The Unmasking Of Socialist, Radical Obama By Herb Denenberg

Source: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=20170433&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576392&rfi=6

10/20/2008

When Sen. Barack Obama isn't reading from a teleprompter or a script prepared by his handlers, the truth starts coming out...in small doses. That's what happened with Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher. Joe asked Obama about his plans for raising taxes on small business, and the great one replied, "Its not that I want to punish your success; when you spread the wealth around it is good for everyone."

Spreading wealth around is right out of Sen. Obama's socialist playbook, and is central to his extremist, radical, left wing, liberal, socialist agenda. No, Sen. Obama, spreading wealth is not good for everyone. It may be good for the Democratic Party, which sees its Robin Hood tactics as a way to win votes, as a way to extend the welfare state, as a way to rob Peter to pay Paul, and as a way to follow the failed European model favored by leftists. But spreading wealth around is not good for the American economy. It is just a piece of the constant tax, spend, regulate, and grow government approach of the Democratic Party, which kills jobs, slows the economy, increases the deficit, and punishes and penalizes success. Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy were tax-cutters and proved that's the way to a stronger economy. Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama are advocates of tax increases and trade restrictions in tough economic times. Hoover gave us the first Great Depression and Sen. Obama may be on the road to producing the second (if, God forbid, he should be elected).

Sen. Obama's game-changing gaffe focused light on another sad reality. The sickness of the mainstream media was demonstrated by its reaction to the unmasking of Sen. Obama as a socialist, bent on redistributionist policies that are anathema to the American people. Instead of admitting the gaffe or trying to explain it away, they launched an attack on Joe The Plumber. They discovered that his middle name was Joe, but his first name was Samuel. They discovered he wasn't a licensed plumber (which he doesn't have to be to run a plumbing business).

This was all just an attempt to prove he was some sort of fraud, because he chose to use his middle name instead of his first name. We know it is politically incorrect to call Sen. Obama by his middle name, Hussein, but the rest of us are free to use our middle name if we chose to do so.

As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, within days the mainstream media had spent more time investigating and reporting on Joe "The Plumber" than they had spent in years investigating and reporting on Barack Obama or his friend, terrorist William Ayers or his corrupt land deal associate, Tony Rezko, or another one of his racist, bigot associates, Father Michael Pfleger. That tells you the depth of the perversion of the journalistic values of the mainstream media, the extent of their journalistic malpractice in covering this election, and about one of the legions of reasons the mainstream media can no longer be trusted...why it should be shunned and boycotted by readers, viewers, listeners, and advertisers. (Start by boycotting the Philadelphia Inquirer).

The Obama spread-the-wealth slip of the tongue also revealed his welfare state mentality and that of the Democratic Party. You can't make a big chunk of the population subservient to government and to the Democratic Party, without doling out goodies of all sorts, especially cash payments. His tax plan is not aimed at stimulating economic growth, producing more jobs, and bringing prosperity. No it is just another tax and spend welfare scheme. It is a welfare plan, not a tax plan. He robotically repeats he is going to cut income taxes for 95 percent of American workers. That's an outright fraud and an obvious impossibility, as an estimated 30 or 40 percent don't even pay income taxes. What he is going to do is send those 30 or 40 percent a welfare check disguised under the more palatable label of an income tax cut.

Sen. Obama has been called on this 95 percent lie (those that will get tax cuts) many times, but he operates in the Goebbels tradition of repeating a lie often enough in order to establish its acceptance as a truth.

His socialist views make it impossible for him to even think rationally about tax policy. That's why he insists on raising the capital gains tax, even when he knows it will cut tax revenue, not increase it. It is explained by his desire to inject "fairness" into the code, but it seems more like part of his wish to penalize and punish success.

There's another important revelation in this whole Joe The Plumber incident. It is Sen. Obama's constant resort to class warfare. He is interested only in advocating for the "middle class" (however he chooses to define that group) and seems to write off all those below and to shovel only contempt on those above. He puts Sen. John McCain down for seeming to advocate for Joe The Plumber as he may be making more than $250,000. Sen. Obama doesn't understand that a president should advocate for and work on behalf of everyone, and not simply play one class against another. Sen. Obama has rhetoric that says we're one America, but his campaign slurs and his programs divide us into classes, only one of which apparently deserves advocacy by the president. This is all part of his socialist, class warfare mentality. Someone should tell him he is running for president, not of one class or another, but of all classes and of everyone. Class welfare, however disguised, is not attractive in American presidential politics.

Sen. Obama's socialist, redistributionist values and policies should surprise no one. He comes out of a leftist, Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-American group of associates and background. One of his first jobs was as a research assistant at a multinational corporation. There he wrote he acted, "Like a spy behind enemy lines." This is part of the anti-capitalist mindset of the socialist/Marxist Obama. He views business as the enemy.

When he was in college, he said he sought out Marxist professors. In his early runs for office, he sought and received the endorsement of a Marxist Party. One of his early mentors during his secondary education was an avowed and active Communist. His spiritual advisor and one of his most important influences was Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright and his church with Marxist teachings in the form of Black Liberation Theology. He worked closely with socialist and terrorist William Ayers. With Mr. Ayers, he helped dole out money to radicalize school children. He also has close ties to ACORN, a group that seems dedicated to undermining our democracy in the guise of helping the downtrodden. He has demonstrated he is very much at home with anti-American, anti-capitalist, Marxist, socialists types such as Rev. Wright, terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and Father Pfleger.

So it is no surprise that the Communist Party USA is very happy with the Obama candidacy. A Communist Party USA news release says the Obama "campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change." Its web site talked of Sen. Obama's "transformative candidacy" as one "that would advance progressive politics for the long term." This is discussed in Investor's Business Daily (Oct. 17, 2008), which notes that Sen. Obama's Marxist views are popular in Europe and that Karl Marx's Das Kapital are on the upswing in German. It writes, "Voters need to remember on Nov. 4 that when Marx's books are selling well and communists are happy, we are headed for trouble."

Ask yourself why the communists seem to favor Sen. Obama; ask yourself why Hamas in effect endorsed Sen. Obama; ask yourself why America's enemies seem to favor Sen. Obama and closely associate with him.

There's something even more troubling about the Joe The Plumber scenario, and that's more than Sen.Obama's clear commitment to socialism. It's a whiff of suppression of free speech, intimidation, harassment, and, I regret to say, a distinct scent of fascism.

The Obama campaign and the mainstream media went after Joe The Plumber for asking a question. This shows how low the Obama campaign has sunk, and it has descended with its close partner, the mainstream media.

They are investigating, smearing and slandering Joe. This is simply a blatant attempt to silence free speech. This comes on the heels of the Obama reaction to its other critics, which has been documented in detail in this column:

* The Obama campaign tried to shut down a Chicago radio station, WGN, which had scheduled interviews with two Obama critics - David Freddoso, author of the important book, The Case Against Barack Obama, and Stanley Kurtz, a distinguished journalist who led the investigation of the connection between terrorist Mr. Ayers and Sen. Obama, including how the two had worked together on an expensive project to radicalize Chicago students.

* The Obama campaign encouraged prosecutors in St. Louis to threaten critics of Sen. Obama with criminal prosecution if they made false charges against Sen. Obama.
* The Obama campaign urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate an organization that was working against the Obama candidacy.

* The Obama campaign will resort to any illegitimate means to defeat its opposition, including repeatedly playing the race card. Sen. Obama is making the slimy Chicago machine politics from which he sprang look good by comparison. If this comment made to a Florida audience isn't playing the race card, nothing is. Sen. Obama said: "It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

* Can you imagine the tactics of an Obama administration with the full powers of the presidency in its grasp? Based on its behavior to date, those tactics would not be pretty.
Of course, Sen. Obama learned these tactics of harassment and intimidation during his long and close association with ACORN, the community organization group now under investigation in at least 12 states for voter fraud, and the group that also specialized in harassing and intimidating banks into making bad mortgage loans to make housing more affordable.

While you try to figure out why America's enemies seem to favor Sen. Obama, let me help you out. They see Sen. Obama as an appeaser who wants to "understand" our enemies rather than fight them. His reaction to 9/11 called for a look at the motivation of those that slaughtered thousands of Americans and did not call for their defeat. He would negotiate without preconditions with countries such as Iran that are now killing Americans and want to make America disappear from the face of the earth and want to commit genocide against Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East.

And he takes the same soft, weak, appeasement approach to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that have been involved in attacks on American interests and in American deaths. He said of them that both need to be compelled to understand "that they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims." Exactly what are legitimate claims of terrorist organizations? The great appeaser always seems to want to psychoanalyze those who would murder Americans. He doesn't seem to think of killing them or defeating them.

Sen. Obama doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between good and evil, as when he found moral equivalence between illegal Russian aggression and the legal American liberation of Iraq. He doesn't seem to be able to see the difference between good and evil, as when he equated Russian aggression and Georgian self-defense, calling for restraint on both sides. If someone were being murdered by a madman, Obama would call for restraint on both sides.

Sen. Obama's associates and connection spell a disastrous foreign policy. For example, one of his foreign policy advisors, Robert Malley met with the terrorist group Hamas and only after that did he step down. Two of his outreach advisors have had to step down because of their connections and associations with terrorist groups. So Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn are only two of the terrorists or terrorist associates that are close to Sen. Obama.

Many, including myself, have called Sen. Obama an empty suit. That pays him an undue compliment. He is a man with associates, with values, with plans and platforms, that are socialist, that are anti-American and un-American, that are morally bankrupt, and that would surely visit catastrophe on the United States, and that's true a fortiori if he reaches the White House supported by a veto-proof majority in the Senate and a Congress led by leftists Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, and backed by a political party that is now controlled by its radical, extremist, leftist fringe.

Put Sen. Obama and his views into perspective. They all seem to revolve around socialist and other extreme views, and American-hating terrorists, racists and bigots. His explanations almost already involve artful dodging or outright lying. Everything we know about him suggests he is unfit to be president, and all that we don't know about him and are unlikely to find out before the election, suggests he is even worse than the most dangerous and unqualified candidate in history.

Americans may not yet understand the real Sen. Obama. But it is clear that the communists, socialists, terrorist organizations such as Hamas, and the enemies of America understand and support him.


Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@ thebulletin.us