Palin Rocks Election In Friendly & Firm Way During Debate With Biden

Shock and Awe: SarahCuda WON the Debate!

Source: http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2008/10/shock-and-awe-sarahcuda-won-debate.html

Video highlights from the "game changer" debate:
Debate transcript here.

Palin to Biden: "You're plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq..."

Palin: "For a ticket that wants to talk about change []there is just too much fingerpointing backwards..."

Palin: "America is a nation of exceptionalism..."

Biden: "This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say sit down with Ahmadinejad." Really? Whose picture was he looking at before he answered the question?

Fred Thompson on Palin: "I'm totally blown away...I've never seen a performance like that. She proved tonight that she was everything her friends and supporters[]thought she was and her detractors said she was not...An absolutely masterful job."

Undecided Focus Group Blown Away: SARAH WON! "spoke to the people... energetic, fresh, intelligent, mainstreet..."

Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign By Kenneth R. Timmerman

Source: http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html

Monday, September 29, 2008 9:23 PM

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.

But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.

But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.

But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.

“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.

But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.

Ritsch acknowledges that there is skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers.

“We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he said. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”

The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raises new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.

But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed for far more abuse.

“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.

Already, the FEC has noted unusual patterns in Obama campaign donations among donors who have been disclosed because they have gone beyond the $200 minimum.

FEC and Mr. Doodad Pro

When FEC auditors have questions about contributions, they send letters to the campaign’s finance committee requesting additional information, such as the complete address or employment status of the donor.

Many of the FEC letters that Newsmax reviewed instructed the Obama campaign to “redesignate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.

Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.

Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.

In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.

Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.

In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.

Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.

But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600.

Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.

In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later.

In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.

Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.

Foreign Donations

And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.

But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.

With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.

In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.

At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.

The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.

Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.

In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.

“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."

Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.

The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.

Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.

One new measure that might not appear obvious at first could be frustrating to foreigners wanting to buy campaign paraphernalia such as T-shirts or bumper stickers through the online store.

In response to an investigation conducted by blogger Pamela Geller, who runs the blog Atlas Shrugs, the Obama campaign has locked down the store.

Geller first revealed on July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.

The online campaign store allows buyers to complete their purchases by making an additional donation to the Obama campaign.

A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show.

Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned.

The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30.

The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.

According to the Obama campaign, they wrongly identified themselves as U.S. citizens, via a voluntary check-off box at the time the donations were made.

Many of the Edwan brothers’ contributions have been purged from the FEC database, but they still can be found in archived versions available for CRP and other watchdog groups.

The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.

A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.

But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the CRP estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.

Many of the small donors participated in online “matching” programs, which allows them to hook up with other Obama supporters and eventually share e-mail addresses and blogs.

The Obama Web site described the matching contribution program as similar to a public radio fundraising drive.

“Our goal is to bring 50,000 new donors into our movement by Friday at midnight,” campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed supporters on Sept. 15. “And if you make your first online donation today, your gift will go twice as far. A previous donor has promised to match every dollar you donate.”

FEC spokesman Biersack said he was unfamiliar with the matching donation drive. But he said that if donations from another donor were going to be reassigned to a new donor, as the campaign suggested, “the two people must agree” to do so.

This type of matching drive probably would be legal as long as the matching donor had not exceeded the $2,300 per-election limit, he said.

Obama campaign spokesman LaBolt said, “We have more than 2.5 million donors overall, hundreds of thousands of which have participated in this program.”

Until now, the names of those donors and where they live have remained anonymous — and the federal watchdog agency in charge of ensuring that the presidential campaigns play by the same rules has no tools to find out.

Biden Tells 14 Lies During VP Debate by Amanda Carpenter

Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/03/biden_tells_14_lies_during_vp_debate

Friday, October 03, 2008


Senator Joe Biden lied at least 14 times during the vice presidential debate according to those counting at John McCain’s presidential headquarters.

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman from GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign said in a statement, “Joe Biden graduated from his trademark verbal gaffe to outright lie in tonight’s debate.”

McCain’s blogger-in-chief Michael Goldfarb chronicled the 14 lies HERE.

On the foreign policy front, Biden challenged Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin when she said Barack Obama’s pledge to meet with any foreign leaders, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without precondition “goes beyond naivete and goes beyond poor judgment.”

Biden lectured Palin, “That's just simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say he'd sit down with Ahmadinejad.” During the YouTube Democratic primary debate last July Obama was asked if he would meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea without “precondition” during his first year in office.

“I would,” he replied.

Biden appeared to attack Obama for making that very statement in August 2007. While Biden was challenging Obama for the Democratic nomination for president Biden said he would not support such a pledge. “Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected president?” he said in an appearance at the National Press Club. “Absolutely positively no."

Five of the lies Biden told were related to tax and energy votes. During the debate Biden adamantly claimed McCain voted the same way as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did on a vote to raise taxes on those making $42,000 a year. The legislative record shows McCain was not present in the Senate for either of those votes and is recorded as “not voting.”

The RNC also takes issue with Biden’s assessment Palin supports a “windfall profits tax” and Biden’s claim McCain voted against alternative energy 23 times. The independent Factcheck.org has previously stated when Obama and other Democrats made similar charges about the 23 votes “they’re overstating the case.”

The other lies detailed by Goldfarb were related to Biden’s characterization of McCain’s healthcare plan, stances on bank deregulation and the $700 billion financial bailout that recently passed the Senate.


Amanda Carpenter is National Political Reporter for Townhall.com.

Presidential & Vice Presidential Debate Summary

Presidential Debate McCain vs. Obama - Friday, September 26, 2008



Vice Presidential Debate Palin vs. Biden - Thursday, October 2, 2008

Obama Participated In Farrakhan's Million Man March

Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/03/obama_flashback_1.asp

by Michael Goldfarb on March 29, 2008 05:57 PM

Hugh Hewitt links a 1995 profile of Obama in the Chicago Reader. It's worth reading in full. He shares his views on black churches and the Christian Right, and he makes clear his preference for "collective action" over individualism. And at the end, after discussing his participation in Minister Farrakhan's Million Man March:

"But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build."

It doesn't seem like Barack had any real problem with cursing out white folks or making anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements, it's just not as productive as he'd like. It's the same when he discusses the "wonderful preachers" in Chicago. "As soon as church lets out," he says, "the energy dissipates." You see it's not enough to just say "God Damn America" on Sunday, you have to organize your community and get on with the damning come Monday.

Update: Since Hugh's linked back here...in response to his question ("Did many mainstream Dems join that march?"), the short answer is no. Only two members of Congress attended, as did a couple of mayors (including Marion Barry), Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. President Clinton gave a speech endorsing the goals of the march, but condemning its organizer.

At the time Clinton said "One million men are right to be standing up for personal responsibility, but one million men do not make right one man's message of malice and division." He did not refer to Farrakhan by name, but in retrospect this looks like pretty strong stuff compared to Obama's "Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up." And of course Clinton didn't actually attend the march.

Also check out Matt Labash's reporting on the march from the October 23, 1995 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Biden Secret Service Codename: 'Assassination Insurance' by Ann Coulter

Source: http://townhall.com/Columnists/AnnCoulter/2008/10/01/biden_secret_service_codename_assassination_insurance?page=full&comments=true

Wednesday, October 01, 2008


While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president -- or maybe take a stab at guessing the decade when televisions were first available to the public.

Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs.

Other than that, the statement holds up pretty well. At least Biden managed to avoid mentioning any "clean" Negroes he had met.

Couric was nearly moved to tears by the brilliance of Biden's brain-damaged remark. She was especially intrigued by Biden's claim that FDR had said the new iPhone was the bomb!

Here is Couric's full response to Biden's bizarre outburst about FDR (a) being president and (b) going on TV in 1929: "Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden's strong suits."

But when our beauteous Sarah said that John McCain was a better leader on the economy than Barack Obama, Couric relentlessly badgered her for evidence. "Why do you say that?" Couric demanded. "Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? ... Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?"

The beauteous Sarah had cited McCain's prescient warnings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Couric, the crackerjack journalist who didn't know FDR wasn't president in 1929, demanded more examples from Palin.

We are currently in the middle of a massive financial crisis brought on by Fannie Mae. McCain was right on Fannie Mae; Obama was wrong. That's not enough?

Not for the affable Eva Braun of evening TV! "I'm just going to ask you one more time," Couric snipped, "not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?"

This would be like responding to someone who predicted the 9/11 attacks by saying: OK, you got one thing right. Not to belabor the point, but what else?

Obama was not merely wrong on Fannie Mae: He is owned by Fannie Mae. Somehow Obama managed to become the second biggest all-time recipient of Fannie Mae political money after only three years in the Senate. The biggest beneficiary, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, had a 30-year head start on receiving loot from Fannie Mae -- the government-backed institution behind our current crisis.

How does the Democratic ticket stack up on other major issues facing the nation, say, gas prices?

Shockingly, Sen. Joe Biden was one of only five senators to vote against the first Alaskan pipeline bill in 1973. This is like having been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. If Sarah Palin does nothing else, she has got to tie that idiotic pipeline vote around Biden's neck.

The Senate passed the 1973 Alaskan pipeline bill by an overwhelming 80-5 vote. Only five senators voted against the pipeline on final passage. Sen. Biden is the only one who is still in the Senate -- the other four having been confined to mental institutions long ago.

The stakes were clear: This was in the midst of the first Arab oil embargo. Liberal Democrats, such as senators Robert Byrd, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church and Hubert Humphrey, all voted for the pipeline.

But Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies by about the same amount.

The only argument against the pipeline was that it would harm the caribou, an argument that was both trivial and wrong. The caribou population near the pipeline increased from 5,000 in the 1970s to 32,000 by 2002.

It would have been bad enough to vote against the pipeline bill even if it had hurt the caribou. A sane person would still say: Our enemies have us in a vice grip. Sorry, caribou, you've got to take one for the team. But when the pipeline goes through and the caribou population sextuples in the next 20 years, you really look like a moron.

We couldn't possibly expect Couric to ask Biden about a vote that is the equivalent of voting against the invention of the wheel. But couldn't she have come up with just one follow-up question for Biden on FDR's magnificent handling of the 1929 stock market crash?

Or here's a question the public is dying to know: "If Obama wanted a historically delusional vice president, why not Lyndon LaRouche?" At least LaRouche didn't vote against the Alaskan pipeline.

Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) Launches New Ad By Steve Foley

Source: http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/story/steve_foley/2008/10/01/the_judicial_confirmation_network_jcn_launches_new_ad

October 1st, 2008

The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) today launched a $1 million first phase of a nationwide grassroots campaign, which includes television ads in national and targeted markets, to raise awareness and recruit activists on the critical issue of the U.S. Supreme Court.

“A President Obama or a President McCain will be likely be handed an opportunity to affect the make-up of the Supreme Court that is unprecedented in our history,” said Wendy Long, chief counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network. The Court could see as many as four to six vacancies to fill, along with up to 200 vacancies in the lower federal courts. JCN is educating the public about the issue of Supreme Court nominations.

“Americans do not get to choose Supreme Court Justices. In their wisdom, the Framers of the Constitution provided that the President chooses them for all of us. The next President will exercise that most important judgment, probably at least several times. JCN is educating Americans about the differences between an ‘Obama Court’ that would engage in judicial activism, acting as a super-legislature and imposing a political agenda from the bench, and a ‘McCain Court’ that would likely practice judicial restraint and fairly apply the law based on what the Constitution says and on laws passed by the representatives accountable to the American people,” Long said.

The JCN effort includes a television ad campaign coupled with a grassroots viral marketing campaign via direct mail, e-mail, text messaging, and phone outreach.

The text of the ad:

Wendy: With the help of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the Judicial Confirmation Network fought for the nominations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Sam Alito. The next President may nominate 4 new Justices. So we’d like you to see this….

VO: Choosing the right Justices is critical for America. We don’t know who Barack Obama would choose, but we know this: He chose as one of his first financial backers a slumlord now convicted on 16 counts of corruption. Obama chose as an associate a man who helped to bomb the Pentagon and said he “didn’t do enough.” And Obama chose as his pastor a man who has blamed America for the 9/11 attacks. Obama chose to associate with these men, while voting against these men.

Wendy: Please join the Judicial Confirmation Network. We need a Supreme Court that respects the Constitution and Justices who won’t legislate from the bench. Judicial Confirmation Network paid for this message and is responsible for it.

Additionally, JCN is releasing an “Enough is Enough JCN Activist Tool Kit” via,e-mail that includes:

1. A click-n-view online version of the new TV spot and the opportunity to share it virally with 5-10 friends who will be voting this year.


2. Downloadable campaign buttons for your homepage or blogs.


3. An online petition calling on Senators to oppose the obstruction of judicial nominees, to denounce the “fear and smear” campaigns led by extremist groups against nominees, and recognize the right of every nominee sent to the full Senate to receive a full and fair up-or-down vote.


4. E-updates on the unfolding judicial education campaign.


5. Contact information for both presidential campaigns to empower members and supporters to call upon both candidates to oppose judicial filibusters and support judges who practice judicial restraint and respect the Constitution and our right to govern ourselves.”

Qualified by Fred Thompson

Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/FredThompson/2008/09/30/qualified?page=full&comments=true

Tuesday, September 30, 2008


When John McCain selected Governor Sarah Palin, as his running mate, the Democrats and their far-left constituency let out a primal scream that could be heard from sea to shining sea. How dare he choose someone that they and their pals in the media had not had a chance to vet (i.e. libel, slander, and otherwise and otherwise eviscerate). Ah, but it was not too late. These seekers of “a new kind of politics” poured torrents of malicious abuse upon her and her family.

Plane loads of scandal mongers, lawyers and other truth seekers became more numerous in Alaska than the polar bear, as they rallied local Democrats and disgruntled Republicans to their cause.

Here was a woman who chose to have children and a career. Aging Washington socialites weighed in with newly discovered sensitivity for mothers with careers outside the home. Here was a woman who became upset because her ex-brother-in-law had tasered her nephew and threatened her father. The Democrats and their friends had to save the country from a woman like this.

Governor Palin’s every comment was scrutinized by the media and judged against what Jefferson or Lincoln might have said. Never mind that her counterpart, the 30-year-Washington-veteran Joe Biden, apparently is unaware that America relies upon coal for a lot of it’s electricity or that he recently referred to a top level U.S. official’s visit to Iran that never happened. That’s just Joe being Joe – protected by the sheer number of his gaffes and the fact that he is Barack Obama’s running mate.

For a while there it seems the fact that so many uninformed yahoos (average people) love her was going to drive the main stream media nuts. They had a hard time grasping the fact that people like her because she is precisely the kind of politician that everyone has been saying they’ve wanted: Independent, not a captive of the Beltway including a Congress with a 9% approval rating, who will take on hacks of either party; who has the tenacity to win and the courage to fight for the long-term benefit of those she represents.

Apparently what no one counted on was that a politician like this would actually show up on the national scene. The media was caught by surprise. The media doesn’t like surprises.

Naturally, there was a backlash to the treatment of Governor Palin and cooler-headed critics have largely concentrated on what they claim is her lack of qualifications. Of course much of the criticism of her qualifications reveals the application of the same old double standard. Less accomplished governors in times past have been considered to be perfectly “well-qualified” as VP picks.

However, it is a legitimate issue and should be taken seriously. I especially take seriously the criticism of people such as New York Times columnist David Brooks who I consider to be an insightful analyst of the political scene.

He recently wrote that governance is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all it requires prudence. What is prudence? Among other things, it is the ability to absorb information and discern the essential current of events – the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and to understand which arguments have the most weight. How is prudence acquired? Through experience. Experience allows a leader to judge what is important and what is not. He added, “Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter.”

One can hardly disagree with the desirability of our leaders having the qualities that Brooks describes (putting aside the question of how many of our leaders who are not Sarah Palin have demonstrated these qualities). But there are other important qualifications, such as will, courage, and determination. Frankly, an infusion of these qualities into our body politic is desperately needed – not just to raise hell with the establishment, but to speak the hard truth about unpleasant choices facing our country. To push for choices that will, in the long term, benefit our country, our children and our grandchildren. In other words, things which “prudent” leaders are all too often reluctant to do.

For many years we have failed to address looming problems that will prove catastrophic to our nation. It’s not because we are bereft of leaders with great experience. And it is not because they do not understand the “essential current of events.” They know these things all too well. It is because they do not have the political courage to do anything about it.

Recently, a Washington Post editorial pointed out that even before the recent financial crisis on Wall Street, the Government Accountability Office issued a report declaring the federal government on an “unsustainable long term fiscal path.” This was primarily due to the projected cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, brought on by an aging population. We will be spending $41 trillion dollars more on these entitlements in the next 75 years than we will receive in payroll taxes and premiums, although the crunch will actually begin much sooner than that. And we already owe Japan and China about $500 billion each.

David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States calls this problem much larger than the recent financial rescue plan. In fact he calls it the “super sub-prime crisis.” Which bring me to the current sub-prime crisis.

Wall Street and Washington were full of people who were “qualified and experienced” in the field of finance. Sen. Barack Obama, for one, has a great deal of experience in the housing field. So do many of his closest advisers. I would have traded some of that experience for a few more leaders with less experience and more courage to buck the establishment and tell the truth about what was happening.

This brings me back to Governor Sarah Palin, and why I say that courage and political will are at the very top of the “qualification” requirements for today’s leaders. So the question is, how does Sarah Palin compare on that score with Biden and Obama, for that matter? Very well, I’d say.

Fred Thompson has been a lawyer, actor and United States Senator. He writes exclusive analysis and commentary for Townhall Magazine.

At Home with John McCain By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall

Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20224638,00.html

Wednesday September 10, 2008 03:45 PM EDT

For all the political snickering over how many houses John McCain owns, his daughter Meghan, 23, says the heart of her family lies in just one place: The creek-side collection of cabins and sheds near Sedona, Ariz., where she and her siblings whiled away their weekends, holidays and summers.


"It's a really beautiful part of my childhood because it's so pure and so unjaded," Meghan tells PEOPLE. There, the Budweiser is on tap (an homage to mom Cindy's family beer empire) and the walls are hung with the children's old artwork. "They're everywhere. It's really embarrassing," says Meghan. "But my mom is obsessed with it all."


In a series of recent interviews, Cindy and John McCain and their daughter Meghan opened up to PEOPLE about the joys, heartbreaks and everyday details of their life together with Bridget, 17, a junior in high school; Jack, 22, a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy; and Jimmy, 20, a Marine home between deployments to Iraq.

On Bonding with the Kids
Cindy: Meghan's my artist and so I would try to nurture her painting. Jack and I built a racecar together. He and Jimmy and I learned to scuba dive together. And, Bridget and I both love computers. I'm kind of a tech-head that way. So she and I will play around together with art and music programs. Not games. Everything has to have an educational purpose.

John: Each of our children has different characteristics, talents, strengths and weaknesses. They're all different and they're all close to each other – and I'm happy about that.

On Dad's Soft Spots
Cindy: John's soft with the boys in understanding their frustration, on occasion, with the military and that life. It is an abrupt change having to come out of a home, you know. He understands.


On Mom's House Rules
Cindy: If you're home and going [to be] out after midnight, you have to call and check in with me. I want to know you're safe. Just because you're 24 and on your own doesn't mean I don't worry about you. And if you use the car, fill it up when you're done. It drives me nuts to find an empty gas tank and everyone gone.


On Jimmy's Send-Off to Iraq Last Summer
Meghan: It was terrible ... Everyone is standing around crying and they're playing bagpipes. And it's like, I equate bagpipes with funeral music ... If my father is elected, there really should be some kind of beautiful ceremony or something that's a little less morbid.

John: I just expressed my pride and my admonition that he try to stay safe. One thing about men and women in the military – they all think they are bulletproof. They are so brave.


On Cindy's Painkiller Addiction in the Early 1990s
Meghan: I can remember seeing a news clip on TV about it when I was young and then our housekeeper turning off the TV ... My mom's been very open about it, how she got to that place, how she suffered with addiction, and got over it and went to rehab. Now, she still won't take anything stronger than Tylenol or Advil. She doesn't want to risk anything.


On Mom's Silly Side
Meghan: She's a perfectionist to some degree, but not nearly the way it's been exaggerated. I wish people could really see my mom's silly side. Sometimes I just like to shock her and say the dirtiest jokes I can possibly think of and she's like, "Oh, Meghan!" I think she secretly enjoys them.


For more on the McCains – and a rare portrait of the extended family (including John's three children from his first marriage) – pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.

• Reporting by LIZ MCNEIL

RELATED ARTICLES:
• PEOPLE chats with the McCains aboard the 'Straight Talk Express'
• 25 Questions for John McCain

Obama Watch by Lisa De Pasquale

Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28829

10/02/2008

Obama Shortchanges His Female Staffers

A few weeks ago the Obama campaign debuted a new ad attacking McCain on the so-called “wage gap.”  In the first ad, the claim is made that women on average receive 77 cents for every dollar men make doing the same job.  As many have pointed out, this statistic doesn’t take experience, years in the workforce and hours worked into consideration.  When those factors are included, the “wage gap” virtually disappears.  In the campaign’s second ad, an older woman claims that John McCain needs an education on women’s issues.  She said:

“I worked at this plant for 20 years before I learned the truth.  I'd been paid 40% less than men doing the same work.  John McCain opposed a law to give women equal pay for equal work. And he dismissed the wage gap, saying women just need education and training. I had the same skills as the men at my plant.  My family needed that money. On the economy, it's John McCain who needs an education.”

Perhaps Obama’s female supporters need an education on his own actions.  If Obama wants to use the feminist formula, it should also be applied to his campaign staffers. 

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock used Legistorm.com, the online database of congressional employees’ salaries, to compare the candidates.  Murdock wrote:

“Obama’s 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama’s average male employee earned $54,397.

Obama’s 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.

Why this disparity? One reason may be the underrepresentation of women among Obama’s highest-compensated employees. Of Obama’s five best-paid advisors, only one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were women.

On average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make.”

By comparison, McCain’s female staffers fair a lot better.  Murdock wrote:

“McCain’s 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.

On average, according to these data, women in John McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, ceteris paribus, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart -- while adding $10,726 to her annual income -- by leaving Barack Obama’s office and going to work for John McCain.”

The liberal National Organization for Women, which has endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket, tells its members that they should “engage in a dialogue about wages, pay equity, and women-friendly workplaces.” 

But, don’t worry, Obama.  You won’t hear a peep out of them.

Obama Channels Reverend Wright

During Obama and McCain’s first debate, there was one moment that struck Rush Limbaugh as an “Aha! Moment” (as Oprah likes to say) for the average American.  Obama said:

“My father came from Kenya.  That's where I get my name.  And in the sixties, uh, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on earth where you could make it if you tried.  The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world.  I don't think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the -- the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same.”

The Obamas have criss-crossed the country in order to diss it.  During his radio show, Limbaugh broadcast a montage of a few of those moments:

OBAMA:  “I know my country has not perfected itself.”

MICHELLE OBAMA:  “It's easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions.  It makes you feel justified in your ignorance.  That's America.”

OBAMA:  “We're confronting the history and stain of slavery in this country.  We're confronting those scars.” 

MICHELLE OBAMA:  “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country.”

OBAMA:  “America is no longer what it could be, what it once was.”

Whether Americans are “right track” or “wrong track” voters, they don’t like to hear their leaders talk negatively about their country.  To Obama’s assertion that America has lost standing in the world, Limbaugh replied:

“I'll say it, Senator, I'll say our standing in the US is even better.  I'll say our borders are flooded with people, Senator, who want to get into this country and live the American dream… I am offended by this ongoing notion of Senator Barack Obama's, this country is not what it once was.  You tell me, Senator man-child, when was it better?  When was it more attractive to people?  When was it easier to achieve the American dream?  When was it easier to achieve prosperity?  When was it easier to enhance one's standard of living?  You tell me, sir.”

The Left’s Heroes: Marx, Lenin, Castro, Obama

Several months ago pictures of the Houston volunteer office for Obama precinct captain Maria Isabel caught the attention of conservative blogs.  Displayed in the precinct captain’s office was a Cuban flag featuring the now iconic drawing of Che Guevera.   The Babalu Blog decided to identify other heroes to Obama supporters.  Blogger Henry Louis Gomez wrote of the precinct captain and other Obama supporters:

“As offensive as I found it, I couldn't draw a conclusion from one misguided and perhaps crazy lady.  But as I investigated the Maria Isabel story I found out that on Barack Obama's official web site there is a place for supporters to post their personal thoughts.  In this "user-generated" section of Obama's web site people are encouraged to explain which issues are important to them, why they support Barack Obama and to post an inspirational quote or two from historic figures.  Many of these people actually quoted Che Guevara, the Butcher of La Cabaña himself.”

Among those quoted by Obama supporters are Karl Marx (obviously), Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Abbie Hoffman, Salvador Allende and Noam Chomsky.  Gomez concludes, “Although this is just a handful of people, I believe it’s symptomatic of a greater trend.  There’s probably many more believers in Marxism among Obama's supporters, these are only the ones who were too stupid to disguise their beliefs.”

Celebrity Quote of the Week

Since the Left is so enamored with their celebrity supporters, Obama Watch highlights one each week.  This week it’s words of wisdom from singer-songwriter Bob Dylan:

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval.  Poverty is demoralizing.  You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor.  But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up... Barack Obama.  He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out.  Am I hopeful?  Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.”

If that sounds familiar it’s because Dylan’s political musings are basically a convoluted mish-mash of lyrics he wrote in the 1960s.

Miss De Pasquale is CPAC director at the American Conservative Union. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is the nation’s largest annual gathering of conservatives.

Obama's McKnight In Shining Armor

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307579834298611

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Obama needed help getting into Harvard Law School. He got it from a disciple of Saul Alinsky who shared the socialist agitator's belief in the radical change the young community organizer could embrace.

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IBD Series: The Audacity Of Socialism

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Obama doesn't talk much about his years at Columbia University and Harvard Law other than he attended both and was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. The reason may be his records at both were, to say the least, undistinguished.

According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors. What his grades were we do not know. As the New York Times reported, "Obama declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

Seems like a job for those 30 people sent to Alaska to investigate Gov. Sarah Palin.

Harvard Law School is hard to get into, with some 7,000 applicants vying for about 500 seats. The LSAT scores required are usually in the 98th or 99th percentile range with grade point averages between 3.80 and 3.95. If Obama's scores were that high, you'd think we'd know them. But we don't.

Obama waited five years to apply to Harvard. As WorldNetDaily reports, from 1985 to 1988, he worked for a subsidiary of the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, founded on the principles of Saul "The Red" Alinsky. He worked as a consultant and trainer. On the board of Gamaliel sat Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight, a student of Alinsky's radical tactics. While at Gamaliel, McKnight became Obama's mentor in community organizing.

As we have noted, when Obama worked for Gamaliel, he was paid by the Woods Foundation, which supported the radical group. Obama would later serve on the Woods Foundation board with terrorist and socialism advocate William Ayers. McKnight schooled young Obama in the gospel according to Alinsky. He apparently saw much promise in the budding politician, a way to advance Alinsky's radical socialist agenda into the highest levels in government.

Obama had been ready to be radicalized. A revealing profile in 1995 in the Chicago Reader, a far-left free weekly, tells of how the young Obama had fully rejected "the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation." According to the profile, Obama said he was "tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up — at the speaker's rostrum and from the pulpit — and then allowed to dissipate because there's no agenda, no concrete program for change."

In his 1995 memoir, Obama said he wanted to go to Harvard Law School to "learn power's currency in all its intricacy," with the goal of "making large-scale change" as a national politician. But he needed to get there first. So Obama approached McKnight to write a letter of recommendation, which he did.

Being tutored by McKnight and other Alinsky disciples, Obama said while campaigning in Iowa last year, was "the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School."

Shortly before Obama entered Harvard, he praised McKnight and his organizing principles in an article titled "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois." In it, he called for more "power" to put in place "a systematic approach to community organization." Power seems to be a recurring theme with Obama.

At Harvard, Obama took advanced training courses at the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky and associated with Gamaliel. He certainly didn't spend much time working on the Harvard Law Review. Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other legal publication. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."

Obama may have had other help getting into Harvard. As we and others have reported, Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton said on a New York cable station that he was approached by Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to radical Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to write a letter to Harvard on Obama's behalf. Both the Sutton family and the Obama campaign have denied the veracity of 88-year-old Sutton's statements.

It is said knowledge is power. Power is what Obama has always sought, and he has learned how to get it and use it at the feet of some of the most radical socialists in America. Now he seeks the power of the presidency to organize every community of America according to their agenda.

McCain Uses Bill Clinton in New Ad by Fin Gomez

Source: http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/09/30/mccain-uses-bill-clinton-in-new-ad/

September 30th, 2008 6:22 PM Eastern

Des Moines, Iowa- In a new ad today, released by the McCain Campaign, Bill Clinton makes an unwitting appearance (via soundbite from a TV interview, apparently) to help McCain’s argument that while he called for stronger reforms on Fannie and Freddie, Democrats( and Obama by association) were hesitant to do so.

(FROM THE AD)PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

ANNCR: John McCain fought to rein in Fannie and Freddie.

The Post says: McCain “pushed for stronger regulation”…”while Mr. Obama was notably silent.”

But, Democrats blocked the reforms.

Loans soared.

Then, the bubble burst.

And, taxpayers are on the hook for billions.

Bill Clinton knows who is responsible.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

ANNCR: You’re right, Mr. President. It didn’t have to happen.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

Dave Ramsey's Common Sense Fix

Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/fed_bailout/3_steps_to_change_the_nations_future_10928.htmlc?ictid=sptlt

Years of bad decisions and stupid mistakes have created an economic nightmare in this country, but $700 billion in new debt is not the answer. As a tax-paying American citizen, I will not support any congressperson who votes to implement such a policy. Instead, I submit the following three steps:

Common Sense Plan.

I. INSURANCE

A. Insure the subprime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance. Government-insured and backed loans would have an instant market all over the world, creating immediate and needed liquidity.

B. In order for a company to accept the government-backed insurance, they must do two things:

1. Rewrite any mortgage that is more than three months delinquent to a 6% fixed-rate mortgage.
a. Roll all back payments with no late fees or legal costs into the balance. This brings homeowners current and allows them a chance to keep their homes.
b. Cancel all prepayment penalties to encourage refinancing or the sale of the property to pay off the bad loan. In the event of foreclosure or short sale, the borrower will not be held liable for any deficit balance. FHA does this now, and that encourages mortgage companies to go the extra mile while working with the borrower—again limiting foreclosures and ruined lives.

2. Cancel ALL golden parachutes of EXISTING and FUTURE CEOs and executive team members as long as the company holds these government-insured bonds/mortgages. This keeps underperforming executives from being paid when they don’t do their jobs.

C. This backstop will cost less than $50 billion—a small fraction of the current proposal.



II. MARK TO MARKET

A. Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only subprime Tier III bonds/mortgages. This keeps companies from being forced to artificially mark down bonds/mortgages below the value of the underlying mortgages and real estate.

B. This move creates patience in the market and has an immediate stabilizing effect on failing and ailing banks—and it costs the taxpayer nothing.



III. CAPITAL GAINS TAX

A. Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous—and immediate—liquidity in the markets. Again, this costs the taxpayer nothing.

B. This move will be seen as a lightning rod politically because many will say it is helping the rich. The truth is the rich will benefit, but it will be their money that stimulates the economy. This will enable all Americans to have more stable jobs and retirement investments that go up instead of down. This is not a time for envy, and it’s not a time for politics. It’s time for all of us, as Americans, to stand up, speak out, and fix this mess.

Clinton Openly Praises McCain-Palin By Betsy Newmark

Oh, that Bill

Source: http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2008/09/oh-that-bill.html

Friday, September 26, 2008

Democrats must be pulling out their hair as Bill Clinton makes his apologia tour for the McCain-Palin ticket. He's talked about why Americans like Sarah Palin. He went on The View and talked about why Americans admire John McCain so much. He was quite kind to McCain when Clinton was on Larry King.

And, it's also readily apparent from both his statements during the primary as well as his interview last night with King that Clinton genuinely likes and admires McCain. In describing their relationship, Clinton said of McCain: "I like him and I admire him." He went on to note that the Arizona senator had helped him normalize relations with Vietnam and fight the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo.

He's defended McCain on postponing the debates to work on the financial crisis and reminded us that McCain was the one who wanted more debates.

"We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.

"You can put it off a few days the problem is it's hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."

And now to top it off, he's suddenly decided that he has so much respect for the Jewish High Holy Days that he can't start campaigning for Obama until after Yom Kippur. Yeah, I'm sure that, in the past, he always held off campaigning for himself and his wife until Yom Kippur had passed.

And are Democrats at all surprised that, with Bill Clinton, it's always going to be about him and not them?

If he keeps this up, the McCain campaign is going to start scheduling events for him.

Heads Up! Democrats Break The Constitution With Senate Vote/Passage Before House

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html

By holding a Senate vote on the highly controverial financial burst bill, a bill that would supposedly bring in revenue over time, before the House of Representatives passes and sends to the Senate a bill, the Democrats override the responsibility given constitutionally to the House in Article I Section 7:

Article I

Section 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

Obama’s Assault on the First Amendment: Stifling political debate with threats of prosecution is not the “rule of law” — it’s tyranny

Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2MxMWJlNzcwMDU3ZTJkYjRmZjU3N2U0OGNlZmE1ZDg=

October 1, 2008 7:00 AM

By Andrew C. McCarthy

In London last week, a frightful warning was sounded about encroaching tyranny. At an important conference, speaker after impassioned speaker warned of the peril to Western values posed by freedom-devouring sharia — the Islamic legal code. Like all tyrannies, sharia’s first target is speech: Suppress all examination of Muslim radicalism by threats of prosecution and libel actions, and smugly call it “the rule of law.”

But we may already be further gone than the London conferees feared. And without resort to the Islamicization that so startled them. For that, we can thank the campaign of Barack Obama.

I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent.

We London conferees were fretting over speech codes, “hate speech” restrictions, “Islamophobia” provisions, and “libel tourism” — the use of less journalist-friendly defamation laws in foreign jurisdictions to eviscerate our First Amendment freedom to report, for example, on the nexus between ostensible Islamic charity and the funding of terrorist operations.

All the while, in St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, were threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.”

The chill wind was bracing. The Taliban could not better rig matters. The Prophet of Change is only to be admired, not questioned. In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees.

Nor was this an isolated incident.

Item: When the American Issues Project ran political ads calling attention to Obama’s extensive ties to Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist who brags about having bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, the Obama campaign pressured the Justice Department to launch an absurd criminal prosecution.

Item: When commentator Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was invited on a Chicago radio program to discuss his investigation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an “education reform” project in which Obama and Ayers (just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”) collaborated to dole out over $100 million, the Obama campaign issued an Internet action alert. Supporters, armed with the campaign’s non-responsive talking points, dutifully flooded the program with calls and emails, protesting Kurtz’s appearance and attempting to shout him down.

Item: Both Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, have indicated that an Obama administration would use its control of the Justice Department to prosecute its political opponents, including Bush administration officials responsible for the national security policies put in effect after nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Item: There is a troubling report that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Section, top officials of which are Obama contributors, has suggested criminal prosecutions against those they anticipate will engage in voter “intimidation” or “oppression” in an election involving a black candidate. (Memo to my former DOJ colleagues: In a system that presumes innocence even after crimes have undeniably been committed, responsible prosecutors don’t assume non-suspects will commit future law violations — especially when doing so necessarily undermines the First Amendment freedoms those prosecutors solemnly swear to uphold.)

Obama may very well win the November election but he, like Sen. McCain, should be forced to win it fair and square: by persuading Americans that he is the superior candidate after our free society has had its customary free and open debate.

One understandably feels little sympathy for McCain here. His years-long assault on the First Amendment under the guise of campaign-finance “reform” has led inexorably to the brazenness of Obama’s Chicago-style strong-arming. But the victim here is not McCain. The victim is democratic self-determination. The victim is our right to informed participation in a political community’s most important decisions. The victim is freedom.

The Justice Department’s job is to prosecute those actively undermining our freedom, not to intimidate citizens in the exercise of that freedom. Consequently, instead of threatening criminal investigations of phantom future civil-rights violations, it should be conducting criminal investigations into whether public officials in St. Louis are abusing their offices to affect a national election.

The federal Hatch Act (codified in Title 5 of the U.S. Code) prohibits executive officials (such as prosecutors and police) from using their offices to interfere with federal elections. The statute may be of limited utility in St. Louis since it principally targets federal officials. Still, state and local government may come within its ambit if their activities are funded in part by the national Leviathan — as many arms of municipal government are these days.

The same bright-line demarcation does not limit application of the federal extortion and fraud laws. The extortion provision (also known as the Hobbs Act and codified at Section 1951 of the federal penal code) makes it a felony for anyone, including public officials, to deprive people of their property by inducing fear of harm. Property interests have been held to include, for example, the right of union members to participate in a democratic process; the harm apprehended can be either physical or economic. Inducing voters to fear prosecution and imprisonment unless they refrain from exercising their fundamental right to engage democratic debate may well qualify.

An easier fit may be fraud, which under federal law (Section 1346 of the penal code) prohibits schemes to deprive citizens of their “intangible right of honest services” from their public officials. Prosecutors and police who abuse their enormous powers in order to promote the election of their preferred candidates violate their public trust.

Regardless of the legal landscape, however, it is the political consequences that matter. Day after day, Obama demonstrates that the “change” he represents is a severing of our body politic from the moorings that make us America. If we idly stand by while he and his thugs kill free political debate, we die too.

ACORN's Senator

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307667123149723

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama wasn't just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky "affirmative action" loans.

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Read More: Economy

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Despite efforts to blame the rescue bill's failure on the GOP, it should be remembered that 95 Democrats — some 40% of the Democratic Caucus — withheld support. Obama himself also deserves blame — not only for the bill's failure, but also for the crisis it was designed to solve.

As the New York Times reports, "Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure." Is the reason the fact that the slush fund for ACORN in the original bill, siphoning off 20% of any future profits for such activist groups, was trimmed from the tree?

Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky. ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers' homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.

In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago's ACORN to run training sessions in "direct action." That's the euphemism for the techniques used under the cover of the federal Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate financial institutions into giving what have been called "Ninja" loans — no income, no job, no assets — to people who couldn't afford them.

CRA was designed to increase minority homeownership. Whenever a bank wanted to grow or expand, ACORN would file complaints that it was not sufficiently sensitive to the needs of minorities in providing home loans. Agitators would then be unleashed.

Chicago's ACORN used Alinsky's tactics against institutions such as Bell Federal Savings and Loan and Avondale Federal Savings. In September 1992, the Chicago Tribune described the group's agenda as "affirmative action lending."

Obama also helped ACORN get funding. When he served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its activist agenda.

In 1995, Kurtz reports, Obama chaired the committee that increased funding of ACORN and other community organizers. The committee report boasted that the fund's "non-ideological" image "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and governmental 'establishments' without undue risk of being accused of partisanship."

The CRA empowered regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority and distressed neighborhoods." It gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks, claiming they were "redlining" poor and minority neighborhoods. ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.

As a former White House staff economist writes in the American Thinker, Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining.  ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis.

Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. Last November, he told the group, "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." Indeed he has. Obama was and is fully aware of what ACORN was doing with the money and expertise he provided. The voters should be aware on Nov. 4 of the roles of both in creating the current crisis.

Governor Palin On Israel: My Heart Is With You

Sarah Palin: "I Know What Americans Are Going Through"

Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/HughHewitt/2008/09/30/sarah_palin_i_know_what_americans_are_going_through?page=full&comments=true

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

In her first radio interview since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin joined Hugh Hewitt on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”  (Listen Here)

Hugh Hewitt: Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?

Sarah Palin: I think they’re just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying, “You know what? It’s time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency.” I think that that’s kind of taken some people off guard, and they’re out of sorts, and they’re ticked off about it, but it’s motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious, and we put government back on the side of the people of Joe six-pack like me, and we start doing those things that are expected of our government, and we get rid of corruption, and we commit to the reform that is not only desired, but is deserved by Americans.

Hewitt: Now governor, the Gibson and the Couric interview struck many as sort of pop quizzes designed to embarrass you as opposed to interviews. Do you share that opinion?

Palin: Well, I have a degree in journalism also, so it surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago. But I’m not going to pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful. I’m going to take those shots and those pop quizzes and just say, “That’s okay.” Those are good testing grounds. And they can continue on in that mode. That’s good. That makes somebody work even harder. It makes somebody be even clearer and more articulate in their positions. So really I don’t fight it. I invite it. 

Hewitt: Have you followed the attacks on you, say, via Drudge or the blogs? Some of them are just made up and out of left field, others are just mocking. Do you follow those?

Palin: No, I sure don’t, and thank God I don’t have time to follow those. I think that those shots, too, though, no matter what we’re taking and receiving, it’s nothing compared to what real shots are against Americans in this world. Americans today who are worried about losing their home and figuring out how in the world they’re going to pay their fuel bill next month, and send their kid to college, and may be worried about losing a loved one that they’re sending off to a war zone to protect our rights. Those are the shots that Americans are taking, so all this political nonsense and the lies, the rhetoric that is spun out there about someone just trying to offer themselves up in the name of service to this great country, I’ll take it.

Hewitt: Governor, you mentioned the people who are struggling right now. Have you and your husband, Todd, ever faced tough economic times where you had to sit around a kitchen table and make tough choices?

Palin: Oh my goodness, yes, Hugh. I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I—heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office. But yes, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs.

Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there. And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 dollars last week in his 401(k) plan that was hit. I’m thinking, “Geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are.”

We understand what the problems are. It’s why I have all the faith in the world that John McCain is the right top of any ticket at this point to get us through these challenges. It’s a good balanced ticket where he’s got the experience, and he’s got the bipartisan approach that it’s going to take to get us through these challenges. And I have the acknowledgement and the experience of going through what America is going through.

Hewitt: Governor, when you say things are tight right now, is that simply because of Todd being off not working? Or is it because of extraordinary demands on the fiscal resources of the Palin family? What’s the situation there? 

Palin: No, it’s just the great financial crisis that America is in as our savings accounts also, and a 401(k), they’re being hit. 

Hewitt: Sure. 

Palin: Our stocks, you know, they took a hit yesterday. And then of course, just the same thing that other Americans are asking themselves today. We’ve got three teenagers. How are we going to pay for their college education? How are we going to make sure that we’re investing wisely today? We’re putting a lot of faith in other people who are using our money as investments. We have to count on the federal government to be overseeing these agencies and entities, making sure that we’re not going to get screwed on this deal, and that our savings are safe.

So there again, John McCain’s got some great ideas on granting authority, for instance, to the FDIC, making sure that our deposits are insured. He wants to increase that deposit insurance cap of all of our money, our savings, from $100,000 dollars up to $250,000 dollars, so that families like mine, so that we don’t have to worry about our money being safe or not under FDIC.

Hewitt: Governor, let’s turn to a couple of issues that the MSM’s not going to pick up. You’re pro-life, and how much of the virulent opposition to you on the left do you attribute to your pro-life position, and maybe even to the birth of, your decision—your and Todd’s decision—to have Trig?

Palin: I think that that’s been probably the most hurtful and nonsensical slap that we’ve been taking is our position that we have taken: Pro-life, me personally, and saying that even though I knew 13 weeks along that Trig would be born with Down syndrome, and I said, “You know, he’s still going to be a most precious ingredient in this sometimes messed-up world that we live in.”

I know that my son is going to provide a lot of hope and a lot of promise in this world, and I’m so thankful of course that I’ve had the opportunity to give him life and to bring him into this world. But I think truly, that that’s been a hurtful slap that we have taken, because people just don’t understand. Ironic too, Hugh, that some would consider my position on life and trying to usher in a culture of life, respecting the sanctity of life in America, that that is seen as an extreme position when to me, an extreme position is one that Barack Obama took when he was in the Illinois State Senate, not even supporting a measure that would ban partial birth abortion, not even supporting a measure that would during, after a botched abortion and that baby’s born alive, allowing medical care to cease and allowing that baby to die. That to me is extreme. That’s so far, far left it’s certainly out of the mainstream of America. To me, that is the extreme position, not my position of just wanting that culture of life to be respected and not wanting government to sanction the idea of ending life. 

Hewitt: Do you think the mainstream media and the left understands your religious faith, Governor Palin? 

Palin: I think that there’s a lot of mocking of my personal faith, and my personal faith is very, very simple. I don’t belong to any church. I do have a strong belief in God, and I believe that I’m a heck of a lot better off putting my life in God’s hands, and saying hey, you know, guide me. What else do we have but guidance that we would seek from a Creator? That’s about as simple as it gets with my faith, and I think that there is a lot of mocking of that. And you know, so be it, though I do have respect for those who have differing views than I do on faith, on religion. I’m not going to mock them, and I would hope that they would kind of I guess give me the same courtesy through this of not mocking a person’s faith, but maybe perhaps even trying to understand a little bit of it.

Hewitt: Governor, let’s close with some foreign affairs. It is reported that you had an Israeli flag in your governor’s office. You wore an Israeli flag pin occasionally. One, is that true? And two, why your support for Israel? 

Palin: Well, it is true, and I ran into Shimon Peres recently at a meeting, and he even pointed that out. He said, “I saw a picture of you on the Internet, and you had an Israeli flag in your state government office.” And I said, “I sure do. You know, my heart is with you.” And all of those trials and tribulations throughout history that Israel has gone through, not only does that allow me to want to support that country, but Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. And they are a democratic country who I believe deserves our support, and I know that John McCain believes as I do—that Israel is our friend, and we need to be there to support them. They are there for us, and I do love that country.

Hewitt: Last question, governor. Have you and Todd heard from your son? And how is it on your nerves having your son deployed?

Palin: That little stinker, I guess he’s called his girlfriend a couple of times, but can you believe he hasn’t called his momma yet? He’s over there. They were just leaving Kuwait heading into Iraq, and I am just so extremely proud of Track, my son, and all of the men and women, of course, serving in the military. I’m proud that my son made this independent and very wise decision as such a young man at 18, deciding—you know, he realized there’s something he can do to help, to contribute, to help protect our nation, and I couldn’t be more proud of him and all those who choose to serve in our military. They’re serving for the right reasons. God bless them, God love them. 

Hugh Hewitt is a law professor, broadcast journalist, and author of several books including A Mormon in the White House?: 110 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney.

Guilty Party: ACORN, Obama, and the mortgage mess By Mona Charen

Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mzk4MmVkNzA1NGQ2NGRkZjQ2YjNmYjdlODZkMmQ4N2I=

September 30, 2008 12:00 AM

The financial markets were teetering on the edge of an abyss last week. The secretary of the Treasury was literally on his knees begging the speaker of the House not to sabotage the bailout bill. The crash of falling banks made the earth tremble. The Republican presidential candidate suspended his campaign to deal with the crisis. And amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN.

ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and “direct action” that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members. ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn’t get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes. This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we’re in.

ACORN does many things under the umbrella of “community organizing.” They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course). Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren’t especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history.” As Fox News reported: “The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms.”

ACORN explained that this was an “isolated” incident, yet similar stories have been reported in Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado — all swing states, by the way. ACORN members have been prosecuted for voter fraud in a number of states. (See www.rottenacorn.com.) Their philosophy seems to be that everyone deserves the right to vote, whether legal or illegal, living or dead.

ACORN recognized very early the opportunity presented by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. As Stanley Kurtz has reported, ACORN proudly touted “affirmative action” lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of “dragging banks kicking and screaming” into dubious loans. And, as Sol Stern reported in City Journal, ACORN also found a remunerative niche as an “advisor” to banks seeking regulatory approval. “Thus we have J.P. Morgan & Co., the legatee of the man who once symbolized for many all that was supposedly evil about American capitalism, suddenly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN.” Is this a great country or what? As conservative community activist Robert Woodson put it, “The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN.”

ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff — the very people who would later descend on Chicago’s banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto. Obama was not just sympathetic — he was an ACORN fellow traveler.

Now you could make the case that before 2008, well-intentioned people were simply unaware of what their agitation on behalf of non-credit-worthy borrowers could lead to. But now? With the whole financial world and possibly the world economy trembling and cracking like a cement building in an earthquake, Democrats continue to try to fund their friends at ACORN? And, unashamed, they then trot out to the TV cameras to declare “the party is over” for Wall Street (Nancy Pelosi)? The party should be over for the Democrats who brought us to this pass. If Obama wins, it means hiring an arsonist to fight a fire.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.