Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities

This is the second article in two days that I have read from MSM news sources criticizing Obama. One was on CNN where the reporting wrote a great article reminding us that the reason Obama was able to purchase 30 minutes or air time on 3 networks was because he has a lot of cash. Something he would not have had he stuck to his promise of excepting public financing for his campaign. It was also pointed out that the attacks from the 527 groups (his reason for bowing out of Public Funding) never materialized.

Maybe it is to little to late, but hey....here's to hoping right?

Now this article below from the AP ripping apart said 30 minute add for lacking any substantive facts.

-Mike

Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities
By CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.
Obama's assertion that "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by "eliminating programs that don't work" masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are—beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn't tell them:

THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.
___

THE SPIN: "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost."

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama's policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years—and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years." The analysis goes on to say: "Neither candidate's plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified."
___

THE SPIN: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. "

THE FACTS: His proposals—the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more—cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged—although not in his commercial—that: "The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals."
___

THE SPIN: "I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care."

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: "I want to start doing something about it." He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.
___

THE SPIN: "We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we're going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad that we've got to look at bringing that war to a close." These lines in the ad were taken from a debate with McCain.

THE FACTS: Obama was once and very often definitive about getting combat troops out in 16 months (At times during the primaries, he promised to do so within a year). More recently, without backing away explicitly from the 16-month withdrawal pledge, he has talked of the need for flexibility. In the primaries, it would have been a jarring departure for him to have said merely that "we've got to look at" ending the war. As for Iraq's surplus, it's true that Iraq could end up with a surplus that large, but that hasn't happened yet.

Hey Stupid!

It's been a while since I have personally written anything for this blog. The way new information is changing and updating so rapidly; I as a working class individual have had little time to sit and formulate my thoughts the way I would like. Besides, the information I have been posting was written by individuals with far more knowledge and skill than yours truly.

But I would like to take a moment to sit back; to pause, and have a "Come to Jesus" moment here regarding the Presidential Election that is less than 7 days away.

These are no doubt trying times in our country. Basically anything that could have gone wrong, is going wrong, and it is doing it all at once. People are struggling. I'm struggling, you may be struggling, many of our neighbors and relatives are struggling. In uncertain times the tendency in all of us is to look for help. To find a solution. However in an age where ideology is the cornerstone of our Main Stream Media and hard facts are a thing of the past, it becomes increasingly difficult to put our fingers on the source of the problem.

Capitalism is not the problem. Capitalism is what built this country into the superpower that it is today. Greedy individuals is what put us in this position. Greedy Capitalists, Stupid Consumers, and government officials who are in bead with both of them.

Politicians lie to us and put the blame on other parties, other companies; anyone but themselves. The media reinforces those lies, because the two have been in bed together for so long that for the media to suddenly report facts would be in essence, them admitting that they have been unrepentant whores for Washington all these years. Specifically they have been whores for the left wing agenda.

So naturally when we are faced with this current crisis of the economy, this crisis of the fabric of our society, we are on the lookout for the fix, the godsend. And the media presented him to us as Barak Obama, the Messiah, the patriarch of the middle class. The One. And it looks like we have bought the product, unseen, unproven, and without a warranty.

People don't think much for themselves anymore. They rely on the media to tell them their opinions. We watch a debate on television, and then we rely on the CNN pundits to tell us what was actually said. We get our information from headlines without actually reading the meat of the article. We are becoming a society of sheeple, a dumbed down culture that is spoon feed it's new set of progressive morals by a bunch of talking heads positioned on the bright box centered in every home in America. We don't think. We think we think, but we don't. We think that because we can recite the talking points of every campaign, we are well informed of the issues. We think that because we read the NYT or the Huffington Post that we are well informed; because we read, regardless of the one sidedness. And the more we are spoon-feed the misinformation, or the sterilized-approved-for-the-masses information, the more we alter our senses. The more we accept the idea that we are in fact victims of a capitalistic machine.

"Our faults are not our own, they were forced upon us by a vile CEO of some company. I did not get ahead in life because I didn't work hard enough, but because I was held back by another force that exists in a high rise building somewhere on Wall Street. It was not my fault that I declared bankruptcy because I couldn't pay my 100% mortgage with a piggy-back equity loan, or my 30,000 dollar credit card bills that I racked up buying my new big-screen tv, furniture, home entertainment gallor. It's not my fault, the bank offered me the credit, they said I could afford it, so if they said it, I must be able to. I didn't think I needed to read the contract I signed that said that my interest rate was adjustable so that my payments might actually go up. I didn't bother trying to correct my credit, or debt problems in the three window that I head before the rate changed so I could refinance into a fixed rate mortgage. Those details don't concern me."

Oh yes they do, had you been intelligent enough for analytical thought, you would have known that.

Just once I want to hear someone say that they support Obama even though he is a socialist. At least they admit that, and by admitting that they are showing that they are at least informed of the facts, and not some mindless couch potato who gets all of his "facts" from CBS news evening edition.

To all those who say that Obama is not a Socialist...you are stupid, and mindless, and deserve what you get because you were either to blind, to illiterate, or just to damn lazy to go out and get the facts for yourselves. To say that he is not a socialists only proves that you never even bothered to go out and learn what socialism is.

But don't worry, Obama likes lazy. In fact he will reward lazy with a monthly check from the state, posted directly into your government bank account so you won't even need to leave your couch and your TV to go cash it. And with a little luck...Obama thinks...You will teach your children to live the same way so that generation after generation will continue to be controlled and suppressed and spoon feed by the state. Because his goal is to take away the pain of having to try and succeed in an evil capitalists society, and replace said society with a Communist Utopia.

Oh the bliss.

This is not our grandparents America. Our grandparents worked for everything they had. Some of them get filthy rich, some of them didn't. But they never blamed anyone, they never demanded that someone who had more than they did, give them a peace of the pie. They excepted the fact that some people were just lucky, got a good break, they even celebrated for them. They did not try to regulate them to try and make it harder for the next guy to get ahead.

Not everyone is going to be monetarily rich. If that happened there would not be anyone left to do the manual work. But there are plenty of other forms of riches to experience in life, and we as Americans have forgotten most of them.

The richness of accomplishing a difficult task.

Planting flowers in your very own garden that you worked hard to get, even if it is only the size of a bathtub.

The richness of seeing your child finally take off on that two-wheel bike after months of skinned knees and broken side view mirrors from bike into car collisions.

The richness of that first dance recital, or that first soccer game that looks more like an ant colony attacking a half eaten apple.

The richness of teaching your children that there is no substitute for hard work, and the sense of accomplishment when they grow up and actively contribute to society.

Helping others less fortunate...seeing the smile on their faces when they receive a gift as simple as kindness.

Just being alive and healthy can be the richest feeling of all for many.

We need to stop and appreciate the everyday things around us. To pause for a moment or two and realize what are real priorities should be. How many problems from yesterday, today, and tomorrow would have been, could have been, solved, had we just remembered that?

Think about it...

The Obama Temptation

By Mark Levin, National Review

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama.

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

Obama's Education Groups Funded Controversial Organizations

Fox News

The Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund of Chicago funded numerous controversial groups while Barack Obama served on their boards between 1995 and 2002, an analysis of their tax returns shows.
In 2001, when Obama was a part-time director of The Woods Fund of Chicago, it gave $75,000 to ACORN, the voter registration group now under investigation for voter fraud in 12 states.
The Woods Fund also gave $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attended. The reason for the donation to the church is unclear -- it is simply listed as "for special purposes" in the group's IRS tax form.
It gave a further $60,000 to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of domestic terrorist William Ayers and, with her husband, a former member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground.
Other controversial donations that year included $50,000 to the Small Schools Network -- which was founded by Ayers and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers' and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society -- and $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.
The Woods Fund did not respond to questions about the funding.
When Obama co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which calls itself "a public-private partnership improving education for 1.5 million urban and rural public school students," it gave to some of the same groups -- partnering with ACORN to manage funding for schools and giving over $1 million to the Small Schools Network.
It also gave nearly $1 million to a group called the South Shore African Village Collaborative, whose goals, according to Annenberg's archived Web site, are "to develop more collegial relationships between teachers and principals. Professional development topics include school leadership, team building, parent and community involvement, developing thematic units, instructional strategies, strategic planning, and distance learning and teleconferencing."
But the group mentions other goals in its grant application to the Annenberg Challenge:
"Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us," one page of the application reads.
Click here to see the application.
Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, found the collaborative's original application when going through Annenberg's archives.
Asked to comment, Yvonne Williams-Kinnison, executive director of the collaborative's parent group, the Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore said, "I don't want to put more fuel on the fire. You can call us back after the election.... I don't want to compromise the position."
Late Afrocentrist scholars Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard were both invited to give SSAVC teachers a training session, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge noted in a report, adding that the "consciousness raising session ... received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey session."
But Carruthers has been a controversial figure because of inflammatory statements he made in writing.
"The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy," Carruthers wrote in his 1999 book, "Intellectual Warfare." "Some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture."
In the book, he compared the process of blacks assimilating into American culture with rape.
"We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist," Carruthers said.
Hilliard has come under fire for advocating what many consider an extreme Afrocentric curriculum.
He selected the articles for the "African-American Baseline Essays" published in 1987 and first used in the Portland, Ore., school district. The essays have been criticized for claiming, among other things, that ancient Egyptians were the first to discover manned flight and the theory of evolution.
An Obama spokesman called investigation of these ties "pathetic."
"This is another pathetic attempt by FOX News to distract voters from the economic challenges facing this nation by patching together tenuous links to smear Barack Obama," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.
"The Annenberg Challenge was a bipartisan organization dedicated to improving the performance of students and teachers in Chicago Public Schools that was funded by a Republican philanthropist who was friends with President Reagan and launched by Republican Gov. Jim Edgar."
But Kurtz says those founders of the Annenberg Challenge would not have known the details about to whom their Chicago office -- one of 18 around the country -- was giving money.
"If you read Ayers' proposal to Annenberg, it doesn't sound radical. But if you actually read Ayers' education writings, they are very radical indeed," Kurtz said. "Ayers, like so many other savvy professors, knows enough not to state his actual views frankly when applying for money. But you can find the truth in his writings."
The controversial donations make up only a small portion of the overall amount doled out by the Annenberg and Woods funds. The Woods Fund gave over $3.5 million to 115 different groups in 2001, and the Annenberg Chellenge dispensed nearly $11 million to 63 groups at its height in 1999.
Most of the groups are mainstream and well respected, ranging from the Jazz Institute of Chicago to the Successful Schools Project.
But Kurtz says that this should not obscure what he describes as controversial donations.
"If John McCain had given to white supremacist groups and people said, 'Hey, the majority of funding didn't go to supremacist groups' -- that wouldn't even cut the ice," Kurtz said.
"I feel certain [Obama] knew about these radical groups," Kurtz said. "We know that he read the applications because he made statements about the quality of proposals."

Philidelphia Judge Dimisses Obama Lawsuit

From Americas Right.com

The order and memorandum came down at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Friday. Philip Berg's lawsuit challenging Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president of the United States had been dismissed by the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick on grounds that the Philadelphia attorney and former Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lacked standing.Surrick, it seemed, was not satisfied with the nature of evidence provided by Berg to support his allegations.

Various accounts, details and ambiguities from
Obama’s childhood form the basis of Plaintiff’s allegation that Obama is not a
natural born citizen of the United States. To support his contention, Plaintiff
cites sources as varied as the Rainbow Edition News Letter … and the television
news tabloid Inside Edition. These sources and others lead Plaintiff to conclude
that Obama is either a citizen of his father’s native Kenya, by birth there or
through operation of U.S. law; or that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia by
relinquishing his prior citizenship (American or Kenyan) when he moved there
with his mother in 1967. Either way, in Plaintiff’s opinion, Obama does not have
the requisite qualifications for the Presidency that the Natural Born Citizen
Clause mandates. The Amended Complaint alleges that Obama has actively covered
up this information and that the other named Defendants are complicit in Obama’s
cover-up.

95 % of Americans will get a Tax Break...

That's what Obama says anyway. Here is the problem anyway; only 62% of Americans actually pay taxes. So that means 38% of Americans will get a tax return who never even payed any taxes to begion with.

Wealth Distribution is what it is....

Obama and Socialism (Part 2)

American Thinker

For conservatives opposed to an Obama presidency, the last few days have brought the wonder of the smoking gun: Obama really was a socialist. Combine that hidden paper trail with his Ayers affiliation, and it's reasonable to believe that Obama still holds these socialist political views.

Conservatives' excitement at finally having found the real socialist hiding inside that empty suit is tempered by one thing -- outside of conservative circles, nobody really seems to care. The media, of course, is very aggressive about not caring, but the malaise seems to affect ordinary Americans as well.

The only way to explain this disinterest in Obama's past and its relationship to his present is that Americans no longer consider the label "socialist" to be a pejorative. To them, it's just another content-neutral political ideology. In our non-judgmental age, it falls into the same category as Liberal vs. Conservative, or Left vs. Right. To most people, it just means Obama is a more liberal Liberal, or a leftier Lefty, and they already knew that.

In order to stir ordinary Americans to the sense of outrage those of us in the blogosphere feel, we need to remind them that socialism is not simply a more liberal version of ordinary American politics. It is, instead, its own animal, and a very feral, dangerous animal indeed.

It helps to begin by understanding what socialism is not. It isn't Liberalism and it isn't mere Leftism. Frankly, those terms (and their opposites) should be jettisoned entirely, because they have become too antiquated to describe 21^st Century politics. The political designations of Left and Right date back to the French Revolution, when Revolutionaries sat on the Left side of the French Parliament, and the anti-Revolutionaries sat on the Right. Terms from the internal geography of the French parliament as the ancient regime crumbled are striking inapposite today.

Likewise, the terms Liberal and Conservative date back to Victorian England, when Liberals were pushing vast social reforms, such as the end of child labor, while Conservatives were all for maintaining a deeply hierarchical status quo. Considering that modern "liberals" are seeking a return to 20^th Century socialism, those phrases too scarcely seem like apt descriptors.

If it were up to me to attach labels to modern political ideologies, I would choose the terms "Individualism" and "Statism." "Individualism" would reflect the Founder's ideology, which sought to repose as much power as possible in individual citizens, with as little power as possible in the State, especially the federal state. The Founder's had emerged from a long traditional of monarchal and parliamentary statism, and they concluded that, whenever power is concentrated in the government, the individual suffers.

And what of Statism? Well, there's already a name for that ideology, and it's a name that should now be firmly attached to Sen. Obama: Socialism.

Although one can trace socialist ideas back to the French Revolution (and even before), socialism's true naissance is the 19^th Century, when various utopian dreamers envisioned a class-free society in which everyone shared equally in what the socialist utopians firmly believed was a finite economic pie. That is, they did not conceive of the possibility of economic growth. Instead, they believed that, forever and ever, there would only be so many riches and resources to go around.

The original utopians did not yet look to the state for help establishing a world of perfect equality. Instead, they relied on each enlightened individual's moral sense, and they set up myriad high-minded communes to achieve this end. All of them failed. (For many of us, the most famous would be the Transcendentalist experiment in Concord, Massachusetts, which almost saw poor Louisa May Alcott starve to death as a child.)

It took Marx and Engels to carry socialism to the next level, in which they envisioned the complete overthrow of all governments, with the workers of the world uniting so that all contributed to a single socialist government, which in turn would give back to them on an as needed basis. Assuming that you're not big on individualism and exceptionalism, this might be an attractive doctrine as a way to destroy want and exploitation, except for one thing: It does not take into account the fact that the state has no conscience.

Once you vest all power in the state, history demonstrates that the state, although technically composed of individuals, in fact takes on a life of its own, with the operating bureaucracy driving it to ever greater extremes of control. Additionally, history demonstrates that, if the wrong person becomes all-powerful in the state, the absence of individualism means that the state becomes a juggernaut, completely in thrall to a psychopath's ideas. Herewith some examples:

My favorite example is always Nazi Germany because so many people forget that it was a socialist dictatorship. Or perhaps they're ignorant of the fact that the Nazi's official and frequently forgotten name was the National Socialist German Worker's Party. In other words, while most people consider the Nazi party to be a totalitarian ideology arising from the right, it was, in fact, a totalitarian party arising from the left.

Practically within minutes of the Nazi takeover of the German government, individuals were subordinated to the state. Even industries that remained privately owned (and there were many, as opponents of the Nazis = socialist theory like to point out), were allowed to do so only if their owners bent their efforts to the benefit of the state. Show a hint of individualism, and an unwillingness to cooperate, and you'd swiftly find yourself in Dachau, with a government operative sitting in that executive chair you once owned.

We all know what life was like in this Nazi socialist state. Citizens immediately lost the right to bear arms; thought crimes were punished with imprisonment and death; children were indoctrinated into giving their allegiance to the state, not the family; the government dictated the way in which people could live their day-to-day lives; and people who appeared to be outliers to the harmony of the conscienceless government entity (gays, mentally ill-people, physically handicapped people, Jews, gypsies) were dehumanized and eventually slaughtered.

And here's something important for you to realize as you think about what happened in that socialist state. While a core group of people, Hitler included, undoubtedly envisioned these extremes as their initial goals, most didn't. They just thought that, after the utter chaos of the 1920s (especially the economic chaos), the socialists would calm the economy (which they did), and simply remove from people the painful obligation of having to make their way in the world. It was only incrementally that the average German bought into the ever-more-extreme demands of the state - and those who didn't buy in were coerced because of the state's unfettered willingness to use its vast, brute power to subordinate individuals to its demand.

Here's another example: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In my liberal days in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very popular to downplay what was going on in the USSR and, instead, chalk up fear of the Soviets to the foul remnants of McCarthyism. This was extreme intellectual dishonesty on our part. The fact is that life in the USSR was always horrible.

From its inception, the Soviet state brutalized people, whether it was the upper echelon party purges or the mass slaughter of the kulaks -- all in the name of collectivism and the protection of the state envisioned by Lenin and Stalin. Most estimates are that, in the years leading up to WWII, the Soviet socialist state killed between 30 and 60 million of its own citizens. Not all of the victims died, or at least they didn't die instantly. Those who didn't receive a swift bullet to the head might starve to death on collective farms or join the millions who ended up as slave laborers in the gulags, with most of the latter incarcerated for thought crimes against the state.

I've got another example for you: the People's Republic of China, another socialist state. One sees the same pattern as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: individuals were instantly subordinated to the needs of the state and, as the state's needs became ever more grandiose, more and more people had to die. Current estimates are that Mao's "visionary" Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of up to 100 million people. The people died from starvation, or were tortured to death, or just outright murdered because of thought crimes. The same pattern, of course, daily plays out on a smaller scale in socialist North Korea.

Those are examples of hard socialism. Soft socialism is better, but it certainly isn't the American ideal. Britain springs to mind as the perfect example of soft socialism. Britain's socialist medicine is a disaster, with practically daily stories about people being denied treatment or receiving minimal treatment. Invariably, the denials arise because the State's needs trump the individual's: Either the treatment is generally deemed too costly (and there are no market forces at work) or the patients are deemed unworthy of care, especially if they're old.

British socialism has other problems, aside from the dead left behind in her hospital wards. As did Germany, Russia, and China (and as would Obama), socialist Britain took guns away (at least in London), with the evitable result that violent crime against innocent people skyrocketed.

The British socialist bureaucracy also controls people's lives at a level currently incomprehensible to Americans, who can't appreciate a state that is constantly looking out for its own good. In Britain, government protects thieves right's against property owner's, has it's public utilities urge children to report their parents for "green" crimes; tries to criminalize people taking pictures of their own children in public places; destroys perfectly good food that does not meet obsessive compulsive bureaucratic standards; and increasingly stifles free speech. (Impressively, all of the preceding examples are from just the last six months in England.)

Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.

Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.

Obama and Socialism (Part 1)

Source: Politicaly Drunk

In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. The admittedly Socialist Organization experienced a moderate rise in numbers between 1995 and 1999. By 1999, however, the Socialist 'New Party' was essentially defunct after losing a supreme court challenge that ruled the organizations "fusion" reform platform as unconstitutional.

After allegations surfaced in early summer over the 'New Party's' endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and 'New Party' then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party.

On Tuesday, I discovered a web page that had been scrubbed from the New Party's website. The web page which was published in October 1996, was an internet newsletter update on that years congressional races. Although the web page was deleted from the New Party's website, the non-profit Internet Archive Organization had archived the page.

From the October 1996 Update of the DSA 'New Party':
"New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races...

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)."

Link To The New Party Update

Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the "Progressive Populist" magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.

"New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory.New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago. "

Link To The November 1996 Progressive Populist Article

The Democratic Socialist Party of America published in their July/August Edition of New Ground 47 Newsletter.

"The Chicago New Party is increasely becoming a viable political organization that can make a different in Chicago politics. It is crucial for a political organization to have a solid infrastructure and visible results in its political program. The New Party has continued to solidify this base...

the NP's '96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude. Danny Davis, winner in the 7th Congressional District, invited NPers to join his Campaign Steering Committee. Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in 7th Subcircuit Court, explained that due to the NP she was able to network and get experienced advice from progressives like Davis. Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration."

Link To DSA Article

Obama's membership within the 'New Party' is disturbing as even Green Party members attacked the DSA and New Party as nothing more than a fringe group. The New Party had hoped to implement Socialist Rule in the United States and was established to counteract the influence of a Democratic Party that they viewed as too moderate and too centered. Now it seems that nearly 10 years after the socialist party fell apart, their strategy of upward growth has reached the White House. Obama's ties to the DSA's New Party is beyond just an association it is outright membership, as clearly defined by the parties August 1996 newsletter, in an outright Socialist organization.

Ruling Set to Come Soon on the Philip Berg Case

Jeff Schreiber at "Americas Right" has been doing a great job following and reporting on the Philip Berg case against Obama and his lack of a birth certificate.

For those of you not familiar with the controversy here is a brief recap.

The only birth certificate Obama has made Public is a digital copy on his website. No original has ever been produced along with a certificate of live birth. There are conflicting stories from his family members about where he was born. Some say Kenya. Whatever the case Obama could end all speculation by presenting an vault copy of his birth certificate. He will not, and the state of Hawaii has blocked any attempt by the public to get it.

Barak Hussein Obama has until October 15 to Prove his Citizenship

Philip J Berg has filed a lawsuit against Obama claiming he is not a US citizen and is therefore ineligable to run for President of the United States.

Per the court order, Obama has until tomorrow to prove otherwise.


The Order

Farrakhan on Obama: 'The Messiah is absolutely speaking'

Obama and the Kenyan Connection

There is much speculation about about the relationship between Obama and the African Country of Kenya. To summarize, the Kenyan government is in upheaval over a disputed election in December of 2007.

I am linking to an Article in the NY Sun that has a good background and history of events leading up to he current situation. Whatever the true facts are I find it very intersting that today the Kenyan Government arrested WND reporter, and author of "Obama Nation", Jerome Corsi as he was about to give a press conference at a hotel after investigating the link between Obama and the Kenyan Government.

The Kenya Connection

More: Obama Youth in Action

This video was actually done in school. These are the people that support Obama. I can't think of any political leader that I would support in this fashion no matter how much I liked them.

BARACK OBAMA KIDS AND HITLER YOUTH SING FOR THEIR LEADER

Fanny and Freddy's Investment in Lawmakers

Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer

When the federal government announced two months ago that it would prop up mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, CRP looked at how much money members of Congress had collected since 1989 from the companies. On Sunday the government completely took over the two government-sponsored enterprises, and we've returned to our data to bring you the updates, this time providing a list of all 354 lawmakers who have gotten money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (in July we posted the top 25). These totals are based on data released electronically from the FEC on Sept. 2 and include contributions to lawmakers' leadership PACs and candidate committees from the floundering companies' PACs and employees. Current members of Congress have received a total of $4.8 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with Democrats collecting 57 percent of that. This week we also wrote about how much money lawmakers had invested of their own money in the companies last year--a total of up to $1.7 million.

All Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008.

Mikes Note: Barak Obama is number two on this list, and has only been in the Senate for 4 years.


See the Complete list of who recieved Money

Palin VS Biden

This the debate was far more entertaing to watch then the McCain/Obama debate.

I think Sarah did a great job of holding her own. It bothered me that she dodged a few questions, but I think the standards were higher for her. What candidate doesn't dodge questions in a debate? Usually the questions is dodged because they don't want to answer them. In Sarah's case I think it was because she really didn't know.

That's not a bad thing, it just means she has spent 35 years debating in the Senate like Biden has.

Overall I think she did a great job appealing to her base, and maybe some independant, undecided voters. I doubt that she changed any minds though. But at this point in the game if you have made up your mind you probably are not going to change it. This is a passionate election. Right now both sides are after the undecided Indy voters.

Barney Frank Getting Hammered by O'Riely

McCain Pulling out of Michigan

McCain had hoped to make it into a battle ground state, but has fallen sharply behind in the polls there. All TV adds and mailing will be dropped and most of the campaign staff will be relocated to more competitive states.

Obama pulled out of North Dakota in late September.

451 Pages of Pork

And John McCain voted for them. So much for vetoing any bill that had earmarks in them and making the person who put them in there "famous".

I think John McCain may have lost my vote. I am tempted to right in Ron Paul next to every person on the Ballot who voted in favor of this bill.

Here are some of the earmarks placed in the bill:

New Tax earmarks in Bailout bill
- Film and Television Productions (Sec. 502)
- Wooden Arrows designed for use by children (Sec. 503)
- 6 page package of earmarks for litigants in the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident, Alaska (Sec. 504)

Tax earmark “extenders” in the bailout bill.
- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
- American Samoa (Sec. 309)- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
- Railroads (Sec. 316)
- Auto Racing Tracks (317)
- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
- Wool Research (Sec. 325)


Wooden arrows, Race Tracks, and Wool research?! That's where the problems with our economy started?

Please...

More On Henry Paulson History with Goldman Sachs

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm's Chicago office for Manmeet Taneja. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998;[8] eventually succeeding Jon Corzine (now Governor of New Jersey) as its chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US$37 million in 2005, and US$16.4 million projected for 2006.[9] His net worth has been estimated at over US$700 million.

Source: Wikipedia

Jim McGovern Votes in Favor of Bailout

Jim McGovern who is our state rep in Washington voted in favor of giving private businesses 700 Billion dollars of your tax payer money. Of course I am pretty sure he is running unopposed, but you can still withhold your vote for him this November.