McCain-Palin
LET FREEDOM RING- BARRY MANILOW
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Obama-Biden
Saturday, October 25, 2008
2008 Presidential Campaign Summaries Volume IV
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Eight States Seeking to Require Barack Obama to Provide Certification of Birth in U.S. or Be Removed as Presidential Candidate on State Ballots
Source: http://peoplespassions.org/peoplesvoice/Lawsuits/National_Press_Release_08_10_22.htm
10/22/2008
Lawsuits in eight states as of this writing– Hawaii, Washington, California, Florida, Georgia. Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, are seeking judicial authority to force the certifying or decertifying of Senator Barack Obama’s qualification to run as a candidate for President as a natural born U.S. citizen. Previously, two lawsuits have failed to force the certifying documents from Obama.
Philip Berg’s months-long lawsuit in Federal Court in Philadelphia reached a dramatic plateau yesterday as Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) failed to respond to the court that Mr. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen and therefore not qualified to run for office of President of the U.S. They admitted to Obama’s non-qualification by their failure to respond to a 30-day court ordered discovery in which Obama and the DNC were ordered to answer a petition by Berg. Berg is a lifelong Democrat in the Pennsylvania Democratic Party who has sought to ratchet up the legal pressure as Obama and the DNC has continually delayed providing certifying documentation of Obama’s birth, which he claims to have been in Hawaii.
A lawsuit in Honolulu in the First District Court is seeking a court-order to open Obama’s secret birth records. Obama has thus far neglected a Freedom of Information request for the records at two hospitals in Hawaii. Lawsuits in Washington and Georgia are seeking state Superior Courts to force the states’ Secretary of State, as the chief state elections officer, to perform their state constitutional duties to require original certifying birth records from Mr. Obama that would verify his birth in Hawaii.
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “"No Person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."
There are numerous allegations to Obama’s claim of natural birth in the U.S. on the web and in the media, all raising suspicion and doubt as to Obama’s actual place of birth and qualification to run for president. Some of the assertions to which Obama “admitted” on Berg’s suit are: he was born in Mombassa, Kenya in 1961 while his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was married to Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan; when his mother, divorced from Obama Sr, moved to Indonesia and married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, Obama was adopted by Soetoro and became an Indonesian citizen; while in Indonesia, Obama had his name changed to Barry Soetoro; Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 under an Indonesian passport when Pakistan was a no travel zone for Americans; Obama had “admitted” to receiving illegal contributions in his campaign for president. Additionally, there is an allegation that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother claims that Obama was born in Kenya; Muammar Gadhafi, leader of Libya, has publicly claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and studied in Muslim schools in Indonesia. Obama has also “admitted” to hold citizenship in another country (the U.S. Constitution forbids dual citizenship).
Non-partisan and independent reviews and examinations of Obama’s birth certificate as shown on his official website has evidence of tampering and in any case does not list any of the points of information commonly found which would make it traceable and verifiable such as hospital, doctor, size weight, foot prints etc.
Interestingly, all these state lawsuits would be dropped if Mr. Obama would simply provide the requested documents supporting his claim of being born in Hawaii.
Lawsuits in additional states are being added each day. For more information about each lawsuit, contact:
(HI) Andy Martin at email: AndyMart20@aol.com
(WA) Steve Marquis email: peoplesvoice@peoplespassions.org
; website: www.peoplespassion.org
(CA) David Archboldemail darchbo1@gmail.com
(GA) Tom Terry email: kingdommatters@gmail.com
(PA) Philip Berg email: philjberg@obamacrimes.com
; website: www.obamacrimes.com
(NY) Dan Smithemail: Dansmith1954@aol.com
(CT) Cort Wrotnowski
email: Metaqubit@aol.com
Contact: Steve Marquis
Telephone Number: 425-698-7084
Email Address: peoplesvoice@peoplespassions.org
Web site address: http://peoplespassions.org/peoplesvoice/peoplesvoice.html
My Mother's Birth Certificate - And Obama's By Joan Swirsky
Source: http://www.rightsidenews.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2308&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=78
October 22, 2008
(critical videos and documents below)
Four years ago, when I had just about completed the lengthy legal and financial vetting process required by the U.S. government to place my then-92-year-old-mother in a nursing home, I was asked to produce her birth certificate as “proof” of her citizenship. While she was born in America, had voted in every election for untold decades, and paid her taxes religiously, that wasn’t good enough to qualify my elderly mother –deaf, legally blind, and confined to a wheelchair – to be admitted to the facility I had chosen for her near my home.
Frankly, I didn't think finding my mother's birth certificate was possible, given the fact that she had been born in a farmhouse in Storrs, CT, along with nine of her 10 siblings, to parents who didn't speak English. Despairing that she would never be "qualified" to receive the care she desperately needed, I set about to find the document, which I was sure had vanished in the unreliable record-keeping of 1913.
First I called an official in Hartford, the capitol of Connecticut, who recommended that I call the Storrs record-keeping office.
That took two minutes.
Next I called the Storrs office and was told to call another number.
That took two minutes.
When I called the third number, I explained to the woman who answered the phone that I was "asking something impossible." I gave her my mother's first name and her father's last name.
Within four minutes, she said, "Here it is!" She had found my mother's birth certificate, and it surprised me when I learned my mother's "real" first name and "real" last name had changed significantly as she and her family became Americanized.
When I expressed my amazement, the woman said: "That's nothing...we're routinely asked to find birth certificates from the 1800s, and we do that all the time!"
Total time it took me to find my mother's 1913, born-in-a-farmhouse birth certificate: 10 minutes!
WHERE IS OBAMA'S?
To this date, Barack Obama has refused - or been unable -to produce an authentic birth certificate that attests to the fact he is an American-born citizen. He has had more than the two-years of campaigning for the presidency of the United States to do this, but failed.
Why is this important? Because the Constitution of the United States expressly forbids anyone born on foreign soil to run for the highest office in our land!
You would think that Obama would have volunteered the "proof" of his eligibility within a nanosecond of entering the race. But here we are, less than two weeks away from the election, and Americans still don't know if Obama is an American!
While Obama's camp submitted a supposedly authentic birth certificate to the far-left blog Daily Kos, it was found to have been a photo-shopped version of the birth certificate of his half-sister, who was actually born in Hawaii, as Obama claims he was.
While this glaring omission in Obama's eligibility to become the most powerful man on earth mystified some and rankled others, a few people - clearly alarmed at what they considered a stealth candidate's attempt to dance his way around the Constitution and venture into the realm of criminality- took action.
SLEUTH #1
The first sleuth was lawyer Philip J. Berg, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and an undisguised Hillary fan.
Last August, Berg - a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania and one-time candidate for both governor and senator -filed a lawsuit in Federal Court (Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083) seeking a Declaratory Judgment and an Injunction against Obama, alleging that the first-term Illinois senator did not meet the qualifications to be President of the United States.
CLICK THIS->RELATED BIRTH CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS LINK
Berg's suit was based on Obama's failure to answer satisfactorily the question of where he was born. Was it in Hawaii, Kenya, or Indonesia? Was his legal name Barack Hussein Obama, Barry Soetoro (his stepfather's surname), Barry Obama, Barack Dunham (his maternal grandparents' surname), or Barry Dunham?
Among the other questions Berg raised were the authenticity of the name Obama used on his Illinois Bar Application and his possible allegiance to other countries.
Details of the case, including direct quotations, are found
on Berg's website: http://www.obamacrimes.com/.
"Voters donated money, goods and services to elect a nominee and were defrauded by Senator Obama's lies and obfuscations," Berg said. "He clearly shows a conscience of guilt by his actions in using the forged birth certificate and the lies he's told to cover his loss of citizenship. We believe he...supported this belief by his actions in hiding his secret, in that he failed to regain his citizenship and used documents to further his position as a natural born citizen...His very acts prove he knew he was no longer a natural born citizen. We believe he knew he was defrauding the country or else why use the forged birth certificate of his half sister?...If the DNC officers and/or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence, we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament...from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship through an oath of allegiance at age eighteen [18] as prescribed by Constitutional laws!"
The net result of Berg's efforts was that, on September 9, both Obama and the Democratic National Committee filed a joint motion for a Protective Order to Stay Discovery pending a decision on the Motion to Dismiss his lawsuit. In other words, to make Berg's lawsuit go away!
Berg said he was "outraged, as this is another attempt to hide the truth from the public; it is obvious that documents do not exist to prove that Obama is qualified to be President." The joint motion, Berg asserted, was a concerted effort to avoid the truth by attempting to delay the judicial process, although legal, by not resolving the issue presented: that is, whether Barack Obama meets the qualifications to be President. He said it is obvious that Obama was born in Kenya and does not meet the qualifications to be President of the United States. Simply stated, Obama "is unable to produce a certified copy of his Birth Certificate from Hawaii because it does not exist."
An e-mail friend of mine, a lawyer, stated: "What has boggled my mind about this case is that Berg simply waited for a court order to compel the production of the birth certificate, when he could just as easily have served a subpoena on the Hawaii County Clerk or County Recorder - or whoever is the custodian of records in Hawaii - to produce the original birth certificate for examination by an expert forensic-document examiner to produce certified copies to the Court, the Plaintiff, and the Defendants, which would have shifted the burden to Obama to quash the subpoena - and if he filed a motion to quash the subpoena to produce his own birth certificate, that would sure as hell tell us that he has a lot to hide."
SLEUTH #2
Also in August, longtime Obama nemesis Andy Martin - a Chicago journalist, lawyer, author of the bestseller, "Obama: The Man Behind The Mask," and executive editor or http://www.contrariancommentary.com/ - filed a suit in the Court of the First Circuit State of Hawaii (08-1-2147-10) against the Republican governor, Linda Lingle, and the director of the Department of Health, Dr. Chiyome Fukino.
Martin's suit alleged that the defendants had refused to provide a copy of the requested, certified copy of the birth certificate of Senator Obama "attested to by the State and not a `certificate' which is posted on a website and which has been debunked as possibly having been altered."
"It is axiomatic," Martin's suit said, "that the birth certificate of a presidential candidate is a document of crucial public concern and significance."
Failing both his petition and an initial "emergency motion," Martin filed his second emergency motion this month (-1-2147-10 BIA) "for an Order to Show Cause (`OSC') directing the defendants...on or before October 22, 2008...at a hearing before this Court why the relief requested by the Plaintiff should not be granted...This lawsuit does not involve complicated or disputed facts."
"Why is Barack Obama obstructing access to his birth records?" Martin asks. "Along with his obstructing access to college records and other essential information about his past? I want to see a certified copy issued by the State of Hawaii, not one issued by the State of Obama... Interestingly, we think we also know now why he has virtually imprisoned his white grandmother and refuses to allow her to appear in public?"
Numerous conservative journalists, talking heads and bloggers have addressed Obama's fitness to be president, questioning his:
- * Reed-thin résumé.
- * Stunning lack of concrete legislative accomplishments (both in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate).
- * Long-time close relationships and associations with Marxists and anti-American militants like Frank Marshall, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Phleger, Khalid Rashidi, et al.
- * Failure to provide transcripts of his years at Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.
- * Failure to provide any more than a one-page "report" from his medical doctor about his health status.
- • * Rationale for flip-flopping on every major issue - economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, et al - during this campaign.
The sleuthing continues. According to Berg, Martin, and a number of other sources, Obama was really born in the Coast Provincial General Hospital at Mombassa, Kenya at 7.24 PM on August 4, 1961, a birth that was documented by a certificate with an embossed seal that displays the name of the hospital, as well as witness signatures. In addition, if these reports are accurate, his grandmother in Kenya, as well as his brother and sister, claim they were present during Obama's birth in Kenya.
GRAMMY DEAREST
Now - belatedly - that the net is closing in on Obama, and the suspicions, as many have alleged, are that he is a Trojan Horse for Islamic interests, or a Manchurian Candidate, or a total fraud - Obama has seemingly discovered an interest in his ailing grandmother. Yes, that Grammy who he so facilely threw under the bus during the early days of his campaign.
He is now so worried about Grandma Dunham - the woman who raised him but strangely didn't attend his nomination - that he is taking a few days off from his intense campaign to visit this ailing widow.
Or could his strangely-timed trip to Hawaii really be to "clear up" the sticky case of his missing birth certificate?
I live in New York, where it is not uncommon for BIG payoffs to influence people to come up with "the goods." A half-a-million here, a dire threat there, often influence people to do things - like perjure themselves, produce phony documents, et al - that they would never do under less "pressured" circumstances.
If the magic document doesn't appear, it is possible, and entirely legal, that Obama could be removed from the ballots in states that are questioning his eligibility.
According to a recent article in The Daily Herald in Everett, WA, a civil action was filed in Washington State Superior Court against Sam Reed, Secretary of State, demanding that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama be removed from the ballot in Washington unless he can provide verification of his status as a United States citizen. The citizen who filed the suit, Steven Marquis, asked that Reed verify - by looking at "original or certified verifiable official documents" - that Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States and eligible to serve as president, and that the office do so by Election Day.
Like others investigating the matter, Marquis said that answering the unanswered questions about Obama's citizenship and background would "preclude a constitutional crisis and likely civil unrest" that would arise if information about Obama's ineligibility came to light after the election.
EXPLOSIVE PRESS RELEASE
This week, on October 21, 2008, Mr. Berg released the result of his investigation. In a startling press release, he has announced that "Obama & DNC admit all allegations in Berg v. Obama."
In his release, Berg explained that "by way of failure to timely respond to Requests for Admissions...the DNC `ADMITTED' that Obama is "NOT QUALIFIED" to be President and therefore Obama must immediately withdraw his candidacy for President and the DNC shall substitute a qualified candidate."
Berg stated that he filed Requests for Admissions on September 15, 2008 with a response by way of answer or objection had to be served within thirty [30] days. No response to the Requests for Admissions was served by way of response or objection. Thus, all of the Admissions directed to Obama and the DNC are deemed "ADMITTED." Therefore, Obama must immediately withdraw his candidacy for President.
According to Berg, Obama - by default - admitted to every charge the lawyer made., among them:
1. I was born in Kenya.
2. I am a Kenya "natural born" citizen.
3. My foreign birth was registered in the State of Hawaii.
4. My father, Barrack Hussein Obama, Sr. admitted Paternity of me.
5. My mother gave birth to me in Mombosa, Kenya.
The list includes 56 admissions.
The DNC's admissions, which number 27, include that:
1. They nominated Barack Hussein Obama as the Democratic Nominee for President.
2. Have not vetted Barack Hussein Obama.
3. They did not have a background check performed on Barack Hussein Obama.
4. They did not verify Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility to serve as President of the United States.
5. Barack Hussein Obama was born in Kenya.
For the entire list, go to: http://www.obamacrimes.com/.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Interest in this case is understandably intense. Berg's website has already received over 55 million hits. But predictably, the overwhelmingly liberal media has yet to pick up on this story, as if ignoring a story that has profound implications for our Republic and for the potential of a Constitutional crisis is less important than discussing Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
It's possible that all the states that are working on obtaining Obama's birth certificate will simultaneously remove him from the ballot at one time.
It's also possible that, failing to produce the birth certificate, Obama will voluntarily step aside, leaving a breach through which Hillary will walk.
Meanwhile, as legal challenges proceed at warp speed, and Obama's lawyers scramble to avoid the Scandal of the Century, one thing remains intractably the same: Obama still hasn't produced proof of his U.S. citizenship! Critical Videos below, documented
------------------------
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.
Related Videos Released this Month of October that document Obama's past
Exmuslim Waleed Shoebat tells us the truth about Barack Hussein
YouTube - The Truth About Barack Hussein Obama_Pt_1/4
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
What Voters Need To Know By Steve Baldwin
Source: http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3372/87/
October 10, 2008
Here is what American voters need to know.
The following information has been completed on my own time and not on behalf of any group or organization. It is based upon my own research and uses contacts I have in all branches of the US government, conversations with think tank leaders, policy experts, election law attorneys, sources within the McCain campaign, and top political consultants.
Obama belonged to a Socialist Party. New Information has come out confirming that Obama was a member of a radical socialist political party in Chicago called the "New Party," composed of former Black Panther members. Several documents have confirmed Obama's membership as recently as 1996. Obama's supporters have attempted to "scrub" websites clean of this information but fortunately, researchers made copies of it before it disappeared. So far, the media is refusing to cover this story.
Obama continues to hide his past. Obama has continued to block reporters from gaining access to any and all medical, school, and even legislative records from his state senate days. The media should be screaming about this but they are not. This makes Obama the least known presidential candidate in perhaps American history. All of McCain's records have been made available.
The only thing we do know about Obama's time at Columbia University is that the title of his thesis was "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament" but he will not release it. I wonder why.
Michelle Obama has written a racist thesis. Access to Michelle Obama's senior thesis at Princeton was also blocked until recent effort by researchers to gain access to it. I can understand now why access was initially blocked.
In her thesis, Michelle identifies herself as a black separatist and is clearly hostile to the notion of blacks integrating into the larger society with all the evil whites. This is Farrakhan type racism that could have easily been written by a Klansman from a white perspective.
Do you think if Cindy McCain had written a thesis about white separatism, it would be news?
Illegal foreign contributions are pouring into Obama's campaign at an unprecedented rate. Analysis of Obama's disclosures reveal he has received around $32 million dollars from overseas, much of it from the Middle East. There are 11,500 foreign donations. 520 of the donors list their country as "IR" which is Iran. He received millions from "Palestinians" and others hostile to US policy. Such contributions are illegal and the Republican Party has asked the FEC to investigate.
Even more alarming is that $190 million of his contributions are unidentified. The donor is not listed. Many donors are clearly using fake names such as "Good, Will." The problem is that the FEC has no power to freeze Obama's campaign or even stop him from continuing to receive foreign money.
All that will happen is that Obama will be fined AFTER the campaign is over. With 10% of Obama's money coming from overseas, this means that for the first time in American history, foreigners will influence the outcome of a presidential election.
Anti-American dictators are praising Obama. Just about every anti-American dictator in the world has issued words of praise for Obama: Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-il, Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez, Libyan dictator, Moammar Qadhafi, and so forth.
Never before in American history have so many enemies of America praised a candidate for the presidency. Not only that, but an array of communist and socialist parties both here and abroad have praised him. Even terrorist groups such as the pro-Al Qaeda HAMAS and the Columbian terrorist group (and heroin producing) FARC have praised him.
And what did Obama promise in return? Such praise and endorsements do not come casually. This means that people representing Obama must have met with these groups and leaders and have promised changes in US policy favorable to them.
Obama's extremist friends go into hiding. The Obama campaign is frantically covering up all Obama's socialist and Marxist connections by keeping his wacko friends away from the press. They just need to keep Americans in the dark for one more month! Moreover, documents that show Obama's work with extremist groups are disappearing. But I don't hear our crack reporters yelling "censorship!"
Forced union dues used for Obama. The unions are gearing up for the largest campaign mobilization in US history. We now know that they have allocated over $100 million dollars of forced union dues to a massive independent effort attacking McCain and supporting Obama. On election day, hundreds of thousands of union workers will mysteriously call in sick and will work on getting the vote out for Obama.
Polls are showing some discouraging trends. They show that people are blaming the fiscal crisis upon the Republicans, even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats and banks were forced by Democrats to make high risk loans to low income people all in the name of "equality" and "compassion".
Indeed, it was Obama's group, ACORN, who played a key role years ago in pressuring these agencies to implement such policies. Three of the key architects of this policy are now involved with Obama's campaign. Moreover, McCain is the one who authored sweeping legislation to reform all of this and it was blocked by the Democrats.
Americans don't know who controlled Congress the last two years. Polls also show that most Americans do not know that the Democrats took power in late 2006 and thus had oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; nor do they know that the Democrats shut down every inquiry into these rogue agencies and ignored every sign of trouble.
Nor do Americans realize that right after the Democrats took control, the economy went south. Except for the foreign policy arena which the Constitution explicitly grants power to the presidency, Bush has been a lame duck for two years in all other policy areas.
Indeed, every economic indicator plunged downward AFTER the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 - inflation, unemployment, job creation, etc, and yet, a misinformed public is blaming Bush, and by extension, McCain for the economy and sadly will be voting based upon ignorance of basic facts.
McCain is not Bush. Most Americans also do not know that McCain fought Bush on Iraq strategy, earmarks, spending, tax policy, education policy, homeland security issues, etc, etc, and that he is by far the most independent member of Congress while Obama never crossed the aisle and was just an isolated far left senator.
It is now clear that we are paying a price for the vulgarization of American culture. We have polls showing many Americans get their "news" from Saturday Night Live, John Stewart, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and even from incoherent ramblings by such popular cultural figures as Alex Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, and so on.
Americans engage in less serious reading and far more in entertaining themselves than any previous generation of Americans. This is truly sad and will cost our country in ways we can't even predict.
Obama has hordes of attorneys ready to challenge votes. We now know that the Obama campaign has around 10,000 lawyers volunteering to work on election monitoring. As the Kerry campaign had four years ago, there will once again be an effort to decertify absentee ballots sent in abroad from military personnel, based on petty mistakes often made with such ballots.
Thousands of military personnel were disenfranchised four years ago and since they usually vote Republican, the Obama campaign will repeat this effort.
Obama is registering thousands of illegal aliens. While the Obama campaign works hard to disenfranchise the men and women fighting to protect us from terrorism, at the same time they're working feverishly to register illegal aliens, felons, and the homeless by the hundreds of thousands.
Video clips have already appeared on You Tube showing the Obama campaign registering illiterate homeless people. Most states do not ask for proof of citizenship to register to vote, so hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens will be voting for Obama.
The group that has specialized in registering illegal aliens for a decade is, in fact, Obama's former "community service" group -- ACORN. While ACORN has been in legal trouble repeatedly for this work, the Obama campaign has contracted them out do to "voter registration." Wink, wink.
Lots of felons will be voting. Not by coincidence, democrat governors and democrat legislators are granting felons the right to vote. Just last week, the Virginian Democrat governor gave thousands of felons the right to vote. Remember, crime pays! The Governor claims this action has nothing to do with the coming election. Right.
Democrats are already disqualifying ballots in Ohio. In Ohio, the Democrat Secretary of State is already disqualifying thousands of Republican absentee ballots, claiming they didn't check some obscure box on the absentee forms. The GOP is filing suit here. But expect Republican ballots to be challenged all over the country by the legions of left wing trial attorneys who are volunteering their time to help steal the election just in case it's close.
Taxpayers groups are being ignored by the media. There are four major taxpayer groups in Washington DC that monitor taxation and spending issues full time. All have now rated Obama as one of the worst senators on tax, spending and pork issues, while also rating McCain as one of the best senators on these issues. All have issued press releases but the media has purposely ignored this story.
Obama supports gay marriage. Recently, both Obama and Biden have made false statements about opposing gay marriage. They know the vast majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, but in both private messages and private speeches, the Obama campaign has informed the homosexual community that they favor repealing DOMA.
DOMA is a federal law that if repealed, means all states will have to recognize married homosexuals who move there from states which have already legalized homosexual marriage - like Massachusetts and California. It's a back door way of legalizing gay marriage nationwide and it's why all the radical gay groups have mobilized for Obama unlike any other candidate before.
With the exception of Fox News, none of the above mentioned developments is being covered by the major media in any meaningful way. All have been given this information. We all know, however, that if McCain took millions of dollars from Middle Easterners, was praised by a half dozen foreign dictators, and hid all his medical and school records, there would be huge stories on TV, radio and the newspapers for weeks on end.
The media is protecting this candidate to a degree never before seen in presidential campaign history.
Predictions if Obama Becomes President
I have been asked for my predictions of what will happen if Obama were to win the presidency and take solid control of both houses. Put your seatbelt on:
Jobs will leave America and job creation will decline. The
capitol markets are starved for cash due to the credit crisis. What is needed more than anything right now is tax cuts for corporations so they can survive the coming recession. This is the worst possible time to raise corporate taxes as Obama is proposing.
Our corporate tax hikes are already among the highest in the industrialized world and this was killing us BEFORE the fiscal crisis. But Obama doesn't understand how the economy works. He views corporations as a source of funding for his social programs. Period.
If he goes through with his corporate tax hike, look for corporations to 1) Outsource jobs overseas 2) Move the entire corporate headquarters overseas, 3) Delay expansion plans, 4) Lay off workers.
Obama's proposal for a government takeover of health care insurance will send the stock market plunging in regards to health care plans, due to the instability such a proposal would create. Obama's plan will drive private plans out of existence, eventually taking over the entire health care market. Also, as in Canada and other nations with "universal" health care, the good doctors leave the profession, creating a shortage, and waiting lists will be instituted for most procedures.
The doubling of capital gains taxes will bring job creation to a grinding halt. There aren't many economists who argue with this point. But Obama doesn't seem to understand this. If this goes through, look also for the unemployment rate to rise.
There will be a flurry of lawsuits against private Christian schools, churches, etc. on the gay issues, all due to the legalization of gay marriage which creates a legal framework for a full frontal assault on American culture.
With the Obama administration using its power to promote homosexual marriage, gay attorneys will work in tandem with Obama's justice department to chip away at religious freedom, claiming gay rights now trump constitutional rights.
Lawsuits will be aimed at forcing private Christian schools to admit gay teachers and to teach gay sex alongside heterosexual sex in sex ed courses.
Similarly, churches that refuse to marry gay couples will be the subjects of lawsuits as well. Indeed, gay legal groups are already laying plans for the final assault on what's left of America's Judeo-Christian culture.
Union power will have a negative impact on the economy. Obama has promised the unions he will remove the secret ballot which means unions will be able to intimidate workers as they did in the 1950s. This means more power, more money, and more demands on industry. This also means more corporations moving offshore or filing for bankruptcy.
The cumulative impact of higher corporate taxes, higher capital gains taxes, and stronger unions - on top of a severe fiscal crisis -- means America will likely have a recession lasting 3-4 years.
Criticism of Obama's agenda will be suppressed. Similarly to the Clinton administration, Obama will use the power of the government to harass opponents with IRS audits. He will also suppress criticism of his agenda by passing the "Fairness Doctrine" which will cause radio stations to remove talk shows. The talk show industry is already preparing for the assault. This is not a joke.
Illegal alien rights will be federalized. Obama has spent much of his career fighting for the "rights" of illegal aliens. There is little doubt he will use his Justice Department to fight for these "rights" which in turn will attract millions of additional illegal aliens. What little gains made in the last few years in fighting for a more secure border will be lost.
The reemergence of bogus race-based rights. Obama believes in wild racial conspiracy theories such as quotas for police arrests and pull overs, reparations for blacks based on the notion all whites are guilty of perpetrating slavery in the past, and that lending agencies based their lending policies on race instead of credit risk.
Indeed, it was the last issue used by Obama's group, ACORN, to fight for high risk lending policies which caused the mortgage crisis we have today.
This worldview will mean that Obama's Justice Department to spend its resources on charging businessmen with racism for not hiring enough minorities, spending millions on federal studies "proving" racism in law enforcement, and going after universities for not implementing race-based admission plans.
Internal Security will be weakened resulting in America becoming more vulnerable to terrorism. Obama has been critical of our internal security apparatus, including the program that monitors the phone calls of foreign terrorists and other elements of the Patriot Act. What most Americans don't know is that Bush's aggressiveness on internal security prevented dozens of terrorist plots, many of which the public never knew about.
Obama's close ties to ACLU type attorneys make it likely that he will weaken internal security measures such as the Patriot Act. This will send an "open season" message to Islamic terrorists.
Just this week, a court has ruled that we must release terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo and grant them all the rights US citizens have. Obama supported this decision. Then we have Obama declaring in his own book (Audacity of Hope), "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
Gas prices will rise. Obama's hostility to drilling and nuclear power means he will rely totally on "alternative" forms of energy to meet our energy needs but there isn't an energy expert alive who will claim this will enable us to meet our energy needs anytime in the next few decades. Coupled with Obama's proposal to increase taxes on an already over-taxed oil industry - which will be passed on to consumers - you can expect to pay steep prices for gas for many years to come.
Welcome to Obama's America.
Steve Baldwin is Executive Director of the Council for National Policy.
McCain Won't Need Training Wheels
Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=309481528423217
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, October 21, 2008 4:20 PM PT
National Security: Biden's warning that Obama's lack of experience will prompt tyrants and terrorists to "test" him within the first six months can only be seen one way — as a confirmation of our worst fears.
IBD Series: Obama vs. McCain — The Great Divide
"We're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," Biden said. "He's gonna need help. We're gonna need you to stand with him."
In other words, Americans are supposed to be patient and supportive while an obviously unqualified president learns on the job. He's so inexperienced in military and world affairs, in fact, that his presidency is guaranteed to invite conflict from America's enemies.
Biden's candid remarks merely prove that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief.
Obama's No. 2 seems to be admitting that his 47-year-old boss wouldn't really know what to do if Iran struck Israel or if Russia invaded the Ukraine. He's admitting that he might make mistakes responding to a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. But we ought to vote for him anyway.
There is one thing Obama is certain of, however, and that's the need to gut the military and dismantle our nuclear arsenal.
Last year he promised a left-wing pacifist group in Iowa that he would waste little time slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons as president.
"I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems," Obama said. "I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending."
He also vowed to set a goal for a "world without nuclear weapons." To seek that goal, "I will not develop nuclear weapons," he said. "I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material. And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."
His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly irresponsible given the world threats. And music to the ears of everyone from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Vladimir Putin.
Proposing "deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal" amounts to unilateral disarmament, and it's suicidal given China's, and now Russia's, aggressive military buildup.
Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear madness, and Osama bin Laden dreams of unleashing a nuclear 9/11 on America.
In contrast, John McCain has vowed: "We must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies."
We've been down this road before. Bin Laden tested Clinton with terrorist attacks in 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2000, and each time he flinched. Obama, working with perhaps a filibuster-proof Congress, would set back the war on terror to those feckless Clinton days.
Delivering on promises made to his pals Reps. John Conyers and Keith Ellison, he would loosen immigration from high-risk Muslim countries, dismantle key parts of the Patriot Act and criminalize profiling at airports all within his first 100 days in office.
Somali warlords also took advantage of Clinton's lack of experience. Like Clinton, Obama believes "real" national security is "humanitarian foreign aid" — essentially using our troops as international meals-on-wheels in Africa and other trouble spots.
Nobody dared test Ronald Reagan. Nobody. And McCain, a war hero who has actually spent time with troops on the ground in hot spots around the world, as well as met with world leaders, would inspire the same kind of respect.
We can avoid dangerous testing and mischief on the part of our enemies by electing him commander in chief, rather than a tyro requiring foreign-policy training wheels during at least the first six months in office.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Obama Praised 'Searing and Timely' Book by Ayers
Barack Obama once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by former domestic terrorist William Ayers and was mentioned by name in the book itself.
Source: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/20/obama-praised-searing-timely-book-ayers/
Monday, October 20, 2008
Barack Obama, who has consistently downplayed his relationship with William Ayers during his presidential campaign, once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by the former domestic terrorist and was mentioned by name in the book itself.
A blogger unearthed the Dec. 21, 1997, endorsement in the Chicago Tribune and posted photographs of the praise for Ayers' book on Zombietime.com Saturday.
Featured next to a smiling photograph of himself, then-State Senator Obama called Ayers' book, "A Kind and Just Parent: Children of the Juvenile Court," a "searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair."
The book, which details life at the Chicago Juvenile Court prison school, mentions Obama by name on page 82 when it describes Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood:
"Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of 'safe neighborhood watch': the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day."
The Obama campaign said the blurb was not a full-fledged review of the book.
"He didn't do a review. He provided one line about the book to the Tribune," campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.
A month before the item appeared, on Nov. 20, 1997, Michelle Obama, then dean of student services and director of the University Community Service Center, held a panel at the University of Chicago that featured both Barack Obama and Ayers.
"Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system," the University of Chicago Chronicle reported on Nov. 6, 1997.
Obama has been criticized for refusing to elaborate on the extent of his relationship with Ayers and for claiming to have had no idea Ayers was a co-founder of the Wesather Underground, which claimed responsibility for bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and a New York Supreme Court justice's home in the Sixties.
The Obama campaign has noted that Obama was 8 years old when Ayers and the Weather Underground were active and has no link to their activities. Ayers has said he has "no regrets" about his participation in the domestic terror group.
"A Kind and Just Parent" was in stock at Amazon.com and ranked 51,273 in sales on Monday.
Interview: The Full McCain
Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTMxOWRkYjgyNDhjOTU5ZTY2OWU2ZTg2ZmUxMzQ1NjQ=&w=MA
March 5, 2007 6:00 AM
In National Review’s latest cover story, Ramesh Ponnuru makes “The Case for McCain.” Here’s the full transcript of the interview Ponnuru did with the Arizona Republican senator for the piece.
Senator John McCain: Glad to see you.
Ramesh Ponnuru: Thank you
Sen. McCain: I got some encouraging news this morning in the USA Today.
Ponnuru (reading headline): “McCain firm on Iraq war. . .” (McCain flips the paper over.) “Despite cost to candidacy”: even better. . .
Sen. McCain: (Laughs) Yep. They’ve got a poll that says 33 percent are much less likely, and 11 percent somewhat less likely to [vote for me]
Ponnuru: So do you think that’s already been costing you? That that’s behind some of the slides in the polls?
Sen. McCain: First of all, I don’t know. But second of all, I can’t worry about it. You just can’t, with something like this you just can’t let it concern you. The issue is too important. The sacrifice that so many young Americans have made already pales in significance to any cost that it may mean to me. You’ve seen these wounded kids, you know how much they’ve given.
Ponnuru: But is the country prepared to give more? The Post had a story on the front page that people want a deadline.
Sen. McCain: Well, I think that it’s the job of people like me to explain to them what’s at stake here. It isn’t just Iraq. I really believe that chaos will ensue, genocide will take place, and unlike after we lost the Vietnam War when they didn’t want to follow us home, these people want to follow us home. I think what’s at stake here is this entire struggle we’re in — you know I hate to use the word war, because then you give people legitimacy as soldiers — but the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism.
And so for me to somehow trim my sails on an issue like this would be just a disservice to the nation.
Ponnuru: Is there a way to continue to fight the war on Islamic extremism while also repairing some of our diplomatic relations? With Europe in particular?
Sen. McCain: I think we probably could improve our image a great deal, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But the United States leads. The United States is the world’s superpower. We lead. There are many benefits of being the world’s superpower, and there’s also occasionally great sacrifices [that] have to be made.
If the United States militarily were in the same situation as our European friends are, we’d probably be much more diplomatically inclined. I think it’s not worth dragging out. But the Europeans because of their lack of expenditure and lack of real military capabilities of course always want to pursue a diplomatic approach to whether it be the Iranians or anything else.
Look. We had Jim Jones, who you know is one of our great generals, talk about how difficult it was to pry two additional helicopters out of our entire NATO alliance just to get to Afghanistan.
Ponnuru: So: Speak softly, carry no stick.
Sen. McCain: There you go. I think that’s pretty, a very good description. And thank God for the Dutch, believe it or not, and the British, and the Canadians for their help in Afghanistan. But other countries are not very useful when they place such strenuous conditions on the actions that their troops can take.
Ponnuru: Turning to domestic issues: Why do you think President Bush failed to get Social Security reform? How do we start entitlement reform?
Sen. McCain: I favor strongly retirement savings accounts, personal savings accounts, whatever you want to call them. And I think every young taxpayer should have the ability to make an investment in their own retirement. But if I had to look back, and hindsight is always perfect, I might emphasize more the criticality of the system itself and add the requirement to have personal savings accounts. Do you see what I mean?
Ponnuru: Get it to balance first?
Sen. McCain: Yeah, I’d start at the chart: “You’ve got this much money coming in, you’ve got this much money going out, here’s where there’s more money coming in and here’s where there’s no money left. Now, where do you want to fix it?” You see what I mean?
And the second thing I would’ve done, I would have made it very clear to the American people that the Democrats would not sit down and negotiate. In 1984 for better or for worse Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill stood together in the Rose Garden. You know, I didn’t take any kind of a leading role in this issue, I really didn’t. I’m all for reform, but I just wasn’t. Lindsey Graham did. Lindsey Graham sat down with a bunch of Democrats, individually or one or two. And said “Let’s try to work this out,” and he just got no response. You see what I mean?
Ponnuru: So what can you do under those circumstances?
Sen. McCain: You go to the American people, you go on television and you go out on the hustings: all of those things that the President did. But I don’t think that they got the message of how broken the system is. You see what I mean? All of the media coverage seemed to center around retirement savings accounts, which again, I’m unalterably in favor of, totally in favor of, but somehow the media [made it]: “Bush hypes retirement saving accounts.” I would’ve liked to have seen the headline: “Bush: System is going to go bankrupt. Present-day workers will not receive the same benefits as present-day retirees.”
If I were president, I’d have three agenda items (assuming that immigration reform is somehow addressed). Do away with wasteful spending, take every step necessary to do away with wasteful spending. Second, Social Security reform. Third, help Medicare and Medicaid. Why in that order? Because I think you can succeed in the first two far more easily than the third. Because the third is far more complex an issue. I can explain the Social Security problem to any group of Americans in five minutes.
Ponnuru: Medicare takes 15, 20?
Sen. McCain: You know there are so many different facets of it, you know.
Ponnuru: So is your thinking that once you’ve made progress on spending on Social Security—
Sen. McCain: Success breeds success.
The other thing I’ve been kicking around and I haven’t talked to my advisers about it is, what about a tax-simplification commission that would require an up-or-down vote by Congress? I’m not saying I’m taking that position, but obviously we need to do something to simplify the tax cut. But I probably shouldn’t even have said it because I haven’t run it by my folks yet.
McCain staffer Mark Salter: No you haven’t.
Sen. McCain: What’s that? (Laughs).
Tax simplification is a priority. Exactly how you go about it, let me amend my comments earlier, exactly how you have to go about it is not clear. You’ve got to do it.
I sat next to the president of Estonia at a lunch in Germany. And Estonia has a 22% flat tax. You can enter your name in a computer, you will see your tax return and you click “yes” or “no.” And they’ve got something like 99.8% compliance. I’m not saying we will ever accept a flat tax, given the way our taxes are structured, but certainly isn’t there an argument for tax simplification in America?
Ponnuru: If you could get the Democrats to agree, or at least to come to the table on entitlements or on tax simplification, are those circumstances under which you’d be willing to accept a tax increase?
Sen. McCain: No; no.
PONNURU: No circumstances?
Sen. McCain: No. None. None. Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues. So what’s the argument for increasing taxes? If you get the opposite effect out of tax cuts?
PONNURU: There’s been a lot of talk after the election that you’ve got all these new populist Democrats who are suspicious of free trade. Is there any way to make further progress with trade liberalization or is that over for the foreseeable future?
Sen. McCain: I’m very worried over about the rising tide of protectionism, which was manifested in the last election. I’m a free trader. Since Phil Graham left, there’s no greater free trader in the Senate than I am. I’m very concerned about protectionism. And one of the aspects of this is we got to try to make sure that the impacts of free trade, which overall are incredibly beneficial, but we’ve got to make sure we try to assist those displaced workers that are affected by the impact of free trade.
By the way, I noticed this morning, a Toyota plant is going to be opening in Mississippi. That was on this morning’s news. You hear about the 13,000 that were laid off at Chrysler, you don’t hear about the 50,000 Americans who now make their living off of eBay.
Ponnuru: Insourcing.
Sen. McCain: Exactly.
I study history all the time. Every time the United States has practiced protectionism we’ve paid a very heavy price for it. Some even claim, with some authenticity, that the Smoot-Hawley tariff acts was a major contributor to the outbreak of World War II, not to mention the Great Depression.
Ponnuru: Is your party where it needs to be on global warming yet?
Sen. McCain: It varies in my party, so I can’t say “my party.” But where I think our party needs to be is to be more involved in market-based economically beneficial green technologies which will then reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
In other words, Lieberman’s and my cap-and-trade proposal is market–based. General Electric, the world’s largest corporation believes they’re going to make profits off of green technologies. I was just out at the port of Los Angeles with Schwarzenegger and BP is going to sequester carbon and take some offshoot materials and convert them into some kind of fuel, as I understand it. That’s going to be beneficial to BP to do that; in other words, it’s economically profitable to do these things.
So I think that what my party needs to do is to emphasize technologies which are profitable and free-market oriented. And a huge part of that in my view is nuclear power. Nuclear power is safe, it’s inexpensive, and all we need to do is get over this problem about the waste. I don’t diminish that problem psychologically, but I certainly do diminish it technologically. The French are generating 80 percent of their electricity today from nuclear power. And I don’t often like to imitate the French, but the fact is that there are a number of countries that have been able to handle this waste issue very effectively. We reprocess or we find a place to store it.
Ponnuru: Nevada?
Sen. McCain: Sure. Or, in South Carolina, they had a plant that until Carter cut it off was going to be reprocessing. Now I’m not saying either one. Let’s just settle it. And maybe storage is an easier thing than reprocessing. I don’t know. But we’ve got to examine whatever viable options there are to take care of the waste issue.
But when you’ve got this T.U.X., whatever the outfit was, that just bought out or leveraged out that utility company in Texas, they were going to build a whole bunch of coal-burning plants. I would hope that we could somehow incentivize industry to go back to nuclear power in a big way. I’m for wind, I’m for solar, I’m for tide, I’m for all of those clean technologies, but when you really look at it and look at the amount they contribute to our nation’s energy requirements they are not large. And that’s why nuclear power can be a significant contributor to clean, no greenhouse-gas emitting technology.
Ponnuru: One of the stumbling blocks people sometimes have is that they look at these proposals to deal with the problem and they seem, not the ones you’re talking about but some of these other ones, incredibly draconian, like Kyoto, and then you look at the pay-off and it’ll solve 0.7 percent of the problem. Is the problem so enormous that these kinds of measures can’t really get you very far?
Sen. McCain: [They can] if they’re market-based. If business and industry sees a way to make money and get returns to their stock holders, then they’re going to move in that direction. And I really believe that again, this cap and trading thing, which is still being sorted out a bit in Europe, is a good market-based approach to it. And again, carbon sequestration is fine, all of these things are fine, but if you want an immediate impact on reduction of greenhouse gases then start building nuclear power plants. And I’m not saying that’s the only answer but I think it’s a significant part of the answer.
Ponnuru: Do you think there’s a strategic or geopolitical component to this issue?
Sen. McCain: Sure. I don’t think Chavez in Venezuela is crazy enough to cut off Venezuelan oil to the United States, but should we be dependent on his temperament? In Nigeria we continue to hear problems there, Iraq, Iran, et cetera.
In many parts of the world where we are dependent upon our oil supply there’s either instability or challenges. So I think it is a national-security argument to reduce our dependency on importing oil.
Ponnuru: What kind of judges would President McCain be looking for?
Sen. McCain: Strict interpreter of the Constitution. I’m proud of what the Gang of Fourteen did. I’m proud that we got two Supreme Court justices that will be the best I think, perhaps ever. I’m proud of that we got a whole flood of federal and appellate-court justices through without a single one being rejected because we framed the criteria as quote “extraordinary circumstances.” And seven Democrats on our gang never saw quote “extraordinary circumstances.” The proponents of the nuclear option wanted 51 votes. Suppose that the Democrats keep their Democrat majority and you get a Democrat president, do you want judges confirmed by 51 votes now? I don’t think so.
Ponnuru: Would Republican senators be willing to filibuster a Democratic nominee?
Sen. McCain: Sure. I mean, I would if — that’s my right as a senator, if the nominee was unacceptable, of course. This is this fight we’ve got going on these resolutions on the floor of the Senate right now. Democrats won’t allow us a vote on our amendment that we want to consider.
Ponnuru: So you think that the Gang of Fourteen deal — that without it, it would have been harder to get Roberts and Alito?
Sen. McCain: I think it would have been almost impossible. That’s why they called it the nuclear option: The Senate was going to blow up. And certainly it wasn’t clear that they had 51 votes. And I think any observer of the Senate, the way the Senate works, the inner workings of the Senate, could tell you that it was going to blow up the Senate and it was questionable whether they had the 51 votes or not. And I think it was the Senator from Pennsylvania that was quote undecided, wasn’t it? As I recall, I think Specter was, I don’t know, I’m not sure, but. . .
Ponnuru: Shocking.
Sen. McCain: (Laughs).
Ponnuru: Are there any members of the current Supreme Court that you particularly admire or regard as a model?
Sen. McCain: Eh of course, Antonin Scalia. He’s a lot of our conservative models, I admire how articulate he is, but I also from everything I’ve seen I admire Roberts as well.
I think it’s vital to strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and have a record of that. Not just a statement of it, but a record of it.
Ponnuru: How important do you think it is that there be diversity on the Court? Justice Ginsburg’s been complaining that she’s the only woman left.
Sen. McCain: I love diversity; I think it’s wonderful. But the fact is I think the first criteria ought to be qualifications. But I love diversity. All of us love diversity. I know no one that dislikes diversity —
Ponnuru: You should see some of my mail.
Sen. McCain: — but the first criteria are the qualifications. And by the way, from what I’ve seen you have some good conservative women and quote “minorities” in the courts today, many of them appointments of the Bush administration.
Ponnuru: I was always hoping for a young, Indian-American justice.
Sen. McCain: I think so, someone with a journalistic background.
Ponnuru: Yeah. Mix it up a little bit.
Sen. McCain: Gee, that’s a great idea. (Laughs)
Ponnuru: On the question of stem cells. I believe the last time around you voted for federal funding for using the embryos at I.V.F. clinics. Have you reconsidered that? Is that still your view?
Sen. McCain: Yeah. It’s still my view. I’ve watched many close friends suffer from many of these debilitating diseases. I’m for all kinds of stem-cell research. But I would hope that we can make scientific progress so that this wouldn’t be that much of an issue any more but I support federal funding for it and I understand that I have a difference of opinion with some of my friends in the pro-life community.
Ponnuru: All kinds of stem-cell research? What about stem-cell research that involves human cloning?
Sen. McCain: I’m obviously against any human cloning. Obviously.
Ponnuru: Would you be willing to ban it?
Sen. McCain: Sure.
Ponnuru: So you’d support something like the Brownback bill?
Sen. McCain: Yes. I think I’m a co-sponsor.
Salter: I’ll double check that.
Sen. McCain: I’m pretty sure I’m a co-sponsor on it. [Editor’s note: He wasn’t a co-sponsor in the last Congress, but says he will support it when it is re-introduced in this Congress.]
Could I also tout my pro-life voting record?
Ponnuru: Absolutely.
Sen. McCain: Could I take a moment? Back 25-year now voting record of pro-life, whether it be federal funding for abortion, or whether it be, no matter what it be, I have many, many votes and it’s been consistent. And I’ve got a consistent zero from NARAL throughout all of those years. I may have had some other policy differences with some people in the pro-life community, but my record is clear. And I think the important thing is you look at people’s voting record because sometimes rhetoric can be a little. . . misleading.
Ponnuru: You started out your political career as a pro-lifer.
Sen. McCain: Yes, absolutely. I campaigned in the first primary for Congress in 1982 as a pro-lifer and my voting record over all of those years, and there are many, many votes that are pro-life votes that I’ve taken. Never once has there been a non-pro-life vote.
Salter: The stem-cell issue. . .
Sen. McCain: Okay. Abortion. Let me just say on abortion.
Ponnuru: For such a long time it seems we’ve been in a national stand-off on that issue. How do we move past that on abortion?
Sen. McCain: I think that, as President Bush said when he campaigned, we need to change the culture. As you know I don’t support Roe v. Wade. But we need to change the culture in America as well as returning the decisions to the states. The reason why I voted against the gay-rights amendment, the gay-marriage amendment was because I’m a federalist and I thought that the states should decide; just like on the issue of abortion, I think the states should decide, rather than the way it is now.
Ponnuru: But if federal courts were to move in here then you would change. . .
Sen. McCain: Absolutely. But you know, consistently federal courts have not.
Ponnuru: That’s right. On Roe, you’ve said that not only do you think Roe was a mistake, but that it should be overturned, now.
Sen. McCain: Yeah. Because I’ve opposed it and that I think the states should — because I thought it was a bad decision, and I think that the decision should be made in the states.
Ponnuru: So you’ve gone further than the president has, because he’s never actually said that it should be overturned.
Sen. McCain: Well I certainly didn’t support it and I don’t know if it’s going to be [overturned] . . . but I do think it was a bad decision.
Ponnuru: In terms of getting things done as the president, how important is it for your party to take back Congress?
Sen. McCain: Oh, I think it’s very important. But if we’re going to, we’re going to have to go back and convince our base and our independents who’ve supported us that we will restrain spending. We have lost our way on spending; we’ve got to stop this excessive, wasteful spending, which has led to members of Congress going to jail.
Ponnuru: Is it possible to re-create a bipartisan basis for the war on terrorism?
Sen. McCain: I have to believe so. I have to believe so because I believe that Democrats are patriotic Americans as well. And there are many of them who understand the dimensions and enormity of this struggle we’re in. But it’s going to take the American people also urging them to cooperate on this issue.
Ponnuru: Campaign-finance reform: Is McCain-Feingold the first step? Is there an unfinished agenda here?
Sen. McCain: I think that we need to give this law a chance to work. And there are aspects of it that are being tested in the courts. So I don’t envision any new legislation. I will say that we need to act as regards to the 527s which are a violation of the ’74 law. And 501(c)s, I believe have every right to lay out their agenda. The 527 which is designed to affect the outcome of an election, clearly, in my view should go under campaign-finance limits — contribution limits.
Ponnuru: Does the F.E.C. need to be beefed up? Its enforcement powers?
Sen. McCain: I think the F.E.C. is moving a little bit on this. We’ve seen the courts told them to act on it. I hope they will.
Salter: Senator Reid is actually moving on this because he thinks Republicans are going to have as big of ones as they have.
Sen. McCain: [Laughs.]
Salter: Whether that’s filtered down to the Democratic commissioners I don’t know.
Sen. McCain: Yeah, but it’s really blatant. I don’t know if you noticed recently, but Move On.Org has been running ads against me with various pictures of me and President Bush together. Some of them are pretty flattering. (Laughter)
Ponnuru: That might help you in the primaries. How do you think President Bush goes down historically?
Sen. McCain: I think it depends on the war in Iraq because many historians view a president primarily on foreign policy. But I think on domestic policy, I think he should go down very well. He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We’re in a long sustained period of economic growth.
Now, I think there will be justified criticism on spending and expansion of government. Failure to act on Social Security and Medicare reform. But presidents can’t do that by themselves. Ronald Reagan didn’t reform Social Security by himself. I think on the economic and a number of domestic issues I think the president is going to be favorably viewed by historians. On the issue of reining in spending I don’t think that he will be viewed favorably. On the issue of Iraq, I think it’s still to be determined.
Ponnuru: How do you think the president should use the veto power? This is a president who’s used it exactly once.
Sen. McCain: Whenever there’s an earmark, he should use it. And he should make the author of that earmark famous. That’s the only way we’re going to get this spending under control.
I voted against the Medicare prescription-drug bill because I didn’t see a way of paying for it. I opposed the catastrophic [health-care] bill back — remember when we did catastrophic? — for basically the same reason. According to the Government Accountability Office we’ve got a 40 trillion dollar unfunded liability associated with Medicare and I think 6 trillion associated with Social Security. Very tough decisions are going to have to be made beginning in 2009. And if you explain it to the American people and you tell them what’s at stake, they will respond.
But they’ve got to believe that you’re not wasting their tax dollars on bridges to nowhere. They’re not going to respond if they think you’re just frivolously, you know, recklessly spending, not just their tax dollars, but dollars that we don’t have.
Ponnuru: They want you to sacrifice before they will? Is that the issue?
Sen. McCain: Yeah sure, why should they? They’ve got to have a government that can believe in, is reasonably efficient. They don’t expect government to be a model of efficiency but at least to be careful stewards of their tax dollars. And if you can convince them of that — that you’ve eliminated a lot of the wasteful spending — then I think they would be willing to respond to whatever is necessary as far as entitlement reform is concerned. And they also need to be made to understand that every day that goes by that we don’t reform these entitlements, the more draconian the measures are. Because debt piles up. Or the unfunded liabilities pile up.
Ponnuru: A few candidates in this race are at least currently saying that they’re conservatives and have decent records of accomplishment. Why should conservative voters pick you?
Sen. McCain: First of all, because I am a conservative. And I think if you look at my voting record by those people that grade, whether it be Citizens Against Government Waste or the National Taxpayers Union or any of those, that I am a conservative. Second of all, I think that the important issue, the overriding challenge that America faces is this struggle, again, I hate to use the word war, against radical Islamic extremism. And I believe that Iraq is part of that and that’s why I have taken the strong position that I have. Do I believe the war was mismanaged? Absolutely. But I believe we’ve got a new general and new strategy and I think we can win. And I believe we will achieve success. And so, I believe that my background, my experience, my knowledge, and everything in me has prepared me to take on this challenge. And I think I’m more qualified to take on the great challenge of the 21st century.
And my other message to conservatives is: of course there are specific issues that we’ve disagreed on. You and I have not covered them all, I’m happy to say, today. But, overall my record is conservative. But more importantly, who do you feel is most qualified to lead the nation in these very challenging times? And finally, they are incredibly challenging, it’s not just Iraq as you know, but there was a guy named Ronald Reagan who came to power when things were looking pretty bleak as well. He believed our best days were ahead of us, I believe our best days are ahead of us.
Just one other thing. I’ve been saying for a long time that we have to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps. I say that as an old Navy man. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the world, but clearly we need a bigger military, particularly personnel-wise and we need to reform procurement in the military. We’re spending too much money on weapons systems that may not have the highest priority. So we need to look at that too. Not only increase size of the military but are we really training them for the right missions? I think they are in many ways, but I think there are other ways that we have to make sure that they are designed to meet this new challenge.
Ponnuru: We just ran a cover story saying we need to expand the army by former Senator Talent.
Sen. McCain: He was a very good member of Armed Services Committee. And by the way, we can recruit them. It’s a marketplace out there. And they’re a third smaller than they were at the time of Gulf One; it’s not as if we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. There’s a group of 18 year-olds out there that are going to join because they’re patriots and then there’s another group of 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, that say, “Hey. What’s the best deal for me for my future? Can I get a free education if I serve four years in the Army?” You know? It’s a marketplace.
Ponnuru: It’s shocking that we haven’t done that since September 11th, that we haven’t expanded it.
Sen. McCain: I’m astonished. Astonished. But they do have plans to do it now, as you know.
Ponnuru: Thank you, Senator.
Obama Cannot Distinguish Between Good And Evil By Herb Denenberg
Source: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=20121359&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576392&rfi=6
09/15/2008
Here's one of the most important reasons why Sen. Barack Obama is not fit to be commander in chief and president - he simply is unable to recognize the difference between good and evil. For proof of that I offer five pieces of evidence:
* Mr. Obama's reaction to 9/11 in a piece he wrote for Chicago's Hyde Park Herald on Sept. 19, 2001
* His reaction to Rev. Rick Warren's question about good and evil.
* His response to Russia's invasion of Georgia.
* His advocacy of infanticide and murder via his position on abortion-related issues.
* His continuous association with anti-American, anti-White, terrorists, racists and bigots of various stripes.
Reaction To 9/11:?Obama The Wimp Speaks
In a piece he wrote a week after 9/11, Mr. Obama recommended strengthening airport security and the like, but then called on American to "engage ... in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness."
Anyone with half a drop of red blood and a spine would call on America to obliterate those who would murder innocent civilians in a supreme act of bloodthirsty barbarism. But, no, Mr. Obama would start to psychoanalyze those who slaughtered 3,000 Americans. He would explain it as something that "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair." He thus demonstrates he is not only a fool and a wimp, but also an ignoramus. He doesn't have the facts. The 9/11 barbarians were well educated and even wealthy, the very opposite of the picture of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair painted by Mr. Obama. As Abe Greenwald wrote in Commentary, Mr. Obama's views were strange as our "attackers were wealthy and educated, connected and ecstatic." It is Mr. Obama who shows evidence of moral poverty and inexcusable ignorance, not the 9/11 killers.
As Investor's Business Daily observed, it was as if "the answer to the attacks should have been food stamps for al-Qaida." He would "understand" these genocidal maniacs rather than kill them. Then Mr. Obama warned of overreaction. He wrote, "We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern dissent." He didn't have time to express concern for American blood flowing at the World Trade Center, but went on to worry about overreaction against al-Qaida and bigotry against out neighbors. Americans didn't need his preaching about how to treat our neighbors - there was no reaction against neighbors of Middle Eastern descent. But what America needed was leadership with some guts and spine, not those who, with the smoke still rising from the World Trade Center, would be concerned about the poverty and ignorance of the wealthy and well-educated murderers of 9/11.
Compare this with the immediate reaction of Sen. John McCain to 9/11. Minutes after the attack on the Pentagon, he was interviewed by many media outlets, and immediately identified the source of the attack and called for all those behind this act of unspeakable horror to be crushed. Unlike Mr. Obama, he did not wait a week to then Hamlet-like try to explain what had happened. Even now with all Mr. Obama's advisors and consultants, he can't get much right on his first try. And even in this case, after having a week to consider 9/11, he got it all wrong.
Here as in so many other cases, Mr. McCain demonstrated he can get it right and get it right the first time and right on time. Mr. Obama has demonstrated gets it wrong, and even after time to consider and experts to consult, he still manages to get it wrong.
Obama's Answer To Evil:?Hamlet-Like Indecision
At the Saddleback Forum, both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were asked by Rev. Rick Warren: "Does evil exist, and if it does do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it?"
Mr. McCain answered without a second's delay. We defeat it. And then he gave the most obvious example - the Islamofascist terrorist whose highest moral value and first priority is the slaughter of women and children, and murder and genocide on the grandest scale they can achieve. Their evil is so pure and unspeakable it is hardly comprehensible by a civilized man. But Mr. McCain knows how to recognize such evil and what to do about it.
In contrast, Mr. Obama could not cite the most obvious example of pure evil. Instead, he sees evil on our streets and in parents abusing children. Give me a break. Then he gets into his endless moral ambiguity on any clear question of good and evil: "Now the one thing that I think important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confrontation, you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying [Warren interrupts to say, 'in the name of good"] in the name of good. And I think it very important is having some humility in recognizing that just because if we think it is good, doesn't always mean that we'll be doing good."
Mr. Obama's answer is further proof that he and his Democratic Party are in denial on the issue of Islamofascist terrorism. It was never mentioned in the debates. It is rarely mentioned in campaign speeches. Mr. Obama and his party should not be trusted to defeat an enemy they don't even seem to be able to identify and name.
Obama Sees Moral Equivalence Between Aggression And Self-Defense
When Russia invaded Georgia, Mr. Obama complained we'd be in a better position if we set a good example in such matters. That clearly implied his moral equivalence between Russian aggression in Georgia and our liberation of Iraq. This stupid statement of course weakened our international negotiating position. But it also shows Mr. Obama's moral bankruptcy in the inability to distinguish between illegal aggression and liberation of a nation based on seventeen United Nations resolutions over many years. Mr. Obama would have probably blamed Pearl Harbor on the bad examples we had previously set in regard to Japan. He would have cautioned our nation against overreaction. And he would have warned that we might be confusing good and evil. Finally, he would have traced the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor to poverty and ignorance rather than evil and infamy. With this kind of total moral confusion and ignorance, if this man sits in the White House we are doomed.
In contrast, again, Mr. McCain got it right and got it right on the spot.
Obama's Abortion Position
This column has presented in detail how Mr. Obama, while in the Illinois Senate, led the opposition to a bill (S.B. 1095, the so-called "Born Alive Bill") that would give infants born in the course of a botched abortion the right to life and to medical care. ("Obama More Than an Abortion Radical," (Aug. 15, 2008)). Mr. Obama feared that letting those infants live would somehow impair the sanctity of Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion. Thus Mr. Obama became the most radical proponent of abortion and became an advocate of infanticide and murder (and there's no way to dress up his position to deny its true meaning). The nurse who crusaded for the bill actually testified before Mr. Obama and his committee how she once held an infant for 45 minutes waiting for it to die. She said that Mr. Obama was unfazed by her testimony. This is surely another classic example of his inability to discriminate between good and evil.
Obama's Association With Evil
Who can remember a nominee of a major political party who had the kind of associates that Mr. Obama marches with - anti-Americans, anti-whites, bigots and racists, terrorists, and crooks? This man is beyond the pale. Both his decisions and his associates suggest he is unable to distinguish between good and evil, and even in cases of the most black and white divergence of right and wrong, he has no clear vision, and Hamlet-like can't make up his mind. Perhaps that is why he set a record of voting "present" while in the Illinois legislature, unable to make up his mind between "yes" and "no." As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani pointed out, as mayor or president you have no such vote as "present." You have to make a decision and you have to do more than engage in some intellectual discourse on doing evil in the guise of the good. Mr. Obama was right when he said that small-town mayors have to make decisions, but senators merely "yak." Until Mr. Obama learns to make decisions and learns to distinguish between good and evil, he better stay in the Senate and keep yaking ... and maybe voting present. Or better yet, he might do the nation a service by going absent altogether.
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.
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