welfare programs and about the colossal evil of the communist bloc.

But the failures of the neoconservative approach to both foreign and domestic policy are recognized even by consummate neocon David Frum, partial author of the infamous “axis of evil” State of the Union speech. In his recently released book Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, Frum concedes Heilbrunn’s point that a conservative regeneration is needed after the Bush administration’s big spending and disastrous foreign policy. While Frum is upbeat about conservatism’s prospects, Heilbrunn ends They Knew They Were Right on an ominous note: “These reckless minds…aren’t going away. Quite the contrary.”

Perhaps. But unless Iraq becomes an Arab version of Switzerland in the next decade, I wouldn’t bet on it. …”

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125472.html

John McCain, Neoconservative

“…The neoconservatives, who believe, or pretend to believe, that supposed foes abroad always represent new Hitlers and that wimpy liberals are about to recapitulate the appeasement that English liberals espoused in the 1930s, are constantly searching for a new Churchill. They see Churchill as the last great representative of the Victorian era in contrast to the weaklings that surrounded him. (George W. Bush himself keeps a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office.) For the neocons, McCain, a military hero who has written a number of books and become a politician, eerily resembles Churchill himself. McCain himself has made his admiration for Churchill abundantly apparent in his most recent book, Hard Call, in which he hails the great man’s prescience in warning of Germany’s aggressive intentions in the run-up to both World War I and World War II. But more to the point, McCain represents for the neocons the ultimate synthesis of war hero and politician. And McCain, in turn, has been increasingly drawn to the neocons’ militaristic vision of the U.S. as an empire that can set wrong aright around the globe.The neocons became close to McCain in the 1990s, when they supported American intervention in the Balkans. According to the New Republic’s John Judis, the first sign of neocon influence on McCain came in 1999. McCain delivered a speech at Kansas State University in which he touted “national greatness conservatism,” arguing: “The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history.” He went on to state that the U.S. should have “every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”

http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/john-mccain-neoconservative.html

The Open-Borders Conspiracy
By Robert Locke
FrontPageMagazine.com

“If I could choose to have my readers learn one and only one thing from what I write, it would be that America’s problems are not the result of blind, much less inevitable, forces, but are the consequences of deliberate political action by motivated individuals and groups. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of our ongoing immigration crisis. Let’s trace the lines of influence in the open-borders conspiracy, a word I use despite its connotations of grassy knollology because in this case it is factually appropriate. Given who has been pushing mass immigration in America and how open they have been about why they are doing it, it boggles my mind that anyone who considers himself conservative can still support this policy. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/850953/posts

Shamnesty John McCain is back in full force: No, he never “got the message”
By Michelle Malkin

“…And, now, straight from the campaign trail with Arnold “Move Left” Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he “got the message” from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the “comprehensive immigration reform” euphemism is a notable milestone.

Also, you don’t need to guess anymore how he would have voted on the Feinstein/Craig illegal alien farmworker amnesty: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/22/shamnesty-john-mccain-is-back-in-full-force-no-he-never-got-the-message/

Translation: McCain’s suck up to La Raza

By Michelle Malkin

“

The other half of the La Raza twins is set to speak today at 12:45 Pacific time. While John McCain’s lips move this afternoon during his speech to the Race’s open-borders lovefest, let me serve as your interpreter:

MCCAIN: My friends, you are right. Those people who killed my shamnesty bill have ill intentions. They are bigots, just like my friend Lindsay Graham told you they were when he spoke before you two years ago. …”

My friends, I don’t want to talk about securing the border any more than you do. But trust me, when the “border” is “secure” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), then we’ll do what we all want to do: Formalize our Sanctuary Nation. Rejoice that illegal aliens are serving in the military. And sanctimoniously demonize and marginalize all those pesky bigots who keep obsessing about immigration enforcement and national security. I’m as committed to peddling sob-story platitudes and whitewashing your ethnic nationalism as you are! (What was that about the 15 things about The Race you should know? Shhhhhhhhhhh!)

Just work with me here, ok? Brother Obama may have marched with you at the Chicago May Day illegal alien parade. But I have a lifetime commitment to Hispandering! And you have showered with me with honors for my open-borders work.

Remember?

They don’t call me La Raza’s voice in Washington for nothing.

Just ask my friend, Juan Hernandez.

My friends.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/14/translation-mccains-suck-up-to-la-raza/

Mexico–United States border

“The international border between Mexico and the United States runs from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east. It traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

The border’s total length is 3,169 km (1,969 miles), according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.^[1] It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million legal crossings every year.^[2]

The nearly 2000 mile (3,138 km or 1,950 miles) international border follows the middle of the Rio Grande — according to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between the two nations, “along the deepest channel” — from its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico a distance of 2,019 km (1,254 miles) to a point just upstream of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. It then follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 858 km (533 miles) to the Colorado River, during which it reaches its highest elevation at the intersection with the Continental Divide. Thence it follows the middle of that river northward a distance of 38 km (24 miles), and then it again follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 226 km (141 miles) to the Pacific Ocean.

The region along the boundary is characterised by deserts, rugged mountains, abundant sunshine and by two major rivers — the Colorado and the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) — which provide life-giving waters to the largely arid but fertile lands along the rivers in both countries.

The U.S. states along the border, from west to east, are:

California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

The Mexican states are:

Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

In the United States, Texas has the longest stretch of the border of any State, while California has the shortest. In Mexico, Chihuahua has the longest border, while Nuevo León has the shortest. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us-mexico-border.jpg

Re: John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez

Who Is Juan Hernandez?

John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez

Lou Dobbs – These Candidates Would Say ANYTHING

The Dangers of the “North American Union” by Jerome Corsi

Why Bill Kristol thinks Ron Paul is a “Crackpot”

Charlie Rose – WOLFOWITZ / HOLMES

Paul Wolfowitz speaks at Hudson Institute

Countdown – No Iranian Nukes and Wolfowitz is Back

Paul Wolfowitz speech June 6 2001

Iraq War Mastermind Speaks Out

Charlie Rose – Sen. Dick Durbin / Douglas Feith / Sen. Ron Wyden

Book TV: Douglas Feith, author of “War and Decision”

Riz Khan – Richard Perle – 18 Mar 08

Charlie Rose – PERL & FRUM

Who is Randy Scheunemann?

Bill Kristol Anthology

Neo-cons War Lobbying To Bomb Iran

NeoConservative Charles Krauthammer discusses U.S. options against Russia

Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 1

Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 2

Krauthammer: What will Obama give to Iran?

Next President 1

Next President 2

Why I love Charles Krauthammer

Bolton and Krauthammer on Russian Expansion past Georgia

Fred Kagan on Jim Lehrer

Fred Kagan Debates Nir Rosen on Iraq Surge (Part 1)

Iraq, the Neocons and the Israel Lobby – John Mearsheimer

Conversations With History: John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt

the Washington Report, Ep.1 with Michael Ledeen (Part 2)

John Bolton – Does Iran Need a “Regime Change?”

Neocon John Bolton Pushes War Against Iran

Norman Podhoretz on Iran

Norman Podhoretz on His New Book

Riz Khan- The Neocons and Iran- 10 Dec 07

Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (1 of 2), 2008

Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (2 of 2), 2008

Charlie Rose: March 4, 2003 with Ron Brownstein and Robert Kagan

Why CIA Veterans Are Scared of McCain

“…These critics point especially to the McCain campaign’s top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann’s record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives’ disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, “the military has won,” says one former senior CIA officer. “We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won’t have any real civilian intelligence capability.”

“McCain would be an absolute disaster,” says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. “He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, ‘The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They’ve made their bed and now they have to lay in it.’ I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent.” Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, “With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization.”

McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials “who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency,” the former senior intelligence officer said. “They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don’t want to hear.” …”

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/08/why-cia-veterans-are-scared-of-mccain.html

McCain’s ACU Ratings
By Randall Hoven

“…What this means is that McCain’s ACU ratings since 1998 put him on the liberal side among Republicans. The few Republicans consistently more liberal than McCain would be Chafee (formerly R-RI), Collins (R-ME), Snowe (R-ME) and Specter (R-PA). One could expect senators from northeastern states to be more liberal since their constituencies demand it, but McCain represents the fairly conservative state of Arizona. (Arizona’s other senator, Kyl, has a lifetime rating of 96.9, and half the representatives from there have ratings of 94.7 or higher.)

How much more liberal would McCain vote if his constituency put even the slightest pressure on him in that direction?

On the other hand, Senator Clinton (D-NY) has a lifetime ACU rating of 9 (83rd place) and Senator Obama (D-IL) has a rating of 8 (86th place).

Not much the cheer about here.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/mccains_acu_ratings.html

Whose War? PDF

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Buchanan accuses ‘McCain’s neocon warmonger’ of treason Stephen C. Webster
“…According to conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, Sen. John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a ‘dual loyalist,’ ‘neocon warmonger’ involved in activities that ‘none dare call treason.’

Scheunemann’s former employer, Orion Strategies, is a lobbying firm with strong ties to Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration in Georgia.

Since Georgia attempted to retake South Ossetia by force, triggering a sharp, violent rebuke by Russian forces, Sen. McCain has been by far the most strident advocate of US support for the former Soviet state. And his top adviser, says Buchanan, may well be the next Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

“He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man,” he wrote. …”

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Buchanan_accuses_McCains_neocon_warmonger_of_0822.html

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/mar/24/00007/

Among the Neocons PDF

A foot soldier in the ideological wars relates

By Scott McConnell

“…Two new issues broke apart the 1980s Reaganite conservative consensus. The first was immigration. By the late 1980s, the impact of the 1965 immigration law had begun greatly to accelerate the pace of immigration. Younger readers may not recall the vital role National Review began to play in analyzing that law and the social, environmental, and political consequences it brought about. The battle was joined when John O’Sullivan (NR’s editor since 1988) published in 1992 Peter Brimelow’s explosive “Time to Rethink Immigration,” which quickly became the most debated conservative magazine article of the year. The piece forced the immigration debate into the open within the conservative movement, where it fused with the populist revolt breaking out in California over Proposition 187, an anti-illegal-alien measure. For the next five years, the magazine put what it called “The National Question” in the spotlight, publishing cover stories by Brimelow, Fred Iklé, O’Sullivan, and eventually (as I was won over to the magazine’s position) one by me.

The neoconservatives, to my complete surprise, were not pleased.

In the summer of 1995, Neal Kozodoy gave me a copy of a letter. Written by Irwin Steltzer to the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, it was making its way around the upper echelons of the neocon magazines and think tanks. Steltzer is a Bronx-born economist and Weekly Standard editor who lives part-time in London. While a gifted economic essayist, his most important function is surely as the ideological gendarme for Rupert Murdoch’s American media properties.

Steltzer wrote to Kristol (and the wider world) that he was canceling his subscription to National Review because of its “increasingly offensive positions on such topics as immigration.” He went on then to complain about a piece by Richard Neuhaus on anti-Semitism, which, Steltzer charged, was itself anti-Semitic. He added, apropos of a quote of Kristol’s that appeared in Neuhaus’s article, that he was “always suspicious” of Father Neuhaus’s excerpting, “particularly in an article which contains cunningly placed little adjectives and descriptions.” He concluded with a more general comment about John O’Sullivan’s National Review: “Add to this NR’s applause for the immigration statutes of the 1920’s, designed to keep eastern European Jews out, and you have a not-very-subtle form of anti-Semitism, dressed up as an attack on liberalism.”

Bill Buckley stood by his editor initially, but not for long. Within two years, O’Sullivan was eased out, replaced by the youthful Rich Lowry, who immediately upon assuming his new post fired Peter Brimelow.

In the very early years of the neocon-paleocon skirmish, Russell Kirk, the somewhat fogeyish father of postwar American intellectual conservatism, gave a speech about the neocons at the Heritage Foundation. He generally praised them but added some words of caution. Quoting from a friend’s letter, Kirk said, “It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant from a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation the conservative is a fascist.” I, of course, had heard of neocon campaigns against other conservatives, but the targets were not men I knew or agreed with. But I did know O’Sullivan and Neuhaus, and the Russell Kirk remark that had once seemed overheated became a good deal less so. …”

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/apr/21/00007/

Idealism and Its Discontents
Thinking on the neoconservative slur.

Victor Davis Hanson

“…Third, Iraq is not the sole touchstone of neoconservative thought. Many traditional conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, who favor balanced budgets, an end to illegal immigration, and more sober judgment on entitlements, came to the conclusion after September 11 that the many lives of Saddam Hussein had run out. Indeed, one of the ironies of this war is the spectacle of many who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s now turning on the war, while many who would have never supported such preemption before 9/11 insist on giving the administration full support in the midst of the present fighting.

Fourth, traditional conservatives especially distrust neoconservatives because, well, they are not entirely conservative and confuse the public about the virtues of the hallowed native reluctance to spend blood and treasure abroad for dubiously idealistic purposes. In contrast, progressives dislike them because their promotion of democracy can complicate liberalism, as if it were a fine and noble thing to insist on elections in the former Third World, even if need be through force. And every ideology saves its greatest venom for the perceived apostate: Thus Zell Miller infuriates liberals in the way John McCain or Chuck Hagel does conservatives.

Fifth, the battlefield adjudicates perceptions. Before the Iraqi invasion, neoconservatives took a beating in the acrimonious lead-up to the war about which scenarios were proffered about millions of refugees and thousands of American dead. Yet after the three-week victory, even television hosts were boasting, “We are all neoconservatives now.” Then the messy post-bellum Iraqi reconstruction brought back disdain, while successful elections and a consensual government could well win admiration. For most, ideology or belief matters not nearly as much as impressions of being judged as smart, successful, and “cutting-edge” — a constantly changing and amorphous image that in Washington is predicated on the 24-hour news cycle.

Finally, radical foreign-policy changes always upset the status quo and beg for conspiratorial exegesis. After 1948, the Cold Warriors were felt to have appropriated the Democratic party from the Henry Wallace wing, and they suffered abuse both from the naïve Left who saw them as veritable McCarthyites, and from the isolationist Right who did not want to continue the sacrifices of internationalism endlessly on into the postwar peace. …”

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200501210758.asp

The Neoconservative Cabal

Joshua Muravchik

“…Who makes up this potent faction? Within the administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is usually identified as the key actor, together with Richard Perle, a member and until recently the chairman of the Defense Advisory Board. A handful of other high-level Bush appointees are often named as adherents of the neocon faith, including Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, National Security Council staff member Elliott Abrams, and Vice Presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI, where I work), the Weekly Standard magazine, and William Kristol’s Project for a New American Century–all three rent offices in the same building–are often described as constituting the movement’s Washington command center. And then, of course, there is this magazine, crucible of so much neoconservative thought.

The history of neoconservatism is less sensational than its current usage implies. The term came into currency in the mid-1970′s as an anathema–pronounced, by upholders of leftist orthodoxy, against a group of intellectuals, centered mostly in Commentary and the quarterly Public Interest, who then still thought of themselves as liberals but were at odds with the dominant thinking of the Left. One part of this group consisted of writers about domestic policy–Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James Q. Wilson, Nathan Glazer–who had developed misgivings about the programs of the New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The other main contingent focused on foreign policy, and especially on the decline of America’s position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the wake of the Vietnam war. The names here included, among others, Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Eugene V. Rostow. Although, at first, most of these people resisted the label neoconservative, eventually almost all of them acquiesced in it. …”

“…On September 11, we learned in the most dreadful way that terrorists would not be appeased by our diffidence; quite the contrary. We saw–they themselves told us–that they intended to go on murdering us in ever larger numbers as long as they could. A sharp change of course was required, and the neoconservatives, who had been warning for years that terror must not be appeased, stood vindicated–much as, more grandly, Churchill was vindicated by Hitler’s depredations after Munich.

Not only did the neocons have an analysis of what had gone wrong in American policy, they also stood ready with proposals for what to do now: to wage war on the terror groups and to seek to end or transform governments that supported them, especially those possessing the means to furnish terrorists with the wherewithal to kill even more Americans than on September 11. Neocons also offered a long-term strategy for making the Middle East less of a hotbed of terrorism: implanting democracy in the region and thereby helping to foment a less violent approach to politics.

No neoconservative was elevated in office after September 11, as Churchill had been to prime minister after the collapse of the Munich agreement, but policies espoused by neoconservatives were embraced by the Bush administration. Was this because Bush learned them from the likes of Wolfowitz and Perle? Or did he and his top advisers–none of them known as a neocon–reach similar conclusions on their own? We may have to await the President’s memoirs to learn the answer to that narrow question, but every American has reason to be grateful for the result.

If these policies should fail, for whatever reason–including a recurrence of national faint-heartedness–then neoconservative ideas will no doubt be discredited. But this matters hardly at all compared with what we will have lost. For, if they fail, either we will then be at the mercy of ever more murderous terrorism or we will have to seek alternative methods of coping with it–methods that are likely to involve a much more painful and frightening course of action than the admittedly daunting one that still lies before us.

If, however, the policies succeed, then the world will have been delivered from an awful scourge, and there will be credit enough to go around–some of it, one trusts, even for the lately much demonized neoconservatives. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/991206/posts

Notice: U.S. WMD Retaliation Doctrine Has Changed

By Michelle Malkin

“…There’s a very important catch in the Weekly Standard by spy-dude Elbridge Colby, who notes a crucial change in our plans to respond to terrorist use of WMD’s. We’ve long held that states which assist in WMD terror would be held accountable. But February 8, we expanded our potential retribution schedule:

Instead of merely threatening that states that support terror attacks will be held responsible–already a staple of U.S. policy–Hadley goes further, threatening non-state actors who “enabl[e]” terrorists to strike with WMD. This careful choice of words would seem to expand our retaliatory standard to encompass complicity and perhaps even negligence. Not only states, but groups and individuals as well, should now be on notice that they will be held accountable for participation in, support for, complicity in, or even negligence in the face of WMD strikes against the United States or its allies. This strategy makes a great deal of sense; catastrophic terrorism is a threat that both justifies and requires a more exacting standard of behavior.

Individuals? Whoever could they mean?

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/10/notice-us-wmd-retaliation-doctrine-has-changed/

Charlie Rose – Georgia/Russia Conflict

Power Play

The nature of nations, like people, never changes. Today’s political realists say economics rather than military might has become the guiding principle of countries, but the conflict in Georgia shows otherwise, argues Robert Kagan.

By ROBERT KAGAN

“…Where are the realists? When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it ought to have been their moment. Here was Vladimir Putin, a cold-eyed realist if ever there was one, taking advantage of a favorable opportunity to shift the European balance of power in his favor — a 21st century Frederick the Great or Bismarck, launching a small but decisive war on a weaker neighbor while a surprised and dumbfounded world looked on helplessly. Here was a man and a nation pursuing “interest defined as power,” to use the famous phrase of Hans Morgenthau, acting in obedience to what Mr. Morgenthau called the “objective law” of international power politics. Yet where are Mr. Morgenthau’s disciples to remind us that Russia’s latest military action is neither extraordinary nor unexpected nor aberrant but entirely normal and natural, that it is but a harbinger of what is yet to come because the behavior of nations, like human nature, is unchanging?

Today’s “realists,” who we’re told are locked in some titanic struggle with “neoconservatives” on issues ranging from Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to China and North Korea, would be almost unrecognizable to their forebears. Rather than talk about power, they talk about the United Nations, world opinion and international law. They propose vast new international conferences, a la Woodrow Wilson, to solve intractable, decades-old problems. They argue that the United States should negotiate with adversaries not because America is strong but because it is weak. Power is no answer to the vast majority of the challenges we face, they insist, and, indeed, is counterproductive because it undermines the possibility of international consensus. …”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122005366593885103.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The Neoconservative Persuasion

Irving Kristol

“…Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the “American grain.” It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the “have-nots” and the “haves” engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability. The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy–because it seems to be in the nature of human nature–that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.

This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on “the road to serfdom.” Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his “The Man Versus the State,” was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today’s America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.

But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives–though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.

AND THEN, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following “theses” (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1141481/posts

The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species

by Kirk, Russell

“…Selfish and Uninstructed. I offer you two specimens of the rejection of the Neoconservatives that I encounter nowadays in many quarters. My first extract is from a letter recently received from a very distinguished historian in Pennsylvania. “I have burned my bridges with most (not all) of the Konservatives, and especially with the neo- conservatives, who are selfish and uninstructed radicals and progressives, wishing to pour cement all over the country and make the world safe for democracy, well beyond the dreams of Wilson,” he writes to me. “A feeling for the land, for its conservation, and for the strong modesty of a traditional patriotism (as distinct from nationalism) none of them has.”

My second instance of the spreading distaste for Neoconservatives comes from a well-known literary scholar. “I would not be at all surprised to see the Neo-Cons jump ship if Dukakis is elected; they would be perfectly capable of making an accommodation with the socialist wing of the Democratic Party,” he tells me …… It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant to a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation that the conservative is a fascist…. I believe that the chief enemy of American conservatism has not been the Marxists, nor even the socialist liberals in the Democratic Party, but the Neo-Conservatives, who have sabotaged the movement from within and exploited it for their own selfish purposes.”

Simple Old Label. Now the strictures of the gentlemen I have quoted cannot well apply to some of the better known people called Neoconservatives; for there are among that group high-minded men and women of principle. Our difficulty here is very like that I encountered when I lectured, a few months ago, on the Libertarians: the appellation Neoconservative, like the appellation Libertarian, is so widely employed, and so variously, as to seem to include people of radically opposed views. What is a Neoconservative, really? Is he, as Harrington and Steinfels saw him, a liberal who opportunistically has turned his coat? Is he primarily a seeker after power and the main chance? Or is he a man who has new ideas about the defense of the Permanent Things? For my part, I wish that certain so-called Neoconservatives whose views and lives I approve, like certain libertarians for whom I have a fellow feeling, would content themselves, as do I, with the simple old label Conservative.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL178.cfm

A Concord of Visions

How the neoconservative right adopted the worst errors of the left

Julian Sanchez

“…A final symptom of the unconstrained vision—and the focus of Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed—is the tendency (in Sowell’s account invariably the tendency of liberals) to focus on the intentions of policies rather than their effects, so that a “poverty relief program” is so called whether or not it actually manages to relieve poverty, and a “Terrorist Surveillance Program” can retain the title even if the vast majority of the people whose conversations are swept up by it have nothing to do with terrorism. “Compassionate conservatism”—in addition to suggesting by implication that conservatism simpliciter lacked compassion—makes a sentiment or an attitude, rather than the specific policy mechanisms it seeks to employ, definitive of the philosophy. As a corollary to this focus on intention, opposition to the particular means employed by elites is viewed as opposition to their ends: Where once progressives tarred Great Society skeptics as callous brutes unconcerned with the plight of the poor, conservative pundits now routinely cast opposition to the Iraq war and other components of the War on Terror as prosecuted by the president as a sign of sympathy for tyrants or terrorists.

None of this is to say that all good flows from the politics of the constrained vision and all ills from the unconstrained view. For my taste—and that of most libertarians, I suspect—Sowell’s constrained vision in its purer forms is probably a shade too constrained, too ready to assume that old customs continue to serve their traditional functions under changed circumstances. But it is the worst features of the unconstrained vision—its hubris, its pretense to omnicompetence—that have taken hold of the right. And if there is wisdom in each of the two perspectives, it should be worrying that, for all the other differences between the major parties, between progressives and conservatives, in this one fundamental way the political landscape increasingly offers only half the picture—different refractions of the same unconstrained vision. With the waning of the constrained perspective’s tempering influence, we’re left with a political vision that’s dangerously double.”

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117049.html

No moderate, no realist, McCain the neocon

Ron Paul revolution against empire and draft

Pat Buchanan vs Neo-Cons

Pat Buchanan on John McCain’s warmongering nature

Pat Buchanan:”McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi”

Anne Norton Defines Neocons

Israel, Iran and the New Neocons

Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 1 of 2

Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 2 of 2

1. The Neocons – Ideology and Fantasy (Part 1 of 14)

2. The Neocons – Rumsfeld’s Imaginary War (2/14)

3. The Neocons – Birth of Islamic Extremists

4. The Neocons – Recruiting Christians / Concept of Terror

5. The Neocons – CIA’s $1Billion Backs Future Terrorists

6. The Neocons – Ignored Warning of Terrorists

7. Then Neocons – Destruction of the Republican Party

8. The Neocons – Clinton’s Blowjob / Extremist Rampage

9. The Neocons – “There’s No Al-Qaeda Organization”

10. The Neocons – “We’re Gonna Find Those Evil Doers”

11. The Neocons – Hunt for Osama / The Disney Terrorists

12. The Neocons – Godzilla was a Terrorist Mentor

13. The Neocons – Dirty Bomb / Precautionary Principle

14. The Neocons – Fear is the Only Agenda

Leo Strauss

“Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-born Jewish-American political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as one of the intellectual fathers of neoconservatism in the United States. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

Irving Kristol

“Irving Kristol (born January 22, 1920, Brooklyn, New York City, New York) is considered the founder of American neoconservatism. He is married to conservative author and emerita professor Gertrude Himmelfarb and is the father of William Kristol.

Kristol was born into an orthodox Jewish family. However, he maintains that belief had nothing to do with his family’s observance.^[1] He earned his B.A. in History from the City College of New York in 1940, where he was an active Trotskyist. Before graduating, he met Gertrude Himmelfarb at a Trotskyist meeting, and they married on January 18, 1942.^[2] He wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940.^[3] From 1941 to 1944, he served as staff sergeant in the armored infantry in Europe in World War II. After the war, he was stationed in Marseilles for a year.^[4]

He was the managing editor of Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, co-founder of the British-based Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958 when he handed over the reins to his friend and City College classmate Melvin J. Lasky^[5], editor of the Reporter from 1959 to 1960, executive vice-president of Basic Books from 1961 to 1969, and professor of social thought at the New York University Graduate School of Business from 1969 to 1988. Since 1988, he has been John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has used these positions and publications to animate the neo-conservative movement, arguing for low taxes, a well-funded and internationally active military, conservative social policy, and a minimalist interpretation of First Amendment rights. For example, he once stated that “I don’t think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does.”^[6]

Kristol is the founder of the politics and culture journal The Public Interest and the foreign affairs journal The National Interest. He was co-editor of The Public Interest (first with Daniel Bell, then with Nathan Glazer) from its founding in 1965 until 2002 and publisher of The National Interest from its founding in 1985 until 2001.

He is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 1988, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1972, a member of the Wall Street Journal Board of Contributors since 1972, and president of National Affairs, Inc.

Kristol suggests of himself, “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I’m going to end up a neo-that’s all, neo dash nothing.”^[7]

In July 2002, President George W. Bush awarded Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Kristol

Russell Kirk

“Russell Kirk (19 October 1918 – 29 April 1994) was an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. …”

“…The Conservative Mind

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana^[3], the published version of Kirk’s doctoral dissertation, contributed materially to the 20th century Burke revival. It also drew attention to:

Conservative statesmen such as John Adams, George Canning, John C. Calhoun, Joseph de Maistre, Benjamin Disraeli, and Arthur Balfour;
The conservative implications of writings by well-known authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, George Gissing, George Santayana, and T. S. Eliot;
British and American authors such as Fisher Ames, John Randolph of Roanoke, Orestes Brownson, John Henry Newman, Walter Bagehot, Henry James Sumner Maine, William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Hurrell Mallock, Leslie Stephen, Albert Venn Dicey, Paul Elmer More, and Irving Babbitt.

The Portable Conservative Reader (1982), which Kirk edited, contains sample writings by most of the above.

Not everyone agreed with Kirk’s reading of the conservative heritage and tradition. For example, Harry Jaffa (a student of Leo Strauss) wrote: “Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke’s attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy’s attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions.”^[4]

Russello (2004) argues that Kirk adapted what 19th century American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson called “territorial democracy” to articulate a version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the Founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in the particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights.

Principles

Kirk developed six “canons” of conservatism, which Russello (2004) described as follows:

A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize “natural” distinctions;
A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another.” [5] and that “all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.” [6] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Kirk

Milton Friedman

“…Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912 – died November 16, 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.^[1] A global public followed his restatement of a libertarian political philosophy that insisted on minimizing the role of government in favor of the private sector. As a leader of the Chicago School of economics, based at the University of Chicago, he had a widespread influence in shaping the research agenda of the entire profession. Friedman’s many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos and lectures cover a broad range of topics in microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. The Economist hailed him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it”.^[2]

Originally a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal and advocate of high taxes, in the 1950s his reinterpretation of the Keynesian consumption function challenged the basic keynesian model. In the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy called monetarism. He theorized there existed a “natural rate of unemployment” and he argued the central government could not micromanage the economy because people would realize what the government was doing and shift their behavior to neutralize the impact of policies. He rejected the Phillips Curve and predicted that Keynesian policies would cause “stagflation” (high unemployment and low growth). He argued that a steady expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and warned against efforts by the treasury or central bank to do otherwise.

Influenced by his close friend George Stigler, Friedman opposed government regulation of all sorts, as well as public schooling. Friedman’s political philosophy, which he considered classically liberal and libertarian, stressed the advantages of the marketplace and the disadvantages of government intervention and regulation, strongly influencing the outlook of American conservatives and libertarians. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. His books and essays were widely read and even circulated underground behind the Iron Curtain.^[3]^[4]

Friedman’s methodological innovations were widely accepted by economists, but his policy prescriptions were highly controversial. Most economists in the 1960s rejected them, but since then they had a growing international influence (especially in the U.S. and Britain), and in the 21st century have gained wide acceptance among many economists. He thus lived to see some of his laissez-faire ideas embraced by the mainstream,^[5] especially during the 1980s. His views of monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation informed the policy of governments around the globe, especially the administrations of Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Brian Mulroney in Canada, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and (after 1989) in Eastern Europe. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Ludwig von Mises

Mises in his library

“Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (pronounced [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]) (September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian Economist, philosopher, and a major influence on the modern libertarian movement.

Because of his Jewish origin and his opinions, he had to emigrate to Switzerland and then settled in the USA.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

Ludwig von Mises Institute

http://mises.org/

Friedrich Hayek

“Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (May 8, 1899 – March 23, 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought in the mid-20th century. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century.[1] One of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, he also made significant contributions in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”[2] He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.[3] He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back to towards classical liberalism after the 1980s. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 2 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 3 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 4 of 4)

Charlie Rose – Economist Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Debates Naomi Klein

The Power of Choice – Milton Friedman

INFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 13, 1976

by MILTON FRIEDMAN

The University of Chicago, Illinois, USA

“…One of my great teachers, Wesley C. Mitchell, impressed on me the basic

reason why scholars have every incentive to pursue a value-free science, whatever

their values and however strongly they may wish to spread and promote

them. In order to recommend a course of action to achieve an objective, we

must first know whether that course of action will in fact promote the objective.

Positive scientific knowledge that enables us to predict the consequences of a

possible course of action is clearly a prerequisite for the normative judgment

whether that course of action is desirable. The Road to Hell is paved with

good intentions, precisely because of the neglect of this rather obvious point.

This point is particularly important in economics. Many countries around

the world are today experiencing socially destructive inflation, abnormally

high unemployment, misuse of economic resources, and, in some cases, the

suppression of human freedom not because evil men deliberately sought to

achieve these results, nor because of differences in values among their citizens,

but because of erroneous judgments about the consequences of government

measures: errors that at least in principle are capable of being corrected by

the progress of positive economic science. …”

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1976/friedman-lecture.pdf

Background Articles and Videos

The Neocons’ Palin Project

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Wasilla, Alaska, is not a natural habitat of neoconservatives.

And her unrehearsed answers to Gibson’s questions reveal her natural conservatism. Asked if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, Palin asked for clarification. “In what respect, Charlie?”

Gibson: “Do we have the right of an anticipatory self-defense?”

Exactly. The intelligence must be legit and the threat “imminent.” …”

http://townhall.com/Columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/09/16/the_neocons_palin_project?page=2

Charlie Gibson’s Gaffe

Charles Krauthammer

“…The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration — and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, “Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?”

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, “In what respect, Charlie?”

Sensing his “gotcha” moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine “is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.”

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” This “with us or against us” policy regarding terror — first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan — became the essence of the Bush doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine. …”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Still More Confusion about the Bush Doctrine (Or, Krauthammer is Wrong)

Alexander F. Di Pippo

“…

In Bush’s own words, in the speech he delivered on September 20, 2001:

We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

This is the core of the Bush doctrine. States or nations that sponsor terrorism would not be treated any differently from stateless terrorist organizations (e.g., Al-Qaeda).

In my view, there are two main reasons for the confusion about the substance of the Bush Doctrine. First, most people are probably not aware that the Bush Doctrine amounted to a radical change in the way the United States dealt with states that sponsored acts of terrorism. The US had always targeted the organizations that carried out the acts, not the states that supported them. Second, one tends to conflate 1. the means of enforcing the Bush doctrine with2. the doctrine itself. Reserving the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against a nation that sponsors terrorism would, for example, be one way of enforcing the Bush Doctrine. But reserving that right already presupposes the principle that the Bush doctrine articulates.

So, Gibson is wrong and someone ought to update Wikipedi”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/still_more_confusion_about_the.html

Charles Gibson

“…Charles “Charlie” deWolf Gibson (born March 9, 1943) is anchor of ABC World News with Charles Gibson, the network’s flagship evening newscast. He became anchor on May 29, 2006, when the program was known as ABC World News Tonight. He also anchors the 5 p.m. EST Information Network weekday newscast on ABC News Radio. Under Gibson’s leadership, ABC World News beat NBC Nightly News for the first time in several years. The two programs have now been in a dead heat, taking turns at the top among household viewers and the 25-54 age group prized by advertisers.

Gibson previously co-anchored ABC’s Good Morning America for a span of 19 years; first from February 1987 to May 1998, then again from January 1999 to June 2006. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gibson

EXCERPTS: Charlie Gibson Interviews Sarah Palin (September 11, 2008)

THE BOLDED & UNDERLINED PARTS WERE EDITED OUT OF THE INTERVIEW

http://marklevinshow.com/gibson-interview/

Newt Gingrich asked about Palin’s Experience. Checkmate.

Sarah Palin ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson | God Edit Controversy

JFK Inaugural Address 1 of 2

JFK Inaugural Address 2 of 2

FDR’s D-Day Prayer

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 2 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 3 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 4 of 4)

Charlie Rose – Economist Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

SNL- Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

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SNL- Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

Er, which candidate is the dangerous one?

“…And away they go. From the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Shooting from the hip on foreign policy, Palin raises spectre of war with Russia

Indeed, 3AW’s Neil Mitchell this morning scoffed that a President Palin would have already started “four wars”, to judge by the interview.

Really? Let’s check.

The first war a President Palin would allegedly start was with Pakistan, by invading it in the hunt for terrorists, and perhaps from the transcript you might agree the words are indeed naive and alarming:

We should start with the premise that the United States, like all sovereign nations, has the unilateral right to defend itself against attack. As such, our campaign to take out Al Qaeda base camps and the Taliban regime that harbored them was entirely justified… (I)f we’ve got (Osama bin Laden) in our sites, we should ask for Pakistan’s cooperation, we should ask Pakistan to take him out. But if they don’t, we shouldn’t need permission to go after folks that killed 3,000 Americans.

Oops, sorry. That was actually Barack Obama. This is Palin:

ABC News Anchor Gibson also asked Palin several times whether or not U.S. forces have the right to make cross-border attacks into Pakistan with or without the approval of the Pakistani government…

“In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists, who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink…”

The other war a President Palin would start, according to Mitchell, was with Russia over Georgia (should Georgia be a NATO member, which it isn’t). Again, the transcript might sound alarming: …”

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/which_candidate_is_the_dangerous_one/

Lost on the Rude-Tube

Charlie Gibson’s poor navigation.By Ruth Wedgwood“…It was the flourish of a trial attorney who chooses to substitute body language for substance, in persuading the jury that the witness is unworthy.It was, to be plain, a distraction from what could have been an interesting conversation.Most women, even now, are quite familiar with being talked over and not so subtly demeaned when they venture an opinion. It happens at dinner parties, in Washington and New York, where Gibson reigns as a network anchor, and even in educational classrooms.It can happen to students who venture to Ivy League colleges without the benefit of a private preparatory school. They may never have heard about a “Nash equilibrium” or “Pareto optimality.” It doesn’t mean they are stupid or without cunning.There was no evident need to demand of Palin three times in a row how she could consider herself to have the necessary qualifications for the vice presidency. The host’s closing line was a debater’s sally — “doesn’t that take some hubris?” Gibson asked, demanding again how a local mayor and Northern Exposure governor could properly consider national office. …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzlmNWRkZDM5ZjJiMTNlM2Y1NjNhYTQ4OTYzM2IzNmM=

Reaction to the Charlie Gibson/Sarah Palin Interview

“…I thought she performed very well, much better than Gibson. What a condescending ass! And the Bush Doctrine question? The Bush Doctrine is an inside the beltway, media coined term. 95% of America couldn’t tell you what the Bush Doctrine is.

She was excellent turning his national security experience into a highlight of what she has accomplished regarding energy. As if Barack Obama has any experience in foreign policy. And he’s their Number One.

She showed more knowledge on Russia than Barack Obama did. No stuttering, no stammering, no uhhhs. And she’s been working on this for a week. …”

http://www.conservatismtoday.com/my_weblog/2008/09/reaction-to-the-charlie-gibsonsarah-palin-interview.html

Reaction: Governor Palin’s interview

Rove: Obama can’t win against Palin

Rick Moran

“… Karl Rove thinks that Obama is making a huge tactical error in paying attention to Sarah Palin at all:

It’s a matchup he’ll lose. If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.

Michael Dukakis spent the last months of the 1988 campaign calling his opponent’s running mate, Dan Quayle, a risky choice and even ran a TV ad blasting Mr. Quayle. The Bush/Quayle ticket carried 40 states.

Adlai Stevenson spent the fall of 1952 bashing Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon, calling him “the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” The Republican ticket carried 39 of 48 states.

If Mr. Obama keeps attacking Mrs. Palin, he could suffer the fate of his Democratic predecessors. These assaults highlight his own tissue-thin résumé, waste precious time better spent reassuring voters he is up for the job, and diminish him — not her.

Rove isn’t the only analyst talking about this blunder. Many Democratic strategists are saying exactly the same thing and are worried that the Obama campaign has lost focus and is sliding into oblivion.I don’t think Obama is in that much trouble. Watch as the media tries to destroy Palin following her first interview with ABC News on friday night. Any little stumble she makes – and even if she doesn’t make a gaffe, one will be invented – will receive headlines as big as the pregnancy of her daughter. The media is desperate to bring Obama back up and will no doubt oblige him with manufacturing a controversy over something Palin says. …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/rove_obama_cant_win_against_pa.html

ABC News blows it

By Michelle Malkin

“Charlie Gibson had a chance to show that he could be fair, balanced, and P.D.S.-free with Sarah Palin’s first major MSM interview.

Looks like he blew it.

Taking quotes out of context.

Getting basic facts wrong.

Engaging in distortionary hype.

And the reason we should watch the rest of this hatchet job is…what exactly? …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/11/abc-news-blows-it/

Eugenics

“Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.^[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral. Historically, a minority of eugenics advocates have used it as a justification for state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, and the killing of institutionalized populations. Eugenics was also used to rationalize certain aspects of the Holocaust. The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,^[3] drawing on the recent work of his cousin Charles Darwin. From its inception eugenics was supported by prominent people, including H. G. Wells, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg and Margaret Sanger.^[4]^[5]^[6] G. K. Chesterton was an early critic of the philosophy of eugenics, expressing this opinion in his book, Eugenics and Other Evils. Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities. Funding was provided by prestigious sources such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Harriman family.^[7] Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenics’ scientific reputation started to tumble in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin began incorporating eugenic rhetoric into the racial policies of Nazi Germany. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics

By Edwin Black

“Mr. Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and the just released War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, from which the following article is drawn.

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called “Master Race.”

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn’t originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement’s campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed “unfit,” preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in “colonies,” and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century’s first decades, California’s eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America’s most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics’ racist aims. …”

http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

Top 7 Myths, Lies and Untruths About Sarah Palin

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/05/top-7-myths-lies-and-untruths-about-sarah-palin/

Frost over the World – Benazir Bhutto – 02 Nov 07

Margaret Thatcher talking about sinking the Belgrano

Yvonne De Carlo on David Frost show – “I’m Still Here”

Barbra Streisand- 1971- David Frost In Hollywood- unaired

Background Articles and Videos

The Impressionists BBC (Part 1)

The Impressionists BBC (Part 2)

The Impressionists BBC (Part 3)

Background Article and Videos

Sweetness & Light

Reprise: Obama’s ‘Empathy’ For Terrorists

““Empathy” would appear to be Mr. Obama’s watchword when it comes to talking about 9/11.

Here are his comments about the event in the revised for 2004 preface to his autobiographical tome, Dreams From My Father (pg. 2):

And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured.

It’s beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow-the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

What I do know is that history returned that day with a vengeance; that, in fact, as Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried-it isn’t even past. This collective history, this past, directly touches my own. Not merely because the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with an eerie precision, some of the landscapes of my life-the buildings and roads and faces of Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan; not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because the underlying struggle-between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us-is the struggle set forth, on a miniature scale, in this book.

I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder-alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware-is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come.

The policy implications of all this are a topic for another book.

Again, doesn’t it sound like terrorism is the product of poverty? Whereas Bin Laden is a millionaire and his followers tend to be at least upper middle class and often highly educated.

And never mind that the 9/11 highjackers themselves have told us on videotape exactly why they made their attacks — they wanted to avenge Bosnia.

So where did Mr. Obama pick up this nonsense? Who knows for sure? But we have our suspicions.

For here his pastor and spiritual mentor’s October 2003 response to the attack on 9/11 (as first reported by us here at S&L, more than a year and a half ago): …”

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/reprise-obamas-empathy-for-911-terrorists

Jeremiah Wright

Minister Farrakhan Speaks About Barack Obama

Obama on Farrakhan

Obama’s terrorist connections – William Ayers

The Observer

“…In an opinion piece in Commentary Magazine, writer Abe Greenwald, responding to Obama’s belief terrorists act out of despair, commented, “‘[P]overty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.’ Strange, considering our attackers were wealthy and educated, connected and ecstatic. You know, if Obama is going to keep ex-terrorists around, he should at least utilize them. He could have asked Bill Ayers, ‘Bill, did your ‘failure of empathy’ stem from your impoverished upbringing as the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison?”

Indeed Obama’s notion terrorists act out of desperation and poor living conditions was directly contradicted in a WND interview last year with a recruited Palestinian suicide bomber.

The recruited bomber said he is driven to carry out a suicide operation to “satisfy Allah and his instructions. No money interests, nothing. No brainwash, no pressure; it is my decision.”
“[My idea of suicide martyrdom] became stronger when I understood what status I will have in heaven if I scarify myself for Allah.”

Asked about media reports portraying Palestinian suicide attackers as acting in response to occupation or poor living conditions, the recruited bomber called those media claims “lies” and “Israeli propaganda.”

http://observanda.blogspot.com/2008/07/obama-9-11-attacks-happened-because-al.html

A reminder of Obama’s compassion…for jihadists

By Michelle Malkin

“…Thank you to Sweetness & Light for the devastating and damning reminder of where Barack Obama’s heart lies on this seventh anniversary of the 9/11 jihadi attacks: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/11/a-reminder-of-obamas-compassionfor-jihadists/

Educating the ignorant Kumbaya candidate

By Michelle Malkin

“Is this man for real? Osama bin Laden’s murderous legions are plenty able to “imagine” the “suffering of others.” Go watch an al Qaeda beheading snuff video. Just Google it or surf YouTube. Imagining the suffering of infidels is covered amply in Basic Jihadi Training 101.

You’ll note, too, that Obama’s fresh instinct in the week after the 9/11 attack was to diagnose it as a “tragedy” stemming from lack of “empathy” and “understanding”–instead of yet another deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged Islamic war on the West that it was.

As for Obama’s continued delusion about the “climate of poverty and ignorance” that supposedly breeds Muslim terrorists, can American politicians ever rid themselves of this unreality-based trope? This belief is part and parcel of the same idiocy that lead the State Department to embrace “spa days” for Muslims to “build bridges” with the Arab world and President Bush to open up our aviation schools to more Saudi students to “improve understanding.” John McCain also alluded to education-as-cure for Islamic terrorism at the L.A. World Affairs Council in March, when he declared that “In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.” Just what we need: more student visas for the jihadi-infested nation that sent us the bulk of the 9/11 hijackers. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/16/educating-the-ignorant-kumbaya-candidate/

Obama, 9/11, and Freedom of Conscience

By Andrew G. Bostom

“…Ibn Warraq writes as a mature, intrepid secular Muslim “apostate,” and scholar of Islam, which affords him unique, important perspectives. Clearly, Warraq’s writings and the apostate testimonials he has compiled are unsparing in their frank criticism of Islamic dogmas and jurisdictions. However, these passionate critiques also reveal the deep, unbroken affection Warraq and his fellow apostates maintain for the individual men and women in their former societies. These brave apostates should never be associated, disingenuously, with bigoted, non-Muslim xenophobes who have surfaced in the West. Warraq speaks for truly courageous intellectuals from Muslim societies who support profound reforms of Islamic institutions. And Warraq’s most recent book, “Defending the West” is a celebration of the “golden threads” woven through Western culture — rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism — which he defended passionately in the wake of the Danish Muhammad cartoons debacle:

The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes… By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.

Ibn Warraq’s formal childhood experience of Islam mirrored Barack Obama’s — it was no more extensive. Yet despite copious evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama has gone to great lengths to deny even a nominal childhood Muslim upbringing. These repeated, often shrill and accusatory denials are accompanied by a disturbing, if predictable silence: not once has Senator Obama celebrated the remarkable freedom of conscience he had here in America to decide in his mid to late 20s that he would practice Christianity openly, and devotedly, absent any consideration of his childhood Muslim background.

Mr. Obama has thus far squandered the unparalleled opportunity to highlight and extol a profoundly important virtue of this flawed, but still great country of ours, personified by his life story: America’s singular, unwavering support for true freedom of conscience. …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obama_911_and_freedom_of_consc.html

Barack Obama – Muslim apostate?

For Al Qaeda, the answer – and the implication – is clear.

By Shireen K. Burki

“…The fact that Senator Obama – the son of a Muslim father – insists he was never a Muslim before becoming Christian is irrelevant to bin Laden. In bin Laden’s eyes, Obama is a murtad fitri, the worst type of apostate, because he was blessed by Allah to be born into the true faith of Islam.

There are two types of apostates according to sharia (Islamic law) and the Hadith (sayings of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him).

The first type is murtad milli, one who converted to Islam and later renounced the faith. The second, and most egregious, type is murtad fitri. It refers to a person born of a Muslim father who renounces his birthright. Two recent examples of the latter are Magdi Allam (a male Egyptian who converted to Catholicism in Italy) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somali-born woman who’s now an atheist). Both now face death threats.

According to Islamic jurisprudence, children of a Muslim father – even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama’s father, and irrespective of the mother’s faith – are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period. …”

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0519/p09s02-coop.html

Islam an unknown factor in Obama bid

By Paul Watson

“…Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said.

“His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque,” Adi said. “I remember him wearing a sarong.”

In her statement, Obama’s sister, who was born after the family moved to Indonesia, said: “My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious.”

In 1968, Obama began first grade at St. Francis Assisi Foundation School, just around the corner from his home.

The Catholic elementary school had opened the previous year and wanted to enroll as many students as possible, so it welcomed children of any religion, said Israella Dharmawan, 63, his first-grade teacher.

“At that time, Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim,” Dharmawan said in Obama’s old classroom, where she still teaches 39 years later. “He was registered as a Muslim because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim.”

Like all pupils, Obama had to pray before and after each class, and cross himself in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Dharmawan said.”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.obama16mar16,0,1634059,print.story?coll=bal_news_nation_promo

Rank	Country	Population
1	Indonesia	231,627,000
2	Pakistan	163,707,000
3	Bangladesh	158,665,000
4	Nigeria	148,093,000
5	Egypt	75,498,000
6	Turkey	70,586,256
7	Iran	70,495,782
8	Sudan	38,560,000
9	Algeria	33,858,000
10	Morocco	31,224,000
11	Uganda	30,884,000
12	Iraq	28,993,000
13	Uzbekistan	27,372,000
14	Malaysia	27,170,000
15	Afghanistan	27,145,000
16	Saudi Arabia	24,735,000
17	Yemen	22,389,000
18	Mozambique	21,397,000
19	Syria	19,929,000
20	Côte d’Ivoire	19,262,000
21	Cameroon	18,549,000
22	Kazakhstan	15,422,000
23	Burkina Faso	14,784,000
24	Niger	14,226,000
25	Senegal	12,379,000
26	Mali	12,337,000
27	Chad	10,781,000
28	Tunisia	10,327,000
29	Guinea	9,370,000
30	Benin	9,033,000
31	Somalia	8,699,000
32	Azerbaijan	8,467,000
33	Tajikistan	6,736,000
34	Togo	6,585,000
35	Libya	6,160,000
36	Jordan	5,924,000
37	Sierra Leone	5,866,000
38	Kyrgyzstan	5,317,000
39	Turkmenistan	4,965,000
40	United Arab Emirates	4,380,000
41	Lebanon	4,099,000
42	Palestinian Authority	4,017,000
43	Albania	3,190,000
44	Mauritania	3,124,000
45	Kuwait	2,851,000
46	Oman	2,595,000
47	Gambia	1,709,000
48	Guinea-Bissau	1,695,000
49	Gabon	1,331,000
50	Qatar	841,000
51	Djibouti	833,000
52	Bahrain	760,168
53	Guyana	738,000
54	Comoros	682,000
55	Suriname	458,000
56	Brunei	390,000
57	Maldives	306,000
	Total	1,468,119,824

Background Articles and Videos

Michelle Malkin on the Obama/Muslim smears

Poll time: Are you pumped?

By Michelle Malkin

“… know a large number of michellemalkin.com readers have shared my deep-seated reservations about John McCain. Those reservations — especially regarding border security, the environment, campaign finance, and his Soros flirtations — remain. And you know I will not hesitate to pound on them. But the Palin VP choice appears to be a huge step forward for movement conservatism. She is the real deal.

Today’s poll question: Are you on board with McCain/Palin? …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/29/poll-time-are-you-pumped/

Barack Obama: Gaffe machine

By Michelle Malkin

“…But what about Barack Obama? The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:

* Last May, he claimed that Kansas tornadoes killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

*Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

*Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, South Dakota audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you Sioux City…I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.” …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/21/barack-obama-gaffe-machine/

Louis Farrakhan

“Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott, May 11, 1933), is the Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam (NOI) as the National Representative of Elijah Muhammad. He is also well-known as an advocate for African American interests and a critic of American society. Farrakhan currently resides in Kenwood, an affluent neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, and part time at a Nation of Islam farm in New Buffalo, Michigan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Farrakhan

Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

“Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, Jr. (born September 22, 1941) is the former Senior Pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a megachurch in Chicago with around 10,000 members.^[1] In early 2008, Wright retired after 36 years as the pastor of his congregation and no longer has daily responsibilities at the church.^[2]^[3] Following retirement, Wright’s beliefs and manner of preaching were scrutinized when short segments from his sermons were publicized in connection with presidential campaign of Barack Obama.^[4] Obama addressed the issues raised by the Wright controversy in his speech entitled “A More Perfect Union” .^[5] To explain more fully his actual positions on these issues, Wright gave a speech before the NAACP on April 27, 2008, in which he stressed that he was not “divisive”, but “descriptive”, and that the black church experience, like black culture, was “different” but not “deficient”.^[6] …”

”…Barack Obama, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, first met Wright and joined his church in the 1980s, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago before attending Harvard Law School.^[24] Wright officiated at the wedding ceremony of Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as their children’s baptism.^[5] The title of Obama’s memoir, The Audacity of Hope, was inspired by one of Wright’s sermons.^[24]^[5]

Wright was scheduled to give the public invocation before Obama’s presidential announcement, but Obama withdrew the invitation the night before the event.^[25] Wright wrote a rebuttal letter to the editor disputing the characterization of the account as reported in an article in The New York Times.^[26]

In 2007 Wright was appointed to Barack Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, a group of over 170 national black religious leaders who supported Obama’s bid for the Democratic nomination;^[27] however, it was announced in March 2008 that Wright was no longer serving as a member of this group.^[28]…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Wright

The Chicago Way

The Untouchables – Baseball

Rickrolling

“Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). When a person clicks on the link given and is led to the web page he/she is said to have been “Rickrolled”. By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.^[1]

Most believe the practice began as a variant of an earlier prank originating from the imageboard 4chan called duckrolling,^[2] in which a link to somewhere (such as a specific picture or news item) would instead lead to a thread or site containing a photoshopped picture of a duck with wheels. The user at that point, is said to have been “Duckrolled”. The first instance of Rickroll occurred on the site’s video game board, where a link to the Rick Astley video was claimed to be a mirror of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV (which was unavailable due to heavy traffic).^[3] The joke was confined to 4chan for a very brief period.

By May 2008,^[4] the practice had spread beyond 4chan and become an Internet phenomenon, eventually amassing some coverage in the mainstream media.^[5]^[6]^[1] An April 2008 poll by SurveyUSA estimated that at least 18 million American adults have been Rickrolled.^[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickroll

McCain Surges In National Polls

“…There are five new national polls out in the last 24 hours, and four of them show Sen. John McCain opening a lead over Sen. Barack Obama, while the fifth shows the race tied.

McCain Up 2 In ABC/WPost Poll An ABC News /Washington Post poll of 1,133 adults, including 961 registered voters, taken September 5-7 shows Obama leading McCain 47%-46% among registered voters but McCain topping Obama 49%-47% among likely voters. In a similar survey completed August 22, just before the start of the conventions, Obama led 49%-43% among registered voters and 49%-45% among likely voters.

McCain Up 2 In CBS Poll A CBS News poll of 655 registered voters taken September 5-7 shows McCain leading Obama 46%-44%. The same group, interviewed prior to the start of the conventions, had Obama leading McCain 45%-42%.

McCain Up 5 In Gallup Tracker The Gallup daily presidential tracking poll of 2,733 registered voters taken September 5-7 shows McCain leading Obama 49%-44%.

McCain Up 1 In Rasmussen Tracker The Rasmussen Reports automated daily presidential tracking poll for September 8 shows McCain leading Obama 47%-46%, and 48%-47% including leaners.

Race Tied In CNN Poll A CNN /Opinion Research poll of 942 registered voters taken September 5-7 shows Obama and McCain tied at 48% apiece. With third party candidates included, McCain and Obama are tied at 45%, with Nader pulling 3%, Barr taking 3% and McKinney with 1%. …”

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080909.htm

The Rasmussen Reports

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows the race for the White House is tied once again. John McCain and Barack Obama now each attract 46% of the vote. When “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 48%.

One week ago today, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage (see recent daily results). Now, for the first time in Election 2008, Rasmussen Markets data shows the race to be a toss-up. …”

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

LOL

Barack Obama says there are 57 states…

Oprah DOESN’T support women…

Red State Update: Obama Admits He’s A Muslim?

Background Articles and Videos

Say Goodbye to the Glowbama Mystique
From behind the mask of moral salvation peeks self-serving racial rationalization.By Michelle Malkin

“…For two decades, Obama tethered himself to a fire-breathing pastor peddling bitter Marxist “black liberation theology” in the name of God. Behind the “audacity of hope” was a grievance-mongering preacher animated by the voracity of hate. And understand this: The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama were not merely passing “associates.” They were mentor and mentee, guru, and student, with fates and fortunes intertwined.

For two decades, while using the church to build his Chicago power base and credibility in the black community, Obama turned a deaf ear to Wright’s AIDS conspiracy theories, class-warfare rants, anti-Israel and anti-white raves, and “God damn America” diatribes. These weren’t occasional outbursts. They were the bread and butter of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now, Obama blames “talk show hosts and conservative commentators” for exposing Wright’s race-based rancor. Audacity, indeed.

On Friday, Obama attempted to minimize the extent to which he had been exposed to Wright’s poisonous politicking from the pulpit. “None of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews,” he told Major Garrett of Fox News. “The other statements were ones that I just heard about while we were — when they started being run on FOX and some of the other stations. And so they weren’t things that I was familiar with.” …”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Y2NjOTA1YzIxNTIxYWFmNTVkOGE0ZDVhMDNlYzg4ODc=

Barack Obama Running on his Religion

By Thomas Lifson

“…Barack Obama was not raised as practicing Christian, and in the pamphlet, he draws on a speech he gave last June, in which he identifies Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Jr. as the man who “introduced” him to Jesus Christ. Barack Obama in the past has openly spoken of his respect and attachment to Pastor Wright, getting married by him in his church and calling him his “spiritual mentor” offering many other signs of respect.

In his writings and sermons, Pastor Wright has left a trail of evidence that paint a picture of a radical activist, a man practicing a version of liberation theology, in which Jesus is not seen simply as a redeemer, but as a liberator of the oppressed. The portrait painted in Wright’s own words by John Perazzo at Front Page Magazine depicts a deeply radical man, convinced that racism is endemic in America,

“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!… We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

His views on capitalism are, if anything, even less benign:

“Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,’” says Wright, “depended upon slave labor (by African slaves), and it is only maintained by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.”

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

Black Liberation Theology

“James Cone published the seminal work that systemized black liberation theology, Black Theology and Black Power in 1969. In the book, Cone asserted that not only was black power not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact, the Gospel message for all of 20th century America.^[1]^[2]

This theology maintains that African Americans must be liberated from multiple forms of bondage — social, political, economic and religious. In this new formulation, Christian theology is a theology of liberation — “a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ,” writes Cone. Black consciousness and the black experience of oppression orient black liberation theology — i.e., one of victimization from white oppression.Liberation by NPR This liberation involves empowerment and seeks the right of self-definition, self-affirmation and self-determination. Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago is the one church frequently cited by press accounts, and by Cone as the best example of a church formally founded on the vision of Black liberation of theology.^[3] This theology has recently become a matter of national debate as intense condemnation of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the most visible exponent of the theology^[4], by the U.S. mainstream media forced Senator Barack Obama to distance himself from his former pastor.^[5] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology

Saul Alinksy

“Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois – June 12, 1972, Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of community organizing.

In the 1930s, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle on the allegedly horrific working conditions in the Union Stock Yards). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. The documentary, “The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy,”^[1] claims that “Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America.”

In his Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing,

“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default..”^[2]

Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for the grassroots political organizing that dominated the 1960s.^[3] Later in his life he encouraged stockholders in public corporations to lend their votes to “proxies”, who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his grassroots style took hold in American activism, his call to stock holders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor only began to take hold in U.S. progressive circles in the 1990s, when shareholder actions were organized against American corporations.

Alinsky was a critic of a passive and ineffective mainstream liberalism. In Rules for Radicals, he argued that the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends, and that an intermediate end for radicals should be democracy because of its relative ease to work within to achieve other ends of social justice. In 1969, he was awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.

Saul Alinsky shows his dark, mischievous sense of humor in his dedication to his own book, Rules for Radicals: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”^[4] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky

Obama’s Alinsky Jujitsu

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

“…Alinsky considered himself a realist above all, the ultimate pragmatist. As a confirmed atheist, Alinsky believed that the here and now is all there is, and therefore had no qualms about assorted versions of morality in the pursuit of worldly power. He didn’t coddle his radical acolytes or encourage their bourgeois distinctions between good and evil when it came to transferring power from the Haves to the Have Nots. Alinsky saw the already formed church communities as being the perfect springboards for agitation and creating bonds for demanding goods and services.

When Obama first undertook his agitating work in Chicago’s South Side poor neighborhoods, he was un-churched. Yet his office was in a Church and most of the folks he needed to agitate and organize were Church people — pastors and congregants — who took their churches and their church-going very seriously. So, this became a problem for the young agnostic, who had been exposed to very little religion in his life. Again and again, he was asked by pastors and church ladies, “Where do you go to Church, young man?” It was a question he dodged for a while, but finally he relented and joined a church.

Not just any church, but a huge black nationalist church with a pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who unabashedly preaches a “black” gospel. Rolling Stone Magazine ran with a story on Obama and his church, entitled, “Destiny’s Child,” which included this excerpt from one of Rev. Wright’s sermons: …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/obamas_alinsky_jujitsu.html

Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx Part 1

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

“…Having been a practicing Christian for more than 40 years now, and a practicing Catholic for 26 of those years, I have visited perhaps 100 various Christian bookstores, both Protestant and Catholic. In all of those places, one thing tied together the books for sale: Christianity.

Not so in Obama’s church bookstore.

I spent more than an hour perusing available books, and found as many claiming to represent Muslim thought as those representing Christian thought. Black Muslim thought, to be specific.

And the books claiming to support Christianity were surprisingly of a more political than religious nature. The books by James H. Cone, Wright’s own mentor, were prominent and numerous.

Now that I have read a number of the books that presumably Wright’s congregants (including Barack Obama) have also read, I can only conclude that the thing tying these volumes together is not Christianity, nor any real religion, but the political philosophy of Karl Marx.

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” (emphasis mine)
– Marx and Engels; The Communist Manifesto; 1848

If Marxism can be summed up in only a couple of phrases, now familiar to nearly every modern person, they would be “class struggle” and “oppressed vs. oppressors.”

James H. Cone, the unquestioned modern-day mentor of all the black power preachers, claims to have created a new theology, uniting the Muslim black power tenets of Malcolm X and the Christian foundations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

All he has really done, in my opinion, is take original liberation theology from Latin America, developed in the early 1960s by Catholic priests, and painted it black. …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/obama_black_liberation_theolog.html

Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx Part 2

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

Religion and revolutionaries

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
– Karl Marx

We need to take faith seriously not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal.
- Barack Obama; The Audacity of Hope; p. 216

Karl Marx seemed to regard religion as one of the toughest roadblocks to mounting and sustaining a proper revolution by the proletariat. That the masses would continue to stubbornly cling to their religions, placing their hope in God rather than man, was evidently one of the more prickly thorns in ole Karl’s side.

Both Lenin and Stalin concurred with Marx, and one of the most stringent and murderous thrusts of Soviet Communism was its campaign against religion, especially Judaism and Christianity. Mao and other eastern communists went this route as well, and never pretended to have any faith whatsoever in anyone or anything but the material world.

But Barack Obama, the student of Saul Alinksy, sees the necessity of reeling in those of faith, and making them part of the class struggle, while avoiding the harsher approach of demanding that the people give up their faith as a consequence of their commitment to revolutionary change. Americans have proven much more stubborn in the religious realm than the Europeans, who fell hook, line and sinker for Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/obama_black_liberation_theolog_1.html

Background Articles and Videos

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 1) – Republican National Convention 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Y0um-JYP8

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 2) – Republican National Convention 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6TAYQjLO1w&feature=related

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 3) – Republican National Convention 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeEeQnnMhKo&feature=related

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 4) – Republican National Convention 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2xyOP1RZR4&feature=related

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 5) – RNC 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQemdSHAcA

John McCain – Acceptance Speech (Part 6) – Republican National Convention 09/04/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7jHVBD1Fk&feature=related

Full Text of John McCain’s Acceptance Speech

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjdlN2JiYjkxOGQ1NzExOTEwZDNiOTJhMGZiMzdkOGE=

1980 Republican National Convention: Ronald Reagan Acceptance Speech

Nineteen Eighty-Four

“Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984),^[1] by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), is a 1949 English novel about life under a futuristic totalitarian regime in the year 1984. It tells the story of Winston Smith, a functionary at the Ministry of Truth, whose work consists of editing historical accounts to fit the government’s policies.

The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens. The book had a substantial impact both in literature and on the perception of public surveillance, inspiring such terms as ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Orwellian’. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

1984 trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF51CqBy81U

Newspeak

“Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix^[1] in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking – “thoughtcrime”, or “crimethink” in the newest edition of Newspeak – or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

George Orwell 1984 Part 1

George Orwell 1984 Part 10

George Orwell 1984 Part 11

Part 01: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xns67A…

Part 02: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii64Er…

Part 03: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksk2Wg…

Part 04: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu86Mb…

Part 05: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQARy…

Part 06: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrziWx…

Part 07: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQxEha…

Part 08: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPpS_…

Part 09: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ze77D…

Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJxL21…

Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1JwVG…

Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpp38p…

Testimony of Barbara Jordan
Chair, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Departments of
Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies
March 29, 1995

“…The Commission believes it is essential to control illegal immigration if we are to have a credible immigration policy. We believe legal immigration is in the national interest, but see illegal immigration as a threat both to our long tradition of immigration and to our commitment to the rule of law. …”

“…Our second set of recommendations would reduce the magnet that jobs currently present for illegal immigration. We have concluded that illegal immigrants come primarily for employment. The Commission believes that we need to enhance our enforcement of both employer sanctions and labor standards. But, to make employer sanctions work, we must improve the means by which employers verify the work authorization of new employees. The Commission believes the most promising option is a computerized system for determining if a social security number is valid and has been issued to someone authorized to work in the United States. We are pleased that the Administration has endorsed our recommendations in this area, and we look forward to working with INS and the Social Security Administration on the design of pilot programs that will phase in and test this new verification approach. I urge this committee to provide the funding needed to develop the computerized system and implement the pilot programs. …”

http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/032995.html

Immigration Gumballs

Roy Beck Discusses Domestic Recruitment Channels

The Year the Global Warming Hoax Died

By Alan Caruba

“….The hoax has mainly been a creation of the United Nations Environmental Program and took off in earnest with the 1992 Earth Summit. It culminated in 1997 with the Kyoto Climate Control Protocol, an agreement to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse” gas (CO2) said to be the cause of an accelerated warming of the earth. By 2005, 140 nations had ratified the pact, agreeing to reduce CO2 emissions. Notably exempt from the pact were nations such as China and India. Few, if any, nations have ever met the limits that require reductions in CO2 production, attributed to the use of so-called “fossil fuels” such as oil, natural gas, and coal. …”

“…Having testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, paleoclimate scientist, Bob Carter, noted in a June 18, 2007 essay that global warming has stopped. There has been little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 17 percent. Thus, the connection between CO2 and “global warming”, the key to the claims that it is occurring and will increase has been proven wrong.

Dr. Roy Spencer, another critic of the global warming hoax, has noted that “At least 80 percent of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems.” The computer models used by advocates of global warming have been unable to include the actions and impact of clouds, thus rendering them seriously flawed. …”

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/caruba090307.htm

Lord Al Gore The Global Warming Fascist

Al Gore’s Liberal Global Warming Fascist Fear Mongering

Explaining the “community organizer” joke to the outraged Left

“…Why Obama’s “community organizer” days are a joke

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama’s deep experience as a “community organizer.” I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don’t get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama’s advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama’s followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/

Son of Communist Organizer Saul Alinsky Praises Democratic Convention and Obama Campaign for Using His Father’s Methods

“…The son of Communist Organizer Saul Alinsky has written a letter to the Boston Globe praising the recent Democratic National Convention as a perfect example of putting into action the Communist methods taught by his late father. The letter from David Alinsky highlights the fact that Barack Obama learned the methods of Saul Alinsky in Chicago and put them into practice as a “Community Organizer,” which effectively could be called a professional “Rabble-Rouser.” Read the article below which comments on the Alinsky letter, and the influence the Communist Organizer has had on Barack Obama: …”

“…Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness,” Alinsky Jr. wrote to the Globe. “It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

This is the man who would be our President? He is using mind-control techniques learned from a Communist Organzier to whip the masses into hysteria and frenzy to bring about “change” — but what kind of change? To be sure, Obama did not learn from Alinsky in person – Alinsky died in 1972. But he learned from those who were schooled in the Alinsky/Communist methods of agitation and organizing, and his entire campaign is clearly based on those methods and principles.

America rejected long ago the philosophy of Communism. In fact, we defeated Communism through perseverance and strength. The last thing America needs is to elect a man as President who has risen to where he is by using the methods espoused by Communist philosophers and organizers. …”

<!– –>http://blogsforjohnmccain.com/son-communist-organizer-saul-alinsky-praises-democratic-convention-and-obama-campaign-using-his-fath

Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx Part 1

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

Not so in Obama’s church bookstore.

I spent more than an hour perusing available books, and found as many claiming to represent Muslim thought as those representing Christian thought. Black Muslim thought, to be specific.

And the books claiming to support Christianity were surprisingly of a more political than religious nature. The books by James H. Cone, Wright’s own mentor, were prominent and numerous.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” (emphasis mine)
– Marx and Engels; The Communist Manifesto; 1848

If Marxism can be summed up in only a couple of phrases, now familiar to nearly every modern person, they would be “class struggle” and “oppressed vs. oppressors.”

All he has really done, in my opinion, is take original liberation theology from Latin America, developed in the early 1960s by Catholic priests, and painted it black.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/obama_black_liberation_theolog.html

Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx Part 2

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

“…Karl Marx seemed to regard religion as one of the toughest roadblocks to mounting and sustaining a proper revolution by the proletariat. That the masses would continue to stubbornly cling to their religions, placing their hope in God rather than man, was evidently one of the more prickly thorns in ole Karl’s side.

America might seem more amenable to the kind of Third Way socialism that Hitler brought to Germany, while cunningly using Christian jargon to wile his way into Aryan minds and hearts.

Black liberation theology, I have discovered (Read Part One here.), is yet another form of Third Way socialism, developed by Marxists seeking a way around the stubbornness of the ardently faithful, a way to hook folks on the revolution, without putting up a fight to eradicate their religion.

And Obama’s Chicago experiences seem to give him great hope that his cloak of religiosity will help to catapult him over the religious right and into the White House on the wings of liberation theology. …”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/obama_black_liberation_theolog_1.html

Exclusive: Left and Right

Tom McLaughlin

“…If I could be so bold as to sum up the political dichotomy of Left and Right, I would say Right-wing conservatives believe what Thomas Paine said: “Government, in its best state, is but a necessary evil” – necessary only to maintain order while individual citizens live out their lives privately – with the liberty to make their own decisions and take responsibility for them. Whatever happiness they achieve is up to them alone. As Jefferson put it, “That government is best that governs least.”

Left-wing liberals believe the opposite: “That government is best that governs most.” Government is the source of happiness by being arbiter of who gets what and does what. Individual citizens depend on government for their welfare, cradle to grave. Unhappy citizens are victims. Their unhappiness is someone else’s fault. They blame “the rich” for hoarding things so there’s not enough to go around. They believe the size of the economic pie is static and doesn’t expand. Rather than produce their own wealth, they use government to redistribute it.

Such victimhood dogma drove Alinsky strategy. His advice for “Community Organizers” like Barack Obama was: “Rub raw the sores of discontent.” No wonder Obama befriended race-baiting Jeremiah Wright. Rubbing raw the sores of discontent is Reverend Wright’s stock in trade, just as it is with those other two black “leaders,” the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton. …”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1070/pub_detail.asp

What’s ACORN up to? Voter fraud as usual

By Michelle Malkin

“…What are Obama’s “old friends” at ACORN up to these days? They’re signing up countless new voters who will dutifully cast dubious ballots for their far Left savior and soulmate. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports today on ACORN’s flurry of suspicious activities. Remember, people. This is your tax dollars at work: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/07/whats-acorn-up-to-voter-fraud-as-usual/

ACORN Watch: Voter fraud suspected in Pa.

By Michelle Malkin

“…Yesterday, it was Las Vegas. Today, it’s Dauphin County, Pa. I’m going to make ACORN WATCH a regular feature, because Obama’s “old friends” will be up to no good across the country through November. And you’re paying for it. Keep a look out in your neck of the woods.

Hat tip for this one to reader Sandy. Via the Patriot-News: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/08/acorn-watch-voter-fraud-suspected-in-pa/

ACORN Voter Fraud

FOX News Reports ON SCOTUS Voter ID and ACORN Fraud

KRQE: ACORN Hiring Criminals to Register Voters in NM

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 1 OF 2

OBAMA’S ACORN EXPOSED PART 2 OF 2

Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending

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

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said it is not unusual for campaigns to amend reports, even regarding large sums of money.

But, said Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: “Barack Obama’s failure to accurately report his campaign’s financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign’s interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud. For a candidate who claims to be practicing ‘new’ politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the ‘old-style’ Chicago politics of yesterday.”

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

ACORN groups work through direct action, negotiations, and with public officials. …”

“…False registrations by employees

In some locations, ACORN employees have submitted false voter registration forms rather than obtaining registrations from actual eligible voters.

In Ohio in 2004, four ACORN employees were indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms.^[16]^[17]
In January 2005 two Colorado ACORN workers were sentenced to community service for submitting false voter registrations.^[18] ACORN’s regional director said, “we find it abhorrent and do everything we can to prevent it from happening.”^[19]
On November 1, 2006, four part time ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City, Missouri for voter registration fraud, after being caught, fired, and turned in by ACORN. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.^[20] ACORN said in a press release that it is in large part responsible in these individuals being caught, and has cooperated and publicly supported efforts to look into the validity of the allegations.^[21]
ACORN was investigated in 2006 for submitting false voter registrations in St. Louis, Missouri. 1,492 fraudulent voter registrations were identified.^{[citation needed]}
In 2007, five Washington state ACORN workers were sentenced to jail time.^[22] ACORN agreed to pay King County $25 000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again. According to King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, the misconduct was done “as an easy way to get paid [by ACORN], not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections.”^[23]^[24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now#False_registrations_by_employees

Background Articles and Videos

Newt Gingrich Slams Reporter Ron Allen About Sarah Palin

Governor Sarah Palin Biography Video

Obama Says Sarah Palin Has Zero Experience. Let’s See…

“…Barack Obama said that Sarah Palin has ZERO experience. Let’s see if you agree… “

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obrd9uHpGRE

Obama Says Sarah Palin Has Zero Experience. Let’s See…

“…Barack Obama said that Sarah Palin has ZERO experience. Let’s see if you agree… “

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obrd9uHpGRE

Explaining the “community organizer” joke to the outraged Left

“…Why Obama’s “community organizer” days are a joke

http://michellemalkin.com/

Lady’s night: Palin at the RNC; Rudy mocks “community organizer,” serves up juicy red meat; Lady Sarah is a champ

“…Palin is letting it rip. For those who don’t know what the job entails, let me explain what small-town mayor entails. “I guess it’s like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Shreds Obama’s bitter/clingy remarks.

Palin dives into substantive policy issues: ethics reform, fiscal discipline, energy policy, chief executive policy. Takes on the anti-drilling crowd. “Starting in Jan., we’re going to lay more pipelines, build nuclear plants, move forward on alternative sources. We need American sources brought to you by American ingenuity and produced by American workers.”

“This is a man who has authored two memoirs, but not a single legislative reform.” This is a man who never uses the word victory, except when he’s talking about his own campaign. When the cloud of rhetoric has passed…when those styrofoam Greek columns go back to some studio lot…what exactly is our opponent’s plan?”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/03/ladys-night-palin-at-the-rnc/

How Sweet It Is:

Opening – The Jackie Gleason Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEQg-L-Rbp0

Isoroku Yamamoto

“Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Japanese: 山本五十六, Yamamoto Isoroku^?) (4 April 1884 – 18 April 1943) was Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student of the U.S. Naval War College and of Harvard University (1919–1921).

Yamamoto held several important posts in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and undertook many of its changes and reorganizations, especially its development of naval aviation. He was the commander-in-chief during the decisive early years of the Pacific War and so was responsible for major battles such as Pearl Harbor and Midway. He died during an inspection tour of forward positions in the Solomon Islands when his aircraft (a G4M Betty bomber) was ambushed by American P-38 Lightning fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II. …”

Archive for September, 2008

The Young Divas – Turn Me Loose

Sunny & The Sunliners “Talk To Me” (OLDIE)

Cream – Sunshine of your Love

Sarah Palin on the Hugh Hewitt Show

Ronald Reagan “Morning in America”

Background Articles and Videos

Sarah Palin: Babies, Guns, Jesus

Palin Will Spend More Time With Couric, Cont’d [Byron York]

Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Larry Kudlow

Charlie Rose – Sarah Palin

CNN Brown: ‘Free Sarah Palin

Chicago Trib’s news priorities: Nude Palin trumps economy

By Michelle Malkin

LOL

Red State Update: Palin-Biden Debate (In Anticipation Of)

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

What we got here is failure to communicate!

Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis

Explosive Video, Fannie Mae CEO calling Obama and the Dems the “Family” and “Conscience” of Fannie Mae

Obama and Democrats are Responsible: Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac

Bill Allison on Lou Dobbs 9/26/08

Rooting Out the Reason for the Bailout

by Rich Tucker

HOUSE OF CARDS

LIBERALS FUELED WALL ST. WOES

Sep 24 – Warren Buffett – Bailout must – market meltdown

Buffett on Goldman Deal

Ron Paul Bashes Warren Buffet & Bailout Plan!

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