Political Football

East Germany Had Its Charms, Crushed by Capitalism

an actual headline from the NYTimes.
woah…  I categorized this as media bias, because I didn’t want to start a new category of media idiocy.

read the article here if you want to reminisce about good ole days behind the iron curtain…

yes, those were the days, my friend.

 what are we going to see – where arer we going to be on November 5? -pf

.

link to article

Miss., Ala. counties have more voters than adults

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS – Oct 24, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — More than a third of Mississippi counties have more registered voters than residents old enough to cast a ballot, according to an Associated Press analysis.

In addition to providing ammunition for people who say the voting system is vulnerable to fraud, the flabby voting rolls may make it difficult to accurately determine turnout for the Nov. 4 presidential election.

“There is no reason in the world why some of these counties should have more registered voters than they have living, breathing people,” Mississippi Senate Elections Committee Chairman Terry Burton said.

Despite the inflated voter rolls, “it’s important not to leap to the conclusion that this means there have been many illegitimate voters,” said Adam Skaggs, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

He said the bigger problem — in Mississippi and across the U.S. — is that people have not registered at all or don’t know they have been purged from the rolls.

In Mississippi, AP’s county-by-county analysis compared voter registration figures released Thursday by the Secretary of State’s office with Census figures from 2000, which provide the latest and most detailed information for the entire state.

Twenty-nine of Mississippi’s 82 counties had more registered voters than people of voting age. Alabama has a similar problem — The Birmingham News found that six of 67 counties there have more registered voters than people of voting age.

Mississippi and Alabama are heavily Republican states expected to choose John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama, though they have U.S. House and Senate races that could be close.

“The opportunity for fraud exists certainly if people are on the rolls that shouldn’t be there,” Burton said. “If there’s one case of fraud, there’s one too many.”

He said people could theoretically vote, then go back and try to pass themselves off as people who have died, though he does not expect that. In Mississippi, only first-time voters who registered by mail must show identification. Without an ID requirement, election officials must rely on poll workers and voters to be honest.

In five Mississippi counties with inflated rolls, the discrepancy can be explained by rapid population growth. In the rest, the population has grown slowly or remained stagnant.

Larry Gardner, chairman of the Election Commissioners Association of Mississippi, attributed some inflated voter rolls to commissioners who “are not doing their job.”

Gardner said in some counties, personality conflicts have led to power struggles between the circuit clerk and election commissioners. The circuit clerk, the county’s chief elections officer, is supposed to help election commissioners purge the voter rolls. Gardner said some clerks have blocked commissioners from using county computers.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office compiled its own list of 24 counties with more registered voters than people of voting age. All are also on AP’s list.

Hosemann said his staff has been working with election commissioners, showing them, for example, how to check Health Department records so they can purge dead voters’ names.

But because of Mississippi’s history of trying to suppress minority voting decades ago, the U.S. Justice Department must clear any changes in election laws or procedures. Some commissioners say they’re reluctant to purge names because they don’t want to run afoul of the department.

In the Jackson suburb of Madison County earlier this year, election commissioner Sue Sautermeister put more than 10,000 names on a list of inactive voters, a step short of purging. After complaints from other county and state officials, Hosemann’s office restored them.

You have GOT to be kidding.  AP has gone round the bend.

It’s almost Nov 1.  3 days of campaigning left – here is an AP headline, and it seems like a surprise, an investigation that is revealing stunning new data…  “Media coverage has favored Obama campaign”  seriously.  That’s the headline. Now stop laughing.  Stop!  read the article.  Yes it’s a real article.  -pf

Link to original article

Oct 31 08:28 PM US/Eastern By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – John McCain supporters who believe they haven’t gotten a fair shake from the media during the Republican’s candidacy against Barack Obama have a new study to point to. Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to in 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs. ABC’s “World News” had more balance than NBC’s “Nightly News” or the “CBS Evening News,” the group said.

Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn’t evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.

“For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain,” said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. “If you watch the evening news, you’d think you should vote for Obama.”

The center analyzed 979 separate news stories shown between Aug. 23 and Oct. 24, and excluded evaluations based on the campaign horse race, including mention of how the candidates were doing in polls. For instance, when a voter was interviewed on CBS Oct. 14 saying he thought Obama brought a freshness to Washington, that was chalked up as a pro-Obama comment.

When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported Oct. 1 that some conservatives say that Sarah Palin is not ready for prime-time, that’s marked in the negative column for McCain.

ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats, and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had 73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain).

Hume’s telecast had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and 28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.

It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last week that McCain’s coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama’s has been more mixed.

Meanwhile, another survey issued Friday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that television continues to be Americans’ main source for campaign news, particularly the cable news networks.

But there were clear partisan differences in where people turned.

For instance, of the people who said they got most of their campaign news from Fox News Channel, 52 percent identified themselves as Republican, 17 percent as Democrats and 30 percent as independents, the Pew center said.

MSNBC viewers interested in campaign news identified themselves at 11 percent Republican, 50 percent Democratic and 36 percent independent. The breakdown for CNN: 13 percent Republican, 45 percent Democrat, 38 percent independent.

The study was based on a survey of 2,011 people taken Oct. 17-20 and 24-27. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.

I never thought things would get so bad that I would have welcomed another Clinton Candidacy – but here we are… 

by the way there are a ton of these sites out there, the one that is formatted the best (IMO) but not most populated, is http://puma08.com  on the other hand, and there IS always another hand…  I’ve found a lot of these sites completely vacant, like someone started them but never posted ANYTHING. 

We still do not know the strength of this movement – it has been estimated as high as 4 million.  But the stars are staring to align…  Barry is getting angry, the stock market is up – and if there are suprises there will be November surprises, not October.  Say a prayer for our Republican friends this weekend. 

This is a post from a Democrat that was asked to speak at a McCain rally.  IMO it’s worth reading, and grab a tissue. -pf

Link 

As a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, I recently had the opportunity to give a speech at a McCain rally as to why I have now switched my support to Sen. McCain. In private e-mails with friends and forum members I have been encouraged to post the text of my speech here for everyone to read.

I can honestly say it was well received by the target audience and I was completely shocked to receive a standing ovation. What I spoke of that day was spoken in truth and from my heart. I hope all here will find it inspirational. Here is the text of my speech.

Good morning! I am so honored to be here today, and to speak to you about why I am supporting Sen. John McCain for President.

A supporter of Democrats my entire life, I was an avid supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton. But, when she suspended her campaign in June, I knew I would throw my support behind Sen. John McCain. Not out of anger or spite, but because Sen. Hillary Clinton was right when she said she would bring a lifetime of experience to the White House, Sen. McCain would bring a lifetime of experience to the White House, and Sen. Obama would bring a speech.

It was a simple decision and now I am the State Chair for “Citizens for McCain,” an organization founded by Sen. Joe Lieberman for Democrats and Independents who put their country first and support the candidate for president who has a proven record of bipartisanship politics.

I agree with Sen. McCain on many issues – the important issues. I trust in his plans for energy independence, tax cuts, creating jobs for Americans, better health care, and as a mother of a soldier who has served in Iraq I trust him to bring our troops home safely and in victory. I trust him to get the government’s spending under control and I trust him to implement policies that will return the strength to our economy and ease the burdens so many Americans carry each day. I trust him to do those things because he has promised those things.

And Sen. McCain says what he means and he means what he says. He is a man of character and those seem to be in short supply in Washington these days. But, Sen. McCain has lead the way in character for many, many years.

I want to relay a story to you that was first presented in the New York Times Magazine in 1997.

In 1982 when Sen. McCain was first elected to the House, Arizona Democratic Congressman Morris “Mo” Udall took him in hand and Sen. McCain has said Mo reached out to him in 50 different ways. Four years later when he was elected to the Senate, Sen. McCain said he felt his greatest debt of gratitude was to Congressman Udall, saying “There was no way Mo could have been more wonderful and there was no reason for him to be that way.”

In the late 1990’s, Sen. McCain made the trip every few weeks to a veteran’s home not far from our nation’s capitol to visit Congressman Udall, who by then lay ill and crippled with Parkinson’s Disease, twisted and disfigured. Udall was rarely conscious and even when he was, showed no signs of recognition.

On one particular day, a nurse entered and said “Almost no one visits anymore.” Once one of the most sought-after men in the Democratic Party, Udall lay dying and was visited regularly by only one single old political friend – Sen. John McCain.

Sen. McCain has reflected on how it affected him when Mo Udall took him in hand all those years ago. Sen. McCain said it was one man saying to another that while they may disagree in politics they didn’t disagree in life. That party political differences only cut so deep. It was the reason Sen. McCain continued to visit Mo Udall, long after Udall lost his political influence. You see, the politics were never all that important. It was the friendship. Congressman Mo Udall died in December 1998.

But, Sen. McCain didn’t forget Mo Udall’s kindness and he carried it forward. When Sen. Hillary Clinton arrived on the Senate floor in 2000, she wasn’t warmly welcomed by the good-old boys club. But, there was one man who was there to welcome her – Sen. John McCain. He reached out his hand, welcomed her, and showed her around, much like Mo Udall had done for him so many years ago.

That, my friends is character and if character is the measure of a man then I would say Sen. John McCain far exceeds the measure.

I want a president with character. I don’t want a president who has to hold repeated press conferences to apologize for and explain his lack of judgment in his personal, business, and religious associations; and I don’t want a president who spent 143 days in the Senate before he decided he was experienced enough to lead this country.

I want a president with proven experience. I want a president who learned long ago that there is great value in bipartisanship politics. I want a president who loves his country and will fight for it. I want a president I can trust.

And I want a president who isn’t afraid to be a maverick, to shake things up, and stand their ground. Known as a maverick for years, Sen. McCain cemented his status when he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. He sent a clear message not only to Washingtonians but to the world. Change is coming to the White House and it isn’t the false and empty change being touted by his Democratic opponent.

That change is coming in the form of Maverick McCain and Sarah Barracuda Palin and we’ve all been put on notice – the face of Washington politics is going to change – for the better. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are proven reformers and they’re going to march that reform right into Washington together, and starting on day one that reform is going to begin to heal this nation’s troubles.

So today, I am here to ask you do to what Sen. McCain asked in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention – stand up with him and fight.

Stand up and fight to bring real change, proven change to Washington that will change the course of this country for the better.

So, let’s stand up together, work together, and fight together, regardless of political party, and let’s elect Sen. John McCain as the next President of the United States.

first a little humor for the day: Newsweek’s Howard Fineman observes:

Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades.

That’s just how they taught it in journalism school. A reporter’s job is to comfort the winsome and afflict the uncharismatic.  (from the WSJ Online “Best of the Web”)

Heritage Calls on Obama to Pull False Ads

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The Heritage Foundation today asked Barack Obama to immediately pull two ads that misrepresent the views of Heritage’s Rea Hederman. The campaign has released a 30-second TV ad with false information and repeats it on the campaign website. The following letter was sent by Heritage lawyer Alan P. Dye to the Obama campaign.

Dear Senator Obama:

Two recent campaign advertisements seriously misrepresent the views of my client, The Heritage Foundation. They suggest, quite falsely, that The Heritage Foundation and one of its analysts support your tax plan.

The print ad on your Website as well as your ad entitled “Try This” reference a quote from policy analyst Rea Hederman. In fact, Mr. Hederman never said what is quoted there. Rather, the words you quote are from a New York Sun reporter who interviewed Mr. Hederman and summarized his views erroneously.

That the reporter’s summary is erroneous is evident from the actual quotes from Mr. Hederman presented in the article, which make it quite clear that Mr. Hederman believes your tax plan would be bad not only for the country, but for the middle class. By omitting the direct quotes from Heritage that are contained in the article and attributing to Heritage a conflicting statement not made by its analyst, the advertisement appears to be an intentional attempt to mislead.

Surely there can be no doubt within your campaign as to how Heritage truly views your tax plan. When one of your economic advisors, Jeffrey Liebman, made this same misrepresentation in a September 4, 2008 letter to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Hederman promptly sent a corrective and very public letter. It appeared in the September 16 issue of The Wall Street Journal under the title: “A Bad Plan That Is Less Bad Is Still Not A Very Good Plan.” In it, Mr. Hederman strenuously decried Mr. Liebman’s blatant misrepresentation and set the record straight.

The Heritage Foundation believes that your advertisements’ use of its name is not only not a fair use of its intellectual property, but is an intentional attempt to mislead and misinform voters. As a responsible candidate, you should insist that your campaign cease to run these false advertisements immediately.

Very truly yours,
Alan P. Dye

have you heard radio spots in Iowa with ”sportsman for Obama” saying Barry supports the 2nd Amendment?  Not so fast… 

The NRA vs. Obama by A.W.R. Hawkins (more by this author) Posted 10/28/2008 ET With the 2008 presidential election upon us, the National Rifle Association is making their case against Barack Obama. They unflinchingly describe him as “the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history” and have dedicated large sums of money to exposing his anti-gun agenda. An in-depth look at his record justifies their position. Not only is Obama the economic socialist Rush Limbaugh has said he is, he is also a gun-banning associate of 1960s radicals who cannot wait to take away one of America’s greatest freedoms – - the right to keep and bear arms. The NRA points out the fact that Obama supports handgun bans while Obama frequently excuses himself by saying he supports the Second Amendment but believes states, cities, and municipalities should be able to regulate types of handguns and implement local restrictions. (This convolution is an example of the type of reasoning he uses to explain how he can both find handgun bans and the Heller case, which banned handgun bans, to be “reasonable.”) But Obama has missed the NRA’s point on this one. They are not simply saying he supports the kind of bans we’ve seen in D.C. and Chicago; they are saying he supports a complete ban on the manufacture, sale, and possession of a handgun. And they are right. On March 31, 2008, the Politico revealed that “Obama endorsed a complete ban on all handguns” in a general candidate questionnaire he filled out on September 9, 1995. This is why the NRA keeps telling people that Obama talks out of both sides of his mouth. On one hand, he says, “I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms,” while on the other he supports a complete ban on the arms they would bear. In the same questionnaire he said he supported mandatory waiting periods for handgun purchases. “Waiting periods” mean that when you go to buy a gun you have to fill out paperwork, go through an FBI background check, and then after passing that, return to the store five days later to pick up your new gun. If you’re a woman being pursued by a potential rapist, you just have to hope the would-be rapist will lie low for five days while you wait to pick up your new means of self-defense. Speaking of self-defense, Obama is completely opposed to that as well. In the decades before the Heller decision, many parts of Chicago put handgun bans in place that necessitated making the use of a handgun for self-defense illegal. (Think about it — how could you legally use an illegal tool to protect yourself?) Proving he meant it when he said states, cities, and municipalities should be able to regulate and restrict the Second Amendment, Obama supported these unconstitutional bans when a 2003 case in Wilmette, Ill. provided him the opportunity to stand up for the “individual right” he also claims to support. What happened in Wilmette was simple: a citizen “used a handgun to defend himself from a dangerous repeat offender.” He killed the attacker, and although the killing was ruled an act of self-defense, the innocent man faced jail time for having used a handgun to defend himself. Many Illinois lawmakers realized that such a charge was illogical and moved to change the law so as to allow the use of a handgun for self-defense. And guess what? — Obama opposed the change in legislation (four times). Did you get that? — OBAMA OPPOSED LAWS THAT ALLOWED USING HANDGUNS FOR SELF-DEFENSE. It appears Obama would have us rely upon the government, via the police force, for our protection. And this is why the pro-gun organization, “Students for Concealed Carry on Campus,” is concerned about an Obama presidency. While writing this article I talked to their president, Michael Guzman, who cited the Wilmette self-defense case and said: “Senator Obama’s time in the Illinois legislature has shown his belief in full reliance upon the government to provide for one’s protection against criminals. We hope he comes to the realization that the police cannot be everywhere at once and that the individual is his or her own first line of defense against a would-be assailant.” But if Obama’s record is any indication of things, he’s not going to come to the realization Guzman hopes for. Just think about other aspects of his record as an Illinois senator: He supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park (which is tantamount to banning gun stores period); he supported H.B. 2579, which prohibited law-abiding individuals from purchasing more than one gun a month; he opposed laws that permitted law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for self-defense (i.e., he opposed concealed carry permits); he supported a ban on “junk guns” (cheaper guns that poor people could actually afford to buy and use for self defense); and he voted not to inform gun owners when the state of Illinois did records searches on them (S.B. 1936). His U.S. Senate record is just as dismal: He supports the reintroduction of the assault weapons ban; he favors a ban on high capacity magazines; he voted with Ted Kennedy on ammunition bans (that included hunting ammunition); and most troubling of all, he voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Roberts and Alito are two of the five justices who upheld the Second Amendment in the Heller case. Just think, if Obama had gotten his way, they wouldn’t have been there, and the Second Amendment wouldn’t be there either. The NRA is right to go after this gun grabber. And while political pundits continue to highlight Obama’s dangerous associations with vile humans like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, the NRA will be one of the few outlets reminding you that Obama has some equally dangerous anti-gun associations as well. They’ll trumpet the fact that “the Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control, Incorporated), [has] endorsed Obama for president.” Which means he can now boast of being endorsed by the same gun control organization that also endorsed “Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), John Conyers (D-N.Y.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and, of course, John Kerry (D-Mass.), to name [but] a few.” Those of us who love freedom need to vote McCain/Palin on November 4, and we need go to the NRA website and add our voices to that organization’s cause by joining today. We have to remember that freedom is not just something others give us: it’s something that we sometimes have to defend individually.

Mosk does not provide the rationale for the “1 percent” number that he provides. How was it calculated? Did Mosk even ask? Among other things, Mosk never mentions the basic AVS mechanism that automatically prevents such fraud. He appears not to have asked the Obama campaign why they don’t use it.

10/27 update –  powerlineblog (blurb above) has more on this today.  go HERE to read it all.  From what I understand the AVS system actually has to be disabled – the AVS system is enabled when installed.  This just begs the question – “are they knowingly enabling campaign finance fraud” where someone is setting off shore with a “bucket-o-money” and dumps it into the campaign in less than $200 increments, using goofy names?

then there is also this – I have NEVER heard of a campaign “accidentally” charging $2300 on a credit card for a candidate. HERE.

——————–

the question remains, why would the BO campaign set up a credit card donation system that is highly, highly irregular (not require a name check validation with the card number) unless they wanted to skirt the law.  I mean really… think about it.  And I do not believe the total represents 1% of the “staggering haul”; I believe it represents much more. There should also be investigations on how much of this money was donated by foreign sources.

I have bolded and annotated my irritations below inside the text of the Wapo article.  This is the first time the MSM has bothered to cover this unusual issue; and the fact that Obama was the first to say he would sign on for federal financing (which requires more oversight) then backed away from it, only adds to my concern.  Reading through the article – it seems more like a “Defense of the Obama campaign scheme”, rather than simple reporting.

read better non-MSM reporting here and here.

and here is another reason for off shore contributions. -pf

Link to washington post article

Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny
Obama’s Take Raises Questions About Web
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008; A01

Sen. Barack Obama’s record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.

Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

“There is so much money coming in and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it,” said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut.

Concerns about anonymous donations seeping into the campaign began to surface last month, mainly on conservative blogs. Some bloggers described their own attempts to display the flaws in Obama’s fundraising program, donating under such obviously phony names as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and reported that the credit card transactions were permitted.

Obama officials said it should be obvious that it is as much in their campaign’s interest as it is in the public’s interest for fake contributions to be turned back, and said they have taken pains to establish a barrier to prevent them. Over the course of the campaign, they said, a number of additional safeguards have been added to bulk up the security of their system.  [huh? what and how please... -pf]

In a paper outlining those safeguards, provided to The Washington Post, the campaign said it runs twice-daily sweeps of new donations, looking for irregularities. Flagged contributions are manually reviewed by a team of lawyers, then cleared or refunded. Reports of misused credit cards lead to immediate refunds.

In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. One-tenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.

But clearly invented names have been used often enough to provoke an outcry from Republican critics. Donors to the Obama campaign using false names such as Doodad Pro and Good Will gave $17,375 through 1,000 separate donations, with no sign that they immediately tripped alarms at the campaign. Of more concern, Cairncross said, are reports that the campaign permitted money from 123 foreign nationals to enter its accounts.

Obama officials said they have identified similar irregularities in the finance records of their Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. “Every campaign faces these challenges — John McCain’s campaign has refunded more than $1.2 million in contributions from anonymous, excessive and fraudulent contributors — and we have reviewed and strengthened our procedures to ensure that the contributions the campaign accepts are appropriate,” said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman.  [but every donation to the McCain campaign has gone through the minimum credit card security check and is on file, there are no files to check on the Obama campaign. -pf]

McCain’s contributor database shows at least 201 donations from individuals listing themselves as “anonymous” or “anonymous anonymous,” according to Obama’s campaign. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the McCain campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising solicitation to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.

Rather than relying primarily on a network of wealthy and well-connected bundlers — as candidates have since President Bush pioneered that technique in 2000 — Obama also tapped a list of 3 million ordinary donors, many of whom who gave in increments of $25 and $50.

Obama’s success with these kitchen-table contributors has set up one of the most lopsided financial advantages in modern presidential campaigning. [this is the author's opinion of what is going on, not mine. -pf] During the first two weeks of October, Obama spent four times more than McCain, including for an unprecedented $82 million saturation-advertising campaign that blanketed the airwaves in key battleground states.

Campaign finance experts have already classified this contest as one of the transformational elections that will dramatically change the way politicians pay for campaigns in coming cycles.

“It’s the model of the future,” said Rick Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School. “Gone will be the $2,300-a-plate dinner. That will be replaced by the $30,000-a-plate dinner, the kind of select event Obama had hosted by folks like Warren Buffett. And the rest will be the micro-donors — entirely Internet-based.”

Hasen said the 2008 campaign is a mirror of other races that led to major shifts in fundraising. The Watergate scandal of 1972 led Congress to create a public financing system for presidential bids. Ronald Reagan harnessed the power of direct-mail solicitation in 1980. [and this has WHAT to do this this issue? LOL!!!] In 1996, political parties opened the door to runaway donations in the form of unregulated “soft money.”

One immediate result of Obama’s fundraising showing this fall is that it may render obsolete the current system of public financing for presidential campaigns. Because McCain opted into the system, he was limited to spending the $84.1 million provided to his campaign by the Treasury once he claimed the GOP nomination. Obama, who chose to remain outside the system after initially suggesting that he would participate in it, is expected to raise and spend at least three times that amount in the general election campaign.

Obama’s advantage, said FEC Chairman Donald F. McGahn II, makes it likely that Congress will rethink whether the program still makes sense.

To many, Obama’s fundraising success is good news — it shows that a White House bid can be financed largely without donors who have ulterior motives or agendas, and diminishes the role of the special interests and large institutional givers that were once the backbone of presidential fundraising.  [to many, Barry's financing is BAD news, as it is impossible to track and is not subject to any required audits, and shows a white house bid can be financed largely with off shore or other contributions that would be deemed illegal if auditable. -pf]

“When you have that many contributors,” McGahn said, “it does in a weird way cleanse the system.”   [it also fits perfectly with BO's strategic plan to dump chaos into the system - confusing the system then crying "disenfranchisement". -pf]

Bradley A. Smith, a former FEC chairman, in an essay in today’s Outlook section of The Post, agreed that Obama’s effort would “put to rest all the shibboleths about campaign finance reform — that it is needed to prevent corruption, that it equalizes the playing field, or that tax subsidies are needed to prevent corruption.”

There are already signs that runaway fundraising efforts built on small donors have the potential to create an entirely new set of problems.

Scott Thomas, another former FEC chairman, said the potential for these types of security breaches has been looming for more than a decade, since the commission first allowed donors to use a credit card when making a contribution.

“The problem itself has been lurking,” Thomas said. “What’s changed is the sheer volume of donations. At some point that causes enough of a clog that campaigns cannot do all of the vetting and research that would be necessary to figure out if they’re looking at a real name.”

How the FEC might attempt to tackle these problems is unclear. Both parties have filed formal complaints calling on the agency to investigate their rival. Only McCain will automatically be subjected to an audit, because his campaign accepted funds from the Treasury. There is no requirement that Obama’s books be audited, and FEC-watchers predicted that it could be tough to find the four votes needed to approve an audit, given that the panel comprises three Republican and three Democratic appointees.

Under current law, there is also very little policing of small-dollar contributions. The false donations uncovered by news outlets or by rival campaigns have all involved more than $200, because those contributions must be disclosed in published reports. The campaigns are not required to share any information about donors who give less than $200. And they are not required to even keep records of donors who give less than $50 — they can even give cash.

“Maybe the answer is to revisit [those disclosure thresholds], given that the levels were put in in the ’70s, long before the Internet,” McGahn said. “This may bring it to the fore.”

[all too late, folks, all too late.  they were smarter than the system this time.   We  only need to wait a week to see if it worked.  -pf ]

Link to original article

Salem-News.com (Oct-27-2008 07:00)

China Expert Hayward Warns Against Obama’s ‘Socialist’ Plan For America (VIDEO)

Bonnie King Salem-News.com

An interview with Al Hayward, 25-year China expert, who says his opinions about Obama won’t be popular but promises of less work – more money have failed before.

A U.S. trade expert with 25 years of experience working with China and other Communist nations, says Capitalism is taking over in the east, and an Obama Presidency would signal a shift from traditional U.S. policies to a Socialist agenda.

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – Al Hayward, a 25-year Chinese trade expert, says “you can drown by tipping the canoe too far in either direction”, and he is worried that what he calls Barack Obama’s “socialistic promises” are tipping this country too far toward communism.

China Trade Expert Al Hayward“What bothers me very much is the fact that Obama’s campaign is based on ‘do less, work less, get more’, and the reality of this is it doesn’t work that way,” Hayward said.

Al Hayward has lived, worked, and done business in mainland China and other communist countries for decades, and he is currently working on a 20 billion dollar “City of Tomorrow” project near Macau.

This weekend as he and the woman he married nearly 20 years ago, Wang Hui, strolled through the streets of Portland’s China town, Al Hayward shared his views with us on the “wrong direction” he sees the U.S. moving in.

“I’ve lived under 15 presidents and voted for 8,” Hayward said. “During the great depression the slogan was, ‘An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work’, I haven’t heard that in this country for 50 years. We’ve been given promises, ‘Elect me and you get more and do less,’ ‘Work less hours and get more pay’. It doesn’t work that way. If you want more, the way I was taught, the way we taught our children, you want more, work more.”

“China’s great economy boom, as exhibited during the ‘08 Olympics and hundreds of billions in trade surpluses came about when she adopted American capitalist policies of, “work more-get more” and became a world industrial powerhouse.”

“I fear that under Obama’s plan, America is in great danger of becoming more Communist than Red China is today if in fact it hasn’t already happened.”

Mark Steyn: Obama nears the ‘now what?’ moment

If elected, he’ll likely, as he has done all his life, take the path of least resistance.

-

Across the electric wires, the hum is ceaseless: Give it up, loser. Don’t go down with the ship when it’s swept away by the Obama tsunami. According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he’s going to win.

In the words of Publishers’ Clearing House, he may already have won! The battleground states have all turned blue, the reddest of red states are rapidly purpling. Don’t you know, little fool? You never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality. Why be the last right-wing pundit to sign up with Small-Government Conservatives For The Liberal Supermajority? We still need pages for the coronation, and there’s a pair of velvet knickerbockers with your name on it.

Yes, technically, this is still a two-party state, but one of the parties is like Elton John’s post-Oscar bash and the other is a church social in Wasilla. As David Sedaris put it in The New Yorker:

“I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of s–t with bits of broken glass in it?’

“To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Well, to be honest, I’ve never much cared for chicken.

McCain vs. Obama is not the choice many of us would have liked in an ideal world. But then it’s not an “ideal world,” and the belief that it can be made so is one of the things that separates those who think Obama will “heal the planet” and those of us who support McCain faute de mieux. I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls “a point of no return.”

It would not be, as some naysayers scoff, “Jimmy Carter’s second term,” but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation – the first being FDR’s New Deal, the second LBJ’s Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. The terrorist educator William Ayers, Obama’s patron in Chicago, is an exemplar of that most-recent model: 40 years ago, he was in favor of blowing up public buildings; then he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within.

All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?

In his first inaugural address, Calvin Coolidge said: “I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” That’s true in a more profound sense than he could have foreseen. In Europe, lavish social-democratic government has transformed citizens into eternal wards of the Nanny State: the bureaucracy’s assumption of every adult responsibility has severed Continentals from the most basic survival impulse, to the point where unaffordable entitlements on shriveled birth rates have put a question mark over some of the oldest nation states on Earth. A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable.”

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away this long with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which Western Europe has dozed this past half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious Western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?   [hey! that's what I said in my previous post! -pf]

“People of the world,” Sen. Obama declared sonorously at his self-worship service in Germany, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people – the Barack Obamas of the day – were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity.

And the wall came down not because “the world stood as one,” but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterrand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived, and the wall would still be standing. Sen. Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing the easy-listening anthems of one-worldism, and the planet will heal.

To govern is to choose. And sometimes the choices are tough ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving “fetuses” of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – i.e., the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex – voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely “present”?

The world rarely stands as one. You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting “present,” you can stand down.

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from “community organizer” to the world’s president-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and U.N. foreign policy.

Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return,” the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

If a majority of Americans want that, we holdouts must respect their choice. But, if you don’t want it, vote accordingly.

ok, I’m not laughing any more. remember yesterday Barney Frank announced that he would seek a 25% $ reduction in the Armed Forces to support these social programs. Ok that’s fine for Sweden, because we’re here… when we’re not there for … I’m really not laughing now. -pf

Biden’s Hint

It’s all tea leaves and chicken entrails, and none of it is pretty.

By Bill Whittle

A few days ago, Joe Biden was trotted out to make his monthly gaffe. Last time — I think it was last time; it’s hard to follow without a program — it was about how Hillary might have been a better VP candidate. This time he mentioned that a young President Obama was likely to be tested in his first six months. Anyway, that’s what he said, before being rotated back to the Cone of Silence.

The thing I actually like about Joe Biden is that these gaffes of his are actually just the product of a man speaking his mind, and some of the time, he happens to be correct.

There have been a lot of guesses as to what shape this “test” might take. But what really interests me is what Sen. Biden had to say later in the same discussion, speaking “off the record” to Democratic-party stalwarts.

“Gird your loins,” he begins — not good! — and then it gets really interesting…

“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. “

Sure you are, Joe. Like I said, there are things I like about Joe Biden. But this perpetual, essential need to puff himself up really tells me the man has serious insecurity issues. But we digress.

“I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, “Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?” We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

So, with the clear understanding that all that follows is the reading of tea leaves and chicken entrails… What the hell was Joe Biden hinting at? What possible action would drive a President Obama’s poll numbers down into the ground?

Well, some people have argued that if Iran and Israel decide to get serious — and if an Obama administration did essentially nothing to defend our ally… how would the vast majority of American Jews — largely Democrats — take that? Could that be the poll hit that Democrats need to “gird their loins” for?

That’s depressing. Here’s something even more depressing: What if Biden is hinting that Obama would indeed get us involved militarily at Israel’s side — or anywhere else, for that matter. In other words, if Obama were to step up and do the right thing, and put America in the middle of another war — would that be what he wants to brace the base for?

What’s depressing about that? Well, in a fundamentally moral country — or political party — such an action should make his poll numbers shoot
up.

Another theory: Recruitment is apparently falling off sharply within the last month or so. I have heard, anecdotally, that new recruits are waiting out the election, since most of them have no desire to serve in the kind of toothless military they see under a President Obama. Is Joe Biden warning us that Obama may need to reinstate the draft to make up for a sudden plunge in volunteers? Who knows? I wonder what the Obama Youth Vote would think if that comes to pass.

Finally, Ed Morrissey over at Hotair.com is wondering if this may all be preamble to something Barack Obama outlines in no uncertain terms in a video you can watch with your own eyes right here.

If you’re new to these intertubes, here’s the print version: He is sitting in what appears to be his senate office, and says, quite clearly, that:

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.
I will not weaponize space.
I will slow our development of future combat systems.
I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons.
I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material.
And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBM’s off hair-trigger alert.”

Wow.

Is Barack Obama planning a unilateral drawdown of U.S. forces? He says that’s what he wants, and he sounds pretty clear about it to me.

There’s a lot to say about that, obviously, but my first thought was that if this became national policy for the United States, we can count on the press brigades that were diligently deployed to determine irregularities in Sarah Palin’s 4-H dues from 1981 and Joe the Plumber’s failure to use American-made Teflon tape to descend on the disarmament procedure and make sure each warhead and every gram was diligently disposed of.

As far as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are concerned… well, they will undoubtedly by moved by the high moral purpose involved — not to mention the fact that it’s Obama who’s asking! — and so I don’t think we need to be too concerned about compliance on their end.

So what was Joe hinting at? What was going to cause Obama’s poll numbers to crater? Perhaps Biden has advance warning that Obama plans to close Disney World and use the facilities to process adorable little bunny rabbits into high-sulfur coal. Again, who knows?

None of these speculations fill me with joy, but I’ll tell you straight up — that last option — unilateral disarmament — makes my blood run cold. When you’re surrounded by armed, raging barbarians, that is not the optimal time to lay down your sword… even if you don’t have the will or the inclination to use it. Why, you may discover that even if you just wave it around a little, it can have a remarkable effect.

Unless you’re running away when you do it, in which case it just pisses them off even more.

Rules for Radicals

In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way:

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

His “rules” derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

from March 2008 Wall Street Journal

Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN

Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that “‘one-size-fits all’ rules for business ignore the reality of the market place.” Today I’m watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.

With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.

There’s no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.

The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.

Health-care paternalism creates another problem that’s rarely mentioned: Many people can’t afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.

Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It’s as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.

Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as “payday lending.”

With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee — usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.

Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn’t perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who’s familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.

Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.

Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

Mr. McGovern is a former senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.

Link to original article

By Edward Mamet
Spectrum
Published on Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:27 PM AKDT

During my 40-year New York City Police Department career, I held nearly every rank and was detached to run large and troubled investigative divisions of two major city and state agencies. Since retiring from the department, I have taught college courses in criminal justice and consulted or testified about police matters for such clients as Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, New York City, Newark, N.J., Chicago, the U.S. Justice and State departments, and victims of police misconduct.

The controversy over Governor Palin’s treatment of her former brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten, and her dismissal of former state commissioner of Public Safety Walter Monegan has led me to look at the matter as if I had been retained by a client to do so. I have therefore examined the full public record of the Wooten and Monegan cases, including the Wooten investigative files and the recently issued Alaska Legislative Council report that charged Governor Palin with an ethics violation for her role in the dismissal of Monegan.

My conclusion is that the Wooten and Monegan matters reveal an Alaska scandal, but one very different from what has been reported by the national press. The scandal — and it is a serious one — involves the conduct of the managers of Alaska’s police agencies and the political officials who have sought to defend them and attack Governor Palin.

The story begins with Wooten’s probationary term as an Alaska State Trooper, when he was found guilty of using official agency reports for personal reasons — a serious charge that in a well-run police agency would have led to an extended probation at the very least. It didn’t, and Wooten was routinely granted full civil service status after his first year.

During his next three years, Wooten committed an astonishing six additional acts of misconduct, unrelated to Palin family complaints, for which he received written admonitions and no meaningful punishment. The matter can be simply stated that any department that treats seven findings of misconduct during the first few years of a police officer’s career by doing little more than creating a papered and ignored personnel file can be categorically defined as recklessly managed.

Then came the Palin family allegations. Those claims included Wooten’s use of a police Taser on a minor, death threats made against his father-in-law (Governor Palin’s father), a criminal hunting violation, public consumption of alcohol while operating a marked police vehicle, repeated acts of violence and alcohol abuse and unlawful steroid use. Given the seven prior findings against Wooten, any well-managed agency would have treated each allegation as a presumptive basis for dismissal and would have treated some as bases for dismissal even for officers with impeccable records. Yet after the department opened its investigation of the Palin charges, no action was taken for more than six months. Only after Governor Palin’s father complained in writing was the investigator’s report issued and it revealed an investigation that I believe:

• Violated basic police investigative procedures by advising Wooten that he was under investigation before the complainant or suggested witnesses were interviewed.

• Dismissed the drug charge on the basis of Wooten’s self-provided lab report that his testosterone levels were normal, and made no apparent effort to find the “blue pill” supplier Wooten was alleged to patronize nor ordered any independent lab tests even for the steroid use allegation that Wooten’s report did not negate.

• Disbelieved credible witnesses who alleged that Wooten was observed drinking in his patrol vehicle.

• Ignored allegations of Wooten’s alcohol and anger management problems, for which abundant evidence existed.

• Accepted Wooten’s excuse that he did not know it was a crime to use another’s hunting license. Faced with charges of an investigative whitewash, the director of the Alaska State Troopers conducted her own investigation and, after yet another five months, issued her findings. Her report failed to take any note of the death threat charge that the investigator had sustained or the allegations of Wooten’s drinking and violence. Amazingly, it accepted without comment the investigator’s dismissal of the drug use charges.

Nonetheless, the director found that:

• Wooten’s seven prior misconduct charges needed to be taken into account in assessing his overall fitness and found that Wooten’s entire record demonstrated “a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times illegal conduct occurring over a lengthy period.”

• Wooten’s Taser use on a minor “demonstrated extremely poor judgment and a conscience [sic] choice …  [of a] very serious in nature … to violate the department’s standards of conduct.” He was a departmental Taser instructor “well trained in the … risks associated with use of the weapon on a child.”

• Wooten had consumed alcoholic beverages while operating his police vehicle, which “not only exposed the Department to liability, but further demonstrates your lack of judgment, … lack of good character, … disregard for law … and a profound disrespect for [your] responsibilities.”

• Wooten committed the crime of unlicensed hunting, which was “exponentially exacerbate[d]” by the fact that he was a wildlife crimes investigator when he did so. She found “no question” of Wooten’s knowing commission of a crime and reported that Wooten “finally did admit that [his] conduct was illegal.” She concluded with a remarkable finding that damned her department far more than it did Wooten himself: “It is nearly certain that a civilian investigated under similar circumstances would have received criminal sanction.”

Despite those findings and the director’s statement that Wooten’s conduct “will not be tolerated,” she merely reassigned him from the Wildlife Investigations Unit, warned him of dismissal if he repeated his behaviors and imposed an indefensibly inadequate 10-day suspension. Worse still, and in textbook demonstration of the department’s managerial dysfunction, the director responded to union pressure by reducing the suspension to five days.

Given the department’s record in the Wooten case, tragic police misconduct cases have predictably occurred. Thus, the state has paid large liability sums in the contemporaneous cases of an officer who was promoted after a jury found him guilty of torturing a suspect with his Taser, another with a prior record of undisciplined violence who remained unpunished even after wrongfully killing a disabled suspect deemed unthreatening by his partner and yet another who committed five rapes after the department failed to investigate harassment complaints of one of his victims.

Further, the indefensible double standard protection given Wooten for conduct “nearly certain” to trigger criminal prosecutions against members of the public apparently remains the department’s norm. Recently asked how he handled trooper hunting violations like Wooten’s, the director of the Wildlife Troopers Division said: “[M]ore often than not it goes into what we call an administrative inquiry, and that’s how the discipline is handled.”

Even more revealing and damning has been former commissioner Monegan’s definition of the Palin family complaints as acts of harassment against Wooten, and his stated belief that his primary obligation in handling the case was to protect departmental morale. He said: “My job was to provide passion and support to 900 people — almost 900 people — in the Department of Public Safety, and one of them — who included Trooper Wooten — he was an irritant to her [Governor Palin ].” The statement alone justifies Monegan’s dismissal, both for its clear indifference to the department’s management failings and its even less defensible failure to understand that Alaska ‘s good police officers do not feel “support[ed ]” by widespread tolerance to the rogue conduct of officers like Wooten.

The recently issued Alaska Legislative Council report is yet another whitewash by state officials and offers further evidence of the state’s continuing refusal to accept the critical need for structural reform of its police agencies and the performance of their managers. The report found that Governor Palin had grounds to fire Monegan for reasons other than his refusal to dismiss Wooten and further found that her action towards Monegan “was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.”

Despite those determinations, the report made the catch-22 finding that the governor had “violated her …  public trust” because her involvement in the Wooten case was an “effort to benefit a personal … interest through official action.” The report’s finding is thus that Governor Palin should not have taken admittedly proper action against a police administrator who failed to reform a department that, among other things, excused repeated acts of admittedly intolerable officer conduct — including an act that would have been “nearly certain” to lead to criminal prosecution had it been committed by a civilian.

Wooten’s conduct clearly merited his dismissal, and his case is among the most poorly handled disciplinary matters I have ever encountered. Contrary to the Legislative Council report, Wooten and Monegan hardly merit immunity because their inexcusable conduct partially related to Governor Palin’s family. In fact, the governor’s opposition to Alaska’s police misconduct and mismanagement and her efforts to deal with the state’s “good old boy” police culture greatly served its citizens and its honorable police officers.

Edward Mamet is a retired New York City Police captain and a police practices consultant.

House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal. At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

“I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s,” Ghilarducci said in an interview. “401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won’t have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break.”

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ghilarducci said.

“I want to spend our nation’s dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered” if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.

She has been in contact with Miller and McDermott about her plan, and they are interested in pursuing it, she said.

“This [plan] certainly is intriguing,” said Mike DeCesare, press secretary for McDermott.

“That is part of the discussion,” he said.

While Miller stopped short of calling for Ghilarducci’s plan at the hearing last week, he was clearly against continuing tax breaks as they currently exist.

Savings rate
“The savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion,” he said. “We have to start to think about … whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”

“From where I sit that’s just crazy,” said John Belluardo, president of Stewardship Financial Services Inc. in Tarrytown, New York. “A lot of people contribute to their 401(k)s because of the match of the employer,” he said. Belluardo’s firm does not manage assets directly.

Higher-income employers provide matching funds to employee plans so that they can qualify for tax benefits for their own defined-contribution plans, he said.

“If the tax deferral goes away, the employers have no reason to do the matches, which primarily help people in the lower income brackets,” Belluardo said.

“This is a battle between liberalism and conservatism,” said Christopher Van Slyke, a partner in the La Jolla, California, advisory firm Trovena, which manages $400 million. “People are afraid because their accounts are seeing some volatility, so Democrats will seize on the opportunity to attack a program where investors control their own destiny,” he said.

The Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America in Chicago, which represents employers that sponsor defined-contribution plans, is “staunchly committed to keeping the employee benefit system in America voluntary,” said Ed Ferrigno, vice president in the Washington office.

“Some of the tenor [of the hearing last week] that the entire system should be based on the activities of the markets in the last 90 days is not the way to judge the system,” he said.

No legislative proposals have been introduced and Congress is out of session until next year.

However, most political observers believe that Democrats are poised to gain seats in both the House and the Senate, so comments made by the mostly Democratic members who attended the hearing could be a harbinger of things to come.

Advice at issue
In addition to tax breaks for 401(k)s, the issue of allowing investment advisors to provide advice for 401(k) plans was also addressed at the hearing. Rep. Robert Andrews, D-New Jersey, was critical of Department of Labor proposals made in August that would allow advisors to give individual advice if the advice was generated using a computer model.

Andrews characterized the proposals as “loopholes” and said that investment advice should not be given by advisors who have a direct interest in the sale of financial products.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 contains provisions making it easier for investment advisors to give individualized counseling to 401(k) holders.

“In retrospect that doesn’t seem like such a good idea to me,” Andrews said. “This is an issue I think we have to revisit. I frankly think that the compromise we struck in 2006 is not terribly workable or wise,” he said.

On Thursday, October 9, the Department of Labor hastily scheduled a public hearing on the issue in Washington for Tuesday, October 21.

The agency does not frequently hold public hearings on its proposals.

Filed by Sara Hansard of Investment News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

A look at the current RSS headlines from ABC’s The Blotter:

Troopergate Probe OK, AK Supremes Say

Todd Palin Pushed Firing for Years, Probe Told

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

Todd Speaks! (Kind of)

Palin Aides to Testify

Troopergate Heads to High Court

Troopergate Suits Tossed

Another Private Palin Email Account?

Probe Challenges Head to Court

Troopergate Suit “Political, Not Legal,” Lawmakers Charge

I’ve got a lot of work to do this weekend, yard signs, events, prepping for events and work work – so I won’t be writing much. thought this was good when I ran into it though, bolding/mine.   read the last paragraph first – this never occurred to me.  -pf

Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

By Michael S. Malone

The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game.  With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling.  And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living.  A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me.  I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut.  I am a fourth generation newspaperman.  As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kansas during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).  My hard-living – and when I knew her, scary – grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times.  And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer.  I’ve spent thirty years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor.  And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national by-line before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media.  Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored.  Hell, I can show you ten different ways to color variations of the word “said” – muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. – to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote.  We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.  But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against their unconscious.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.  That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views, and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire.  If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty – especially in ourselves.

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions.  But I always wrote it off as bad judgment, and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.  Sure, being a child of the ‘60s I saw a lot of subjective “New” Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from ‘real’ reporting, and at least in mainstream media, usually was.  The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.  I’d spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else’s work – not out any native honesty, but out of fear: I’d always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense . . .indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes – and if they did they were soon rehired into an even more prestigious jobs.  It seemed as if there were two sets of rules:  one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who’d managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation’s leading newspapers, many of whom I’d written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page.  Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith – and I know the day and place where it happened – was the War in Lebanon three summers ago.  The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia only carried CNN, a network I’d already learned to approach with skepticism.  But this was CNN International, which is even worse.  I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel.   The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story . . .but it never happened.

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign.  Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates.  But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass – no, make that shameless support – they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press.  I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather – not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake – but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage.  This is the Big Leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.  The few instances where I think the press has gone too far – such as the Times reporter talking to Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends – can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha Bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side – or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden.  If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.  That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault:  his job is to put his best face forward.  No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer – when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction?  Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview?  All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize?  And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.  Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate.  So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicting and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it’s because we don’t understand what their motives really are.  It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide – especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50:50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes . . .and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain’s.  That’s what reporters do, I was proud to have been one, and I’m still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren’t those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign?  Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors.  The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay-out the editorial pages.  They are the real culprits.

Why?  I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one:  Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry.  The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent.  Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared.  Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb.  The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures.  Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play.  Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here.  After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway – all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself:  an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.  With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country . . .

Senator Harkin’s revisionist History of Vietnam  (you tube)

more – also you tube

http://iowaindependent.com/6373/christopher-reed-gets-the-anti-harkin-vote

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/blogs/politically_speaking/?p=607

http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=139016

I read this on another message board and got a sad/chuckle.

In a local restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08″ tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference–just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

BO does not regret his “share the wealth” comment – first honest thing I’ve heard from him in a while.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kNVPZaj1sYA

Vote Miller-Meeks for Congress!

My vote on November 4 will be for Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks for Congress. (2nd Congressional District of Iowa / US House of Representatives)

Dr. Miller-Meeks is simply the best candidate.

Ready to make a difference on Day One in Washington DC; she is not a politician or a political activist but has been “driven to serve” her entire life.

As a wife and mother she understands the burdens and responsibilities families bear. As a Veteran (24 years in the Army / Army Reserves) she knows the military. Working her way through college and medical school with part time jobs, and later as a nurse; she understands how nurses provide the back bone of the medical care we receive.

Leading the way, she was the first woman faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Iowa and was the first woman president of the Iowa Medical Society. Dr. Miller-Meeks has spent more than a decade in a successful private practice; so she understands the “taxing” trials of small business owners.

The 2nd Congressional District would be well served by electing Dr. Miller-Meeks as Iowa’s FIRST woman congressional representative to the US House.

A new definition of the “height of impropriety” – if they can do this, what keeps them from  capturing your credit card information and re-billing higher amounts?  I tell you this race gets more and more bazaar as the months progress.  11 days to election folks.  

Much more here.  Basically these reports are supposing there is a multi, multi million dollar bankroll in foreign banks submitted from foreign countries under various names to skirt the donation limits.   It has been suggested that 30% or more of BO’s largess has been donated in this manner.  -pf

this from powerlineblog.com 

Who is John Gault

We’ve previously noted the gusher of illegal campaign contributions flowing into the Obama campaign from contributors such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will.” More recently, incidents have been reported in which people have seen credit card charges surface suggesting they donated to Barack Obama when they did not. Matthew Mosk and Sarah Cohen noted one such incident earlier this week:

Now comes the story of Mary T. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. Biskup got a call recently from the Obama campaign, which was trying to figure out why she donated $174,800 to the campaign — well over the contribution limit of $2,300.

The answer she gave them was simple. “That’s an error.”

Is the Obama campaign knowingly receiving illegal contributions? Yesterday one of our readers reported the results of an experiment he conducted:

I’ve read recent reports of the Obama campaign receiving donations from dubious names and foreign locales and it got me wondering: How is this possible?

I run a small Internet business and when I process credit cards I’m required to make sure the name on the card exactly matches the name of the customer making the purchase. Also, the purchaser’s address must match that of the cardholders. If these don’t match, then the payment isn’t approved. Period. So how is it possible that the Obama campaign could receive donations from fictional people and places? Well, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:

Name: John Galt
Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane
City: Galts Gulch
State: CO
Zip: 99999

Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-didgit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and… “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”

This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s donors. Also, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without the collusion of the credit card companies. They simply wouldn’t allow any business to process, potentially, hundreds of millions in credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchasers name.

In short, with the system set up as it is by the Obama camp, an individual could donate unlimited amounts of money by simply making up fake names and addresses. And Obama is doing his best to facilitate this fraud. This is truly scandalous.

Our reader was not yet done. He tried the experiment on the McCain site: “I tried the exact same thing at the McCain site and it didn’t allow the transaction.” He then repeated the experiment at the Obama site:

I went back to the Obama site and made three additional donations using the names Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers, all with different addresses. All the transactions went through using the same credit card. I saved screenshots of the transactions.

Our reader reports, incidentally, that he was using his MasterCard for the contributions. We submit this report in the spirit of inquiry and would especially appreciate hearing from readers who can illuminate how credit card procedures might (or might not) allow this to happen.

UPDATE: Readers have replicated the experiment reported in this post. We will have to revisit the issue tonight or tomorrow and appreciate any information you can provide in the meantime.

Link to full article

Each year since 2005, the US government has levied taxes and then transferred over a trillion dollars per year in social welfare spending.  Since 1965, the year the War on Poverty began, the US government has shared tens of trillions of dollars in wealth to fight a poverty rate that remains unchanged, at 14%, from 1964 to today.

In this election, Obama promises to “share the wealth.”  Barney Frank asserts that there are plenty of “rich people we can tax to recover this money” the Democrats plan to spend – as if you absconded with the funds.  Hillary famously said that the Left would “take things away from [us] on behalf of the common good.” And, of course, Joe Biden asserts it is patriotic for the rich to pay more taxes.  All of them are channeling FDR who, at a campaign stop in 1936, said “increasing the tax paid by individuals in the higher brackets was the American thing to do and increasing still further the taxes paid by individuals in the highest brackets was even more the American thing to do.”    

…..

It is the Left’s assumption, in cherishing those socialist beliefs, that Americans will slavishly continue to work and pay taxes regardless of how confiscatory the taxes they face.  Human nature, history, and experience tells us otherwise which brings us to Atlas Shrugged.

Of course, in the real World, there will be no need for Rand’s idealistic strike.  Instead, the productive class will shrug in these ways:

For those rich enough to do so, there will be no need to strike because they need only move their business or themselves across the border or overseas “to escape the taxgather.”  Already, thousands of new companies have been started by Americans in Hong Kong in the last six months.  Ireland is the home of more and more American businesses because of their low employer tax rate of 12% and lower regulations.

A huge port is being built in Mexico rather than the US for goods that will wind up in the United States. Investor’s Business Daily informs us of Canada’s efforts to make trade deals with other countries besides the US.  Simply put, rather than pay the high American tax rates and regulations, business and individuals will go to where their profits will not be confiscated – all causing a loss of American jobs and the tax revenue the government otherwise might receive – all to the benefit of Ireland, Mexico and beyond. 

read more here: http://politicalvanguard.com/index2.php?id=atlas

And the Main Stream Media will never ask.

Link to TownHall

Team Obama Spin Lies About Ayers
Amanda Carpenter
Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Since Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has specifically targeted Barack Obama on the campaign trail for “palling around” with domestic terrorist William Ayers, Obama’s chief advisors seem to be at loss for words.

One prominent campaign message man has even lied about Obama’s admiration for a critique written by the former terrorist who conducted despicable acts in his youth, about the juvenile justice system.

Obama Spokesman Bill Burton denied Obama ever favorably reviewed Ayers’ 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, sarcastically titled “A Kind and Just Parent” in an interview with Fox News Company’s Megyn Kelly Tuesday.

“He did not write a blurb for his book,” Burton said. “He did not.”

Contrary to what Burton said, a December 1997 article from the Chicago Tribune contains a statement from Obama describing Ayers’ book as “A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.”

The book plainly recognizes Ayers’ involvement in terrorist acts.

The Amazon.com description of Ayers’ book says “For five years, Ayers, a former member of the radical 1960s Weathermen organization, acted as a teacher and an observer in Chicago’s Juvenile Court prison, the nations first and largest institution of juvenile justice….the court today epitomizes the confused and confusing way American justice deals with children…Ayers shows that we must overcome our preconceived notions of these children and learn to deal with the realities of their lives.”

A month before Obama’s flattering blurb was published, Obama participated in a panel about the juvenile justice system hosted by the University of Chicago and organized by Obama’s wife Michelle, then-Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center.

At the time Mrs. Obama said, “This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it.”

According to the University of Chicago’s release on the event Obama was invited because he was “working to combat legislations that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system,” at the time.

Obama’s Campaign Manager David Axelrod told CNN on Monday that Obama did go to Ayers home in 1995 for an event that helped launch his political career but “he didn’t know the history” about Ayers’ violent past, which included plans to bomb the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol as a founding member of the radical Weather Underground terrorist group, at the time.

A number of conservatives, led by the popular talk-radio host and television personality Sean Hannity have called on Obama to disclose exactly when he learned about Ayers’ radical past, but no one from the Obama campaign has made that information available.

Obama Communications Director Robert Gibbs said he didn’t know anything about Obama’s relationship with Ayers firsthand. “I don’t know the details of this,” he told Fox News Tuesday. “I do know what I read in newspapers.”

The New York Times published a news story over the weekend that stated Obama has “downplayed” his relationship with Ayers, but the GOP has exaggerated it.

When asked directly about his friendship with the former terrorist Obama has described Ayers “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” who “engaged in detestable acts when I was eight years old.”

Obama also likened his disagreements with Ayers over his radical acts to his disagreements with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn in a previous Democratic primary debate.

This is a long, long letter I sent to a friend that she could send around to a lot of undecideds in her toss-up state..  Hopefully some here might find it useful — or parts of it – to send to folks who are still undecided.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had lunch with an “old” college friend recently and we engaged in a great discussion over the pros and cons of each candidate.  My friend was admittedly undecided and I simply asked her to consider some new things.  Upon leaving, my friend told me she enjoyed our dialogue and I had given her new things to consider.   

When people were choosing between candidates in 2000 – one factor was personality.  It was generally felt that Bush was “more likable” and not as stiff as Gore.  8 years later – there seems to be quite a bit of rethinking – “hmmm… maybe the stiff guy knew more?” Today – when we are deciding between two candidates – one of the factors appears to be “personality” – that Obama is more exciting than and not as stiff as McCain.  But perhaps, McCain knows more because he has more lived longer and has served in several capacities in service to our country. 

Eight years ago there was some concern about Bush not knowing much about Foreign Affairs – but then he picked Dick Cheney to be his VP choice.  People were relieved because they felt Cheney had been around and knew enough to guide Bush.  Eight years later there is an overriding consensus that perhaps Cheney guided too much.  In 1992 the President Elect was also a Governor with little or no Foreign Policy experience.  It is well known all these years later that the first attack at the World Trade Center and on the USS Cole went unanswered.  Also – the 2001 attack was already in the planning stages during the Clinton Administration.  And when Osama Bin Laden could possibly have been taken out – the President chose not to.  Perhaps a non-military experienced President didn’t recognize what a strategic strike would be. 

People try to paint McCain as the next Bush.  From his entire background – it is abundantly clear that McCain is his own man with his own life experiences that has shaped the man he is today.   16 years ago, 8 years ago and even 4 years ago – when choosing between candidates there was some discussion about how credible a commander in chief could be without ever having served. How could a candidate/President ever truly understand the risks of war, the risks to the men and women serving.  Today – finally after years and years, we have a candidate who knows all too well the risks and horrors of war.  McCain went to War College where, he has said he learned some of the most important lessons about the US “failed” involvement in Vietnam which in part was not having a winning strategy from the start.  McCain long ago criticized the Administration’s handling of the Iraq War.  When it was political suicide to advocate for the “surge strategy” in Iraq – people began writing off his candidacy.  We all know McCain’s assertion by now – that he’d rather win a war than an election.  He didn’t waver nor flip-flop.  He was right.  And even though Obama says the surge exceeded our wildest expectations – he still couldn’t vote for it because we shouldn’t have been there is the first place.  I don’t know about you – but when you are in a bad situation —- you don’t complain about why you got there – you do something to fix it!  And speaking of his floundering campaign last Summer – McCain recognized the mistakes being made – he “righted the ship” and went on to win the nomination of his party.  He had no big organization behind him and the media and late night comics were cracking jokes about his failing campaign.  McCain righted his campaign ship.  There actually might be something to be said for being tough and knowing that he has been through worse times as Tom Ridge shared at the convention. 

We have had hard historical lessons in the past 60 years: The rise of Hitler, the spread of communism, Vietnam’s failure, the rise of terrorism worldwide and terrorist attacks on our home soil.   I can admit that I am grateful our Country has not been attacked again since 2001.  Remaining vigilant is never a mistake.  McCain believes in being strong here and around the world.   When we looked the other way in the 1930’s – Hitler took hold of Europe.  It is simply not possible to not remain vigilant. 

Harry Truman, who was ridiculed upon his ascension to the Presidency when FDR died is now, 60 years later, considered to be one of our best Presidents.  The following is an excerpt from the Truman Library website: “Although he struggled to succeed on the farm and in business, Harry S. Truman found success in the military. Starting from the rank of Private in the National Guard of Missouri, Truman left military service 37 years later as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Officers’ Reserve Corps. On active duty during the First World War, Captain Truman excelled as the commanding officer of a field artillery battery. His intelligence, practical experience, and work ethic proved invaluable. “Captain Harry” was highly respected by the nearly two hundred men of Battery D, and that respect kindled lifelong friendships.”  When faced with the biggest decision ever up to that point in time, Truman relied on FDR’s cabinet members and his own experience in War time to guide his action. 

Friends made in wartime have often been for life as men and women share an experience that few others can understand.  John McCain still has the respect and support of the his fellow servicemen – those he fought with and those who were POWs with him.  That says a heck of a lot.  John McCain was tested, no question, and has admitted that he was “broken” by extreme torture yet he survived.  He has been tested as few men ever want to be and so intimately understands the horrors of war.   

George Washington had this to say and he may have known something about having friends he served with: “Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.” – George Washington (1732 – 1799) US Statesman. I still wonder about Obama’s friends – the ones we know about and the ones we have not heard from.   And I like this quote: “A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.” – Proverbs 27:19 

And isn’t it also noteworthy that John McCain has friends of all affiliations.  He had Joe Lieberman speak on his behalf at the Republican Convention.  Lieberman believes so much in his friend that he put himself in political peril (as much as McCain did with his surge support) to appear in St. Paul.  McCain has said he will have the best people – of any affiliation – serving with him and in his Cabinet.  Wouldn’t that be a nice change –  Someone who has proven ability to work cooperatively with colleagues of the “other” party?  I would challenge people to look up the laws the candidates have voted for and have presented as their own.  Look at the Yays, the Nays and the No Vote or Present Votes.  Each candidate has their own Senate web pages.  

Almost two years ago – former President Gerald R. Ford passed away 30 years after he lost his bid for re-election – at the time he was also ridiculed for his “clumsiness” and widely disparaged for his pardon of Nixon.  Ford was almost unanimously honored by historians and current political pundits at his death for doing the right thing for the country even though it was political suicide.  Many have postulated that Ford may have won if he had not pardoned Nixon.  Ford knew what the right thing to do was – to put the Country first not his own ambition.   At the time, people wanted “change” and so the Country (I was merely in the 3 rd grade at the time) elected Jimmy Carter – someone with no foreign experience at the time. Certainly older Americans remember what happened to our citizens turned hostages in Iran. And if younger Americans do not know this history then they need to hear it. 

I believe the proliferation of 24 hour news channels and paid political pundits has been quite detrimental to the presidential campaign season.  People used to have to pay attention to the words and records of the candidates and not to which pundits could best spin a topic.  Would Abraham Lincoln or Harry Truman be electable in this day and technological age?  Everyone wrote off Harry Truman way back in 1948.  You know what?  He did his whistle stops in small towns and rural areas and people got to hear him speak and make up their own minds.  Back then there was no CNN or FOX news. McCain, I believe, won his nomination in a large part because of his town hall meetings where people heard him speak, could ask questions and really listen for themselves what the candidate believes and proposes and wants for the country he loves. 

So I challenge people to turn off CNN, FOX news and MSNBC, change the channels in the morning from the Today Show or Good Morning America when they do their daily political commentary.  Google (ok, I’ll concede this benefit of technology and the internet) the speeches of each of the candidates – read the text – underline key points and re-read them. 

Also – another challenge if you are willing:  Disregard the party affiliations.  Look at McCain’s record and qualifications.  Think about hiring a new employee – what would you look for?  Experience?  A grasp of the important issues pertinent to the job?  A proven record of having the right strategies?  A person who recognizes mistakes, who wants to reform bad practices of the company?  In Medicine – a potential doctor must go through a series of practical experience – internships, residencies.  An Architect – before being fully licensed must do an apprenticeship.  Would you hire a new graduate – even if from an Ivy league school for a senior management position – one with little or no experience to speak of.  It is fine to have new ideas but it is also important to try those ideas out at entry levels.  What does it say about an employee working in his position for relatively a short amount of time but instead of focusing on his present duties he is already eyeing the top position?

It is my humble opinion that a man who has served our Country well and with honor and puts Country First is the best one to lead it.  I’ve learned from history’s lessons. 

~Libra Girl

I was first engaged with the good Doctor in February 2008 by her grasp of the facts and her open approach to dialog with anyone and everyone.

You can listen to her most recent interview with 1040AM WHO-Radio Jan Mickelson, by clicking here, and dragging about half way through the podcast before it starts.  She sat down with him on Oct 14.

Her story is amazing and is one of service.

Dr. Miller-Meeks is a wife, mother, a veteran (Army) was a Nurse, is a Doctor, a small business owner and was the first first woman faculty member at the University of Iowa in the Department of Ophthalmology as well as the first woman president of the Iowa Medical Society 2006-07.

She has plans for Energy, Health, Taxes, heck you can read it all by going to her website, it’s all there and more…  http://millermeeksforcongress.com

It is my hope that she becomes the first women to represent Iowa in the US Congress in 2009 – you should hope so too.

Democrats running wild will do this:

- Unions. I am not against Unions. I want Unions to ALWAYS ALLOW private or “blind” votes. something creepy about a legal requirement that will not allow a private vote – only a show of hands. how is that in the best interests of the workers? and watch for new rules on organizing. we need to look at the history of these activities and how successful they are. Many companies just fold or move. where are the jobs and who’s thinking of the workers then?

I am tired of Unions spending Union dues to defeat Republican candidates. LINK   Half of Union workers are Republicans or Independents. Money spent should be subject to an up or down vote from the electorate.

here now if you watch this YOUTUBE video you don’t need to read the rest of this tax crap below.  ok?  or read it anyway.

- Corporate Taxes. The USA now has the highest corporate tax rate in the World (35%). Why would new companies establish here? Why wouldn’t current companies move? Mexico is 28%, Canada is 19.5%.

Do you WONDER why goods and services are expensive? In reality corporations don’t pay taxes, they just past those costs on to the consumer. You think you can legislate so companies can’t do that? Not so fast. Companies are beholden to their stock holders or owners. If you’re losing money, why stay in business? An owner could sell the business and put the money in the bank and make a profit with much less effort.  That leaves…

- Income Taxes. Senator Obama wants to cut taxes for 95% of the electorate – but 40% of the those filing taxes, do not make enough money to qualify to pay ANY income tax.  He needs to explain what he means by that.  If he does allows the BUSH tax cuts to expire, as all Democrats say they will do – there WILL be an automatic tax increase for 100% of those who pay taxes.

Sen. Obama says no one that makes under $250,000 a year would see a tax increase.  Sorry to small businesses that are reported to make over $250,000.

which caused this uproar by Joe the Plumber.  what’s that about.  All he did was ask Senator Obama some questions.  Now he’s a villain, village idiot or should be in jail because he’s lived in 3, 4 states, is behind on his taxes and is in the last of 5 years required to acquiring a plumber’s license himself.  Crazy for asking – but Barry – what if I want to get rich running a plumbing business, why block the dream?  He was just saying $250,000 isn’t a whole lot of money if you want to re-invest into a business – you know CREATE WEALTH?     or…

Death Taxes - So much for Paris Hilton inheriting a huge fortune?  that’s not my point.  I’m very concern about family farms and small businesses related to Death Tax.  No good.  There should be NO inheritance tax for inheritance under several million dollars or more – I’m not smart enough to set that figure but it’s not cool to have to sell a business or a family farm because the “owner” dies.    Taxes – all to pay for

- Growing Entitlements. -  There is a point of view that says our national debt can lead to economic crisis. it’s more likely that growing entitlements will do more long lasting harm.  This is all making me very tired.  On this issue I will re-direct you to blog post that I’ve told you about 20 times you can google ScrappleFace and Katrina or go here and I’m tossing two paragraphs below to tease you to go there.

The danger of centralized government control is not that it robs a few dollars from rich people and gives them to the poor. It’s not even that such a bureaucratic behemoth spawns the waste of billions of dollars. After all, it’s just money.

No, the threat of this system is that it strips a man of what makes him a man, and turns him away from his inner resources, or the inclination to partner with neighbors to solve problems. It humiliates him, blinds him and ultimately cripples him.

It is simply foolish to think you can grow entitlements as the democrats promise and not tax us into submission.  Our economy requires innovation and competition. Creating an environment where more and more services are delivered by the state or federal government will not work, it will end competition therefore it will end process improvement.

A national government can’t be big enough to take care of us all.   Katrina was not a failure of the Bush Administration it was a FAILURE.  First things first, people need to be able to think and act for themselves, then the local government then state then finally and only if necessary the federal guv’ment.

Think about it, guys…  This won’t take long to bankrupt us all, or certainly drive those with money out of the US.  Then who pays?

Look at Venezuela, Hugo is driving out of the country those who want to create wealth for themselves, or those who own business he’s nationalized…  and then who will pay for all these entitlements?

Many of these 3rd world tyrants are being propped up by oil.  Our bad.  But our guv’ment  doesn’t even want us to DRILL!

Just vote Republican – They have their problems too, and a LOT of them - but

the alternative is just that scary.

Senator Obama – what do we know about him? very little, and when someone asks questions they are called racist.  I’m not.  There have certainly been questionable characters in his past. The fact that there is a long history or the same types of “characters” in his past has to make you wonder…

Except for the unrepentant terrorists (Ayres and his wife) the Senator has been quoted as being influenced throughout his adult life by these other people and more dubious characters.

Is any of this illegal? No. But the man IS running for the President of the United States.  Does this man have any NORMAL friends he counts on, prays with, gets money from?

William Ayres and his wife - hate America, but have made their livelihoods here. was pictured (assuming with some pride) photographed standing on the US flag in 2001. Now Obama started to say he barely knows him but that is not substantiated by other facts over the last weeks and the Senator’s story is flexing.

It seems every week we hear more and more of how their paths have crossed, been on the same panels, boards, Obama has written brief “reviews” of Ayres’ published books (for book sleeves)… today I found this – LINK – for all we know they shared the same office space (bldg/floor) for three years.  William I hardly new ye…  says Barry…

just too much to ignore… but if that’s ok then there’s….

Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright - Senator Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” comes from one of Wright’s sermons. Wright was one of the first people Mr. Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama consulted Mr. Wright before deciding to run for president. A 20 year member of his church – how could he NOT know?

Tony Rezko - Link - he’s talking – we’ll learn more.

James Meeks - Link

Michael Pfleger - Link  the key word is Pattern don’t you think?

And none of this covers the good Senators connections and support of ACORN over the last 20 years.

more here

Vote McCain – Palin

Democrats seek new wing for White House

The radical left wing of the Democratic Party is measuring the drapes for an extreme makeover of U.S.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

“If America does not wake up to what is happening, there will be much suffering through a long dark night.”

– “The End of Prosperity”

Democrats could not justifiably talk about “taking the country back” Nov. 4.

This wing of the party has never held power before.

They are virulently pro-abortion, anti-religion, pro-homosexual and so blindingly pacifist they might not put up a fight if an invading force landed in San Francisco.

They are pro-union, anti-trade. They are against every form of energy known to man, and will so weaken this country in its energy policy that it could become a national security threat.

Most alarmingly, they believe in government. They believe in using government to redistribute wealth. They want to use the government to even things out in life: no losers, no winners.

That means, of course, that any lip service they give to the “American dream” is only lip service: How can you put a cap on a dream? This wing of the Democratic Party does, by essentially saying, “Dream all you want, work all you like — but if you get too much money, in the government’s view, we’ll take it and give it to others.”

THE THRESHHOLD has been drawn already: Barack Obama considers anyone earning over $250,000 “rich” and therefore fair game for confiscatory taxes. He has acknowledged, for instance, that increasing the capital gains tax rate actually lowers the amount of dollars it raises, but wants to raise it out of fairness.

They also give lip service to freedom of “expression.” But in practice, they will use the bridle of government to rein in opposing speech.

That may sound overly dramatic. We assure you, it’s not. They will bring back the “Fairness Doctrine,” in which the government “facilitates” political speech on television and radio. So any conservative speech that’s not counterbalanced by liberal speech will be silenced.

They also plan to have citizen (comrade?) groups monitoring local radio stations for “fairness.” Those stations deemed unfair — to what, the “greater good” as determined by the government? — will have their federal broadcast licenses held over their heads.

IN SHORT, THIS country’s voters seem prone to change the nature of this country fundamentally, and perhaps forever, from a free-market republic to a European-style socialistic nation.

You cannot, after all, have a true free market when the government involves itself heavily with rigging things to prevent losers and punish winners — without regard to work ethic or sweat equity. We don’t care how you got the money; you’ve simply got too much. Give it to us.

Investors Business Daily notes how Obama uses the term “economic justice” in some speeches without defining it. But IBD knows what it means: “It’s a euphemism for socialism,” the newspaper says.

“In the past,” says IBD, “such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

“In his latest memoir he shares that he’d like to ‘recast’ the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the ‘winner-take-all’ market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).”

We understand why people want change. We want change. The Bush administration mishandled the war and managed to outspend every administration in history.

But the kind of change that the socialist wing of the Democratic Party will bring is both fundamental and frightening to those of us who believe in constitutional principles of limited government and individual liberty.

SOME READERS haven’t appreciated our editorial criticisms of Barack Obama over the past year. Nor do we enjoy being critical of him. But we thoroughly and utterly believe that his view of government is dangerous to the most basic of American values and freedoms.

We believe he is, in fact, a socialist.

This is not a paranoid, abstract guess. Most reporters who have shown any curiosity at all have come away with the evidence: Obama’s mentors in his youth included a communist named Frank Marshall Davis. Obama’s “community organizing” associates were schooled in the teachings of Saul Alinsky, a socialist who wanted nothing less than a socialist revolution in America.

“Throughout his career,” Investor’s Business Daily writes, “Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for ‘economic justice.’

“He’s been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.”

Change? You bet.

Change for the better? Only if you’re a devotee of Hugo Chavez.

This election threatens to change this country fundamentally, and not for the better.

Columnist Thomas Sowell has called Obama “a danger of the first magnitude in the White House.”

“Conservative-friendly media better get ready,” warns Brian C. Anderson, editor of City Journal , predicting that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate will “launch a full-scale war” on conservative thought, particularly in talk radio.

IT WON’T ALWAYS be with the strong arm of government, either: When WGN-AM in Chicago hosted several conservative writers one day, the Obama campaign bombarded the station in an attempt to silence the conservatives. Notably, the Obama camp had been invited to have someone on the air, but declined. They just wanted the conservatives off.

The news media love to tar conservatives as “radical.” This group of liberal Democrats is the most radical ever to be so close to the seat of power in this country.

Unless conservatives and moderates wake up and mobilize by Nov. 4, they may not recognize this country after the election.

From the Sunday, October 19, 2008 edition of the Augusta Chronicle

Link to Townhall Article

I have always disliked the “goo-goo” types. That stands for good government, the people who want everybody to vote. I don’t want the uninformed to vote because either they will vote the familiar name or they will vote the way somebody tells them to vote. The goo-goo crowd must be in seventh heaven because in Indianapolis 105% of the voting age population is eligible to vote. Thanks to the so-called nonpartisan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a great many people who are dead, invented or just plain silly have registered. On FOX News one ACORN representative admitted that she tells everyone whom she signs up to vote for Senator Barack Hussein Obama. Jeanne MacIntosh of the New York Post got one 19-year old to admit he had registered 72 times in precincts all over Ohio. What was in it for him? Cash and cigarettes. That is a felony in Ohio. But what the heck, registered to vote in Ohio are Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey, according to the Wall Street Journal. In Nevada, where the FBI raided ACORN offices, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys is registered to vote.

ACORN has registered more than three million new voters since Senator John Forbes Kerry was defeated by President George W. Bush in 2004. That was a very close election. Another three million votes and in a close election these votes probably will make the difference.

Currently ACORN is under investigation in Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All but Connecticut are closely contested states.

In some states new voters are put aside until their bona fides can be ascertained. In others there is no such provision. The Obama campaign has 30,000 lawyers ready to challenge the election in any close state. The McCain campaign has 5,000 lawyers for the same purpose. It used to be that in a very few places-Chicago comes to mind-there were sometimes irregularities but for the most part voting was treated as a sacred right of every American.

The entire political process is in jeopardy. Some elected officials of both parties have taken these fraud charges seriously. Others are being very partisan. In Ohio, for example, a United States District Court ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was violating Ohio law by refusing to allow county election boards to verify the identities of voters registered by ACORN. She appealed to the United States Court of Appeals but the full court confirmed the District Court’s early ruling. The Attorney General of Ohio has filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, so the matter is not settled.

As of this writing a landslide is building for Senator Obama. If the race were to tighten during the remaining days, it could be months before legitimate votes are confirmed and a winner is declared. Think of Florida in 2000 and then multiply by a dozen. So unless there is a landslide due principally to ACORN’s activities the American political process, once the envy of the world, will be shattered.

this is getting ridiculous…

Who’s playing the race card?  Charles Krauthammer Op-ed – Washington Post

Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association — with total strangers, mind you — but worse: guilty according to the New York Times of “race-baiting and xenophobia.”

But should you bring up Barack Obama’s real associations — 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN — you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.

The fact that, when John McCain actually heard one of those nasty things said about Obama, he incurred the boos of his own crowd by insisting that Obama is “a decent person . . . that you do not have to be scared [of] as president” makes no difference. It surely did not stop John Lewis from comparing McCain to George Wallace.

full article from the Wall Street Journal here

Americans voting for “change” should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.

                                           -

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history.  Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.

The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.

- The business climate.  control more of the private economy…    The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.

- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is “card check.” Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The “Employee Free Choice Act” would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.

The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union “contract” after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.

- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for “the rich,” substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.

- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the “community organizer” left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress — Democratic, naturally.

Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.

Mr. Obama’s agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton’s was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore’s BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.

In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today’s left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism.

I am quite discouraged and a bit dumbfounded.  I’ve been talking with various members of my family – all women whom I consider to be savvy and intelligent.  Yet when it comes to me – I think they all think I am nuts and not discerning enough to know why I am supporting McCain– and that I believe everything that I read that is negative about Obama.  Last night even I was asked if it were possible that I am racist!  Me, racist?  I have been called a lot of things –stubborn, too sensitive, sarcastic, manipulative (not one I am proud of certainly), quick to speak my mind without editing, a trouble-maker and a whole long list still BUT I have never once been called a racist or even questioned until last night.  I once walked away from someone I was with in a Caldor store (remember Caldors?) when I heard the N word used.  After being given up by my biological parents I was cared for in a hospital for the first year + of my life and most of the caretakers were black women.  I have always felt innately comfortable with them.  Admittedly in my small town and growing up we didn’t have many black people but my family was never prejudiced.  My grandfather, after suffering a devastating stroke, was cared for by a black woman – Hilda.  And when Hilda herself was gravely ill my mom and aunt went to see her in ICU and told the nurses they were Hilda’s sisters.  I went to a college where there were women of all colors.  I worked with black people at my dad’s law office.  A dear, dear friend – Demola and his wife Karen are two of my favorite people.  I went to Grad School and met many more people – some of whom are black and whom I have hung around with and in public no less — they are all great people: Caroline, Donell and Cynthia to name a few.    When the person who asked me if I were racist – she also asked me who of color I admired or liked besides Colin Powell and Condi Rice (because I had already said I admired both of them) — and I drew a blank — because I don’t think of people I like in terms of black and white.  I finally came up with Willie Randolph on the spot.  My guy Willie -former Yankee Great and most recently the fired manager of the NY Mets. 

I am a student of History — American History specifically and of the American Presidency.  I was raised by politically active parents and have participated myself in local politics.   I don’t support Obama this year because there are t0o many questions about him and surrounding him.  He has little to no experience on the executive level.  He has been running for President since virtually the first day he stepped into the US Senate.  I don’t approve his stance on partial Birth Abortion and babies born in botched abortions.  I don’t agree with his tax policies.  I need small businesses and big businesses to be able to thrive and expand and offer more job opportunities since I will most likely not be their first choice candidate.  If Obama has stayed in the Senate — built up more of a record — I would have looked at him with less apprehension over his lack of experience.  Years ago I would have loved for Colin Powell to have run for President.

 And yes, I do question Obama’s associates in the past and present.  One is known by the company one keeps.  This is a truism we are raised with from the playground.  Why do you think bullies are usually friendless?  Because other kids innately know not to around hang around with a bully.  Don’t parents of teenagers care about who their kids pal around with ?  They want to make sure their kids are not friends with those who use drugs or drink — right?  This is quite simplistic but it figures that who we are friends with later in life also says who are as people. 

And I want to know why the media is so hands off giving a fully unbiased critical review of Obama – the man and his background.  Why is his background so shrouded in mystery?  Warts and all, divorce and all, fooling around and all, Keating 5 and all, lobbyists and all, skin cancer and all …McCain is an open book.

Casey Anthony was just arrested for allegedly murdering her missing daughter Caylee in FL.  Most people question why she would not contact police as soon as her daughter went missing — why wouldn’t she call for help.  This is common sense.  Why wouldn’t she still tell Police everything she knows if it would help find/save her daughter should she still be alive?  So — why wouldn’t Barack Obama just fork over his birth certificate since a respected attorney has requested to see it in a court of law.  Why go to the trouble of all the legal harranging to have the suit dismissed if you could just present the birth certificate?  Again, this is the most basic of common sense.  More people believe Casey Anthony is involved in the disappearance of her daughter than are concerned about why Barack Obama is not more forthcoming — and he is running for President of the US! 

So, ironically – because I don’t support Obama – I do feel as though I am the black sheep of my family.  Ironic, isnt’ it?

~Libra Girl

Link

Yesterday, I referred to the “dishonest, but facially highly effective, ads” Barack Obama has employed against John McCain. The most persistent of these dishonest ads, at least in the Northern Virginia area, pertain to McCain’s health care plan. They follow the line taken by Lyin’ Joe Biden in his debate with Sarah Palin, where Biden claimed that McCain’s plan effectively gives Americans $5,000 and then takes away $12,000.

Yuval Levin, in the Weekly Standard, has exposed the multiple liberties Obama-Biden have taken with the truth on this subject:

Senators Obama and Biden both mentioned the taxation of health benefits in recent debates, and their campaign has run ads pointing to it as well, but all have failed to note the tax credit that more than makes up for it. The net tax burden on middle class families declines under the McCain plan, while insurance options improve. If they do mention the tax credit, they suggest it is all that families would have if they left their employer coverage–as Joe Biden put it in his debate with Sarah Palin, you would have to “replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company.” But that ignores the simple fact that employer-purchased health care is purchased with employee wages. Right now, employers pay workers less in cash wages because they pay so much in premiums. With McCain’s reform, workers who opt out of coverage will get more take home pay and a tax credit to more than make up for lost employer contributions to health care.But perhaps the most dishonest charge concerns the prospects for the employer-based system itself. The Obama campaign has implied that McCain’s plan would unravel the system and cause workers to be dropped from their employers’ health plans. “Twenty million of you will be dropped,” Joe Biden said in the vice presidential debate. In fact, the McCain plan does not alter the basic financial incentives facing employers. Workers might choose to leave employer coverage, but the McCain plan would not force them out.

Indeed, it is Barack Obama’s health care plan that raises the prospect of masses being dropped from the employer-based insurance system, and his vulnerability on this crucial front may explain some of his intense defensiveness on health care. In the second presidential debate, Obama sought to address this concern through a brazenly misleading depiction of his own plan. “If you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it,” he said. “All I’m going to do is help you to lower the premiums on it.” But you can only keep your plan if your employer doesn’t eliminate it, and Obama’s health care proposal, unlike John McCain’s, gives your employer a powerful incentive to do just that.

Where McCain seeks to address the problems of our health insurance system by building a market for private individuals, Obama seeks to do so by building a public-insurance system. His plan would force all but the very smallest businesses to either provide insurance coverage that meets the plan’s requirements (which the Obama campaign has not specified, but would surely involve extensive particular coverage mandates like those in the federal employee health plan, which exceed what most popular employee plans provide today), or pay a tax to the government. Many employers would thus face the choice of increasing their insurance costs to comply with the new coverage requirements or dropping their workers’ coverage. Obama, meanwhile, would create a new government-run insurance program (funded by the new tax on employers who don’t offer coverage) that would compete with private companies to cover people who are not insured by employers.

In effect, the Obama plan creates an incentive to drop employees from existing plans, and then takes private insurers out of the race to cover them by using price controls to make the public option cheaper. The plan’s goal is to drive Americans into a public Medicare-like insurance system by default.

Unfortunately, Obama’s dishonest attacks on McCain’s plan are perfect for use by an unscrupulous politician in a negative ad. For although McCain’s health care plan isn’t terribly complex, it can’t be explained effectively in 30 seconds. For that reason and because, in any event, McCain lacks the resources to air the truth about his plan with anything like the frequency that Obama is able to tell falsehoods about it, the Obama attack has gone unanswered.

This disparity in the candidates’ resources points to perhaps the greatest irony of this campaign: Obama’s ability to misrepresent facts about substantive issues largely without response is predicated on another Obama falsehood — his promise that, if his opponent agreed to do the same (as McCain did), he would finance his campaign through public funding.

Link to WSJ online article

It is disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you’re shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he’s on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

At the recent Emmy Awards, historian Laura Linney averred that America’s Founders had been “community organizers” — like Barack Obama. Too bad they aren’t like that any more. Mr. Obama’s kind of organizers work at Acorn, the militant advocacy group that is turning up in reports about voter fraud across the country.

Acorn — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — has been around since 1970 and boasts 350,000 members. We’ve written about them for years, but Acorn is now getting more attention as John McCain’s campaign makes an issue of the fraud reports and Acorn’s ties to Mr. Obama. It’s about time someone exposed this shady outfit that uses government dollars to lobby for larger government.

Acorn uses various affiliated groups to agitate for “a living wage,” for “affordable housing,” for “tax justice” and union and environmental goals, as well as against school choice and welfare reform. It was a major contributor to the subprime meltdown by pushing lenders to make home loans on easy terms, conducting “strikes” against banks so they’d lower credit standards.

But the organization’s real genius is getting American taxpayers to foot the bill. According to a 2006 report from the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), Acorn has been on the federal take since 1977. For instance, Acorn’s American Institute for Social Justice claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003. Its American Environmental Justice Project received 100% of its revenue from government grants in the same years. EPI estimates the Acorn Housing Corporation alone received some $16 million in federal dollars from 1997-2007. Only recently, Democrats tried and failed to stuff an “affordable housing” provision into the $700 billion bank rescue package that would have let politicians give even more to Acorn.

All this money gives Acorn the ability to pursue its other great hobby: electing liberals. Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats and is already boasting it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question is how many of these registrations are real.

The Michigan Secretary of State told the press in September that Acorn had submitted “a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications.” Earlier this month, Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller requested a raid on Acorn’s offices, following complaints of false names and fictional addresses (including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys). Nevada’s Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications Acorn submitted weekly.

Officials in Ohio are investigating voter fraud connected with Acorn, and Florida’s Seminole County is withholding Acorn registrations that appear fraudulent. New Mexico, North Carolina and Missouri are looking into hundreds of dubious Acorn registrations. Wisconsin is investigating Acorn employees for, according to an election official, “making people up or registering people that were still in prison.”

Then there’s Lake County, Indiana, which has already found more than 2,100 bogus applications among the 5,000 Acorn dumped right before the deadline. “All the signatures looked exactly the same,” said Ruthann Hoagland, of the county election board. Bridgeport, Connecticut estimates about 20% of Acorn’s registrations were faulty. As of July, the city of Houston had rejected or put on hold about 40% of the 27,000 registration cards submitted by Acorn.

That’s just this year. In 2004, four Acorn employees were indicted in Ohio for submitting false voter registrations. In 2005, two Colorado Acorn workers were found to have submitted false registrations. Four Acorn Missouri employees were indicted in 2006; five were found guilty in Washington state in 2007 for filling out registration forms with names from a phone book.

Which brings us to Mr. Obama, who got his start as a Chicago “community organizer” at Acorn’s side. In 1992 he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded Acorn’s leaders for being “smack dab in the middle” of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago’s Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for “staging, sound, lighting.” It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it’s disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you’re shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he’s on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law — on the taxpayer’s dime.

Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

NRO blog

I’ve been out of pocket since Thursday, but turned on the Sunday shows and nearly hurled. John Lewis plays the race card like no one else. The idea that he would use George Wallace’s name to describe the McCain/Palin campaigning is sickening. John Lewis is not to be criticized given the abuse against him during the civil-right marches, but John McCain can be compared to Wallace despite his heroic service to this country and torture as a POW.

Barack Obama’s campaign has managed to paint Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin as racists. Meanwhile, how dare anyone suggest that Obama’s voluntary association with a racist pastor for 20 years, and his lame defense of the association, raises character questions.

Will the lib media be upset if we quote Aristotle, whose insight seems useful in this context?

“Those, then, are friends to whom the same things are good and evil; and those who are, moreover, friendly or unfriendly to the same people; for in that case they must have the same wishes, and thus by wishing for each other what they wish for themselves, they show themselves each other’s friends.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter)

We choose our own friends and associates. And this is significant in Obama’s case in particular as we are trying to get a sense of who he is and what informs him. Obama is asking the nation to honor him with its highest office. Yet, during most of his adulthood, he has befriended some of the worst kind of people — many of whom detest the nation Obama seeks to lead. And when combined with Obama’s own extremism on issue after issue (is there a left-wing position he does not embrace?), there can be no doubt that an Obama administration working with a Democrat majority in Congress will fundamentally alter the nation’s character in ways that will be very difficult to unravel.

As for Obama’s commercials, they are deceitful even by the Washington Post’s standards. They flat out lie about McCain’s health-care plan and the tax consequences. Indeed, one of the sources he cites for the truthfulness of his ad is the Center for America’s Progress, which is John Podesta’s group. But Obama doesn’t care. He is spending a fortune on the ads, hoping to scare people into believing McCain will take their health care away. Obama’s ad about McCain’s position on corporate taxes is another flat out lie. McCain isn’t proposing a $4 billion tax for oil companies or loopholes for corporations. He opposes letting the Bush tax cuts lapse and wants to further reduce corporate tax rates across the board. Obama has been called on the ad as well, but he is running them non-stop.

And then there is ACORN. Obama worked for them, represented them, and has now given them $800,000 from his campaign. Is Obama unaware of what a fraudulent operation this is? Of course not. He rejects any responsibility for their actions. And what of Obama’s thuggish tactics in intimidating those with whom he disagrees? He asked the Justice Department to prosecute a private group that was running ads about his ties to William Ayers — and later sought tax information from them to file complaints with the IRS. He tried to silence our own Stanley Kurtz by using his campaign e-mail list to encourage calls to the management of a radio station on two separate occasions to keep Kurtz off the air. And then they flooded the show with calls when Kurtz was on.

The vast majority of conservative intellectuals and grassroots activist comprehend what’s at stake in the election, even if David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Doug Kmiec, and other eccentrics do not. Obama and David Axelrod know exactly what they are doing, and so do most of the media anchors and reporters. And they hope to alter this country in ways we should all find revolting.

Powerlineblog  the fraud continues

This is one of those news stories you can hardly believe. In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN turned in 5,000 new registrations. The authorities there started reviewing them, and quit after they found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent. The mind boggles: ACORN turns in thousands of new registrations, and not a single one represents a legitimate voter. Here is CNN’s report:

watch you tube video here

News reports have suggested that Indiana, traditionally a Republican state, may be in play. We’re beginning to understand why.

UPDATE: I forgot to say this this is via InstaPundit. One of Glenn’s readers writes: “I watched the clip you linked. Couldn’t tell from the report. Does ACORN work more closely with one party/candidate than another? Heh.”

Good point. There are some things you need to know, and others you don’t. The connection between ACORN’s voter fraud and the Democratic Party? Forget about it.

Guilty Party: ACORN, Obama, and the mortgage mess
Mona Charen, September 30, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mzk4MmVkNzA1NGQ2NGRkZjQ2YjNmYjdlODZkMmQ4N2I=
_________________________________________________________An ACORN Falls from the Tree: A congressional outrage
Ken Blackwell, September 29, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2Y5MTc0ZTAyMmE1Mjk3NGE3OWRiY2FkMjZlN2YxYzc=
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Inside Obama’s Acorn:
By their fruits ye shall know them
Stanley Kurtz, May 29, 2008

“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.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI
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2004 Video: Democrats Defend Fannie/Freddie from Regulation:
“We’ve been through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. Mr. Chairman we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.”-Rep. Maxine Waters, 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUM
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History of Fannie Mae scandal
Associated Press, December 7, 2006
“Fannie Mae announces its long-awaited restatement, erasing $6.3 billion in profit from 2001 through June 30, 2004.”
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/12/07/history_of_fannie_mae_scandal/?page=1
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Bailout Politics: The Congressional Dems who enabled this crisis are now being trusted to fix it?
Thomas Sowell, September 30, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWE3OWU3OTExYzNlNTUzMzY2YmJmOWZjMzcwN2M1NjU=