Naomi's Election Blog

AMERICA THE WEAK

2008-10-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

AMERICA THE WEAK
US RISKS TURMOIL UNDER PREZ O

By RALPH PETERS

Posted: 4:51 am
October 20, 2008

IF Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, our re public will survive, but our international strategy and some of our allies may not. His first year in office would conjure globe-spanning challenges as our enemies piled on to exploit his weakness.

Add in Sen. Joe Biden - with his track record of calling every major foreign-policy crisis wrong for 35 years - as vice president and de facto secretary of State, and we'd face a formula for strategic disaster.

Where would the avalanche of confrontations come from?

* Al Qaeda. Pandering to his extreme base, Obama has projected an image of being soft on terror. Toss in his promise to abandon Iraq, and you can be sure that al Qaeda will pull out all the stops to kill as many Americans as possible - in Iraq, Afghanistan and, if they can, here at home - hoping that America will throw away the victories our troops bought with their blood.

* Pakistan. As this nuclear-armed country of 170 million anti-American Muslims grows more fragile by the day, the save-the-Taliban elements in the Pakistani intelligence services and body politic will avoid taking serious action against "their" terrorists (while theatrically annoying Taliban elements they can't control). The Pakistanis think Obama would lose Afghanistan - and they believe they can reap the subsequent whirlwind.

* Iran. Got nukes? If the Iranians are as far along with their nuclear program as some reports insist, expect a mushroom cloud above an Iranian test range next year. Even without nukes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try the new administration's temper in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

* Israel. In the Middle East, Obama's election would be read as the end of staunch US support for Israel. Backed by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah would provoke another, far-bloodier war with Israel. Lebanon would disintegrate.

* Saudi Arabia. Post-9/11 attention to poisonous Saudi proselytizing forced the kingdom to be more discreet in fomenting terrorism and religious hatred abroad. Convinced that Obama will be more "tolerant" toward militant Islam, the Saudis would redouble their funding of bigotry and butchery-for-Allah - in the US, too.

* Russia. Got Ukraine? Not for long, slabiye Amerikantsi. Russia's new czar, Vladimir Putin, intends to gobble Ukraine next year, assured that NATO will be divided and the US can be derided. Aided by the treasonous Kiev politico Yulia Timoshenko - a patriot when it suited her ambition, but now a Russian collaborator - the Kremlin is set to reclaim the most important state it still regards as its property. Overall, 2009 may see the starkest repression of freedom since Stalin seized Eastern Europe.

* Georgia. Our Georgian allies should dust off their Russian dictionaries.

* Venezuela. Hugo Chavez will intensify the rape of his country's hemorrhaging democracy and, despite any drop in oil revenue, he'll do all he can to export his megalomaniacal version of gun-barrel socialism. He'll seek a hug-for-the-cameras meet with President Obama as early as possible.

* Bolivia. Chavez client President Evo Morales could order his military to seize control of his country's dissident eastern provinces, whose citizens resist his repression, extortion and semi-literate Leninism. President Obama would do nothing as yet another democracy toppled and bled.

* North Korea. North Korea will expect a much more generous deal from the West for annulling its pursuit of nuclear weapons. And it will regard an Obama administration as a green light to cheat.

* NATO. The brave young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe will be gravely discouraged, while the appeasers in Western Europe will again have the upper hand. Putin will be allowed to do what he wants.

* The Kurds. An Obama administration will abandon our only true allies between Tel Aviv and Tokyo.

* Democracy activists. Around the world, regressive regimes will intensify their suppression - and outright murder - of dissidents who risk their lives for freedom and justice. An Obama administration will say all the right things, but do nothing.

* Women's rights. If you can't vote in US elections, sister, you're screwed. Being stoned to death or buried alive is just a cultural thing.

* Journalists. American journalists who've done everything they can to elect Barack Obama can watch as regimes around the world imprison, torture and murder their foreign colleagues, confident that the US has entered an era of impotence. The crocodile tears in newsrooms will provide drought relief to the entire southeastern US.

Sen. John McCain's campaign has allowed a great man to be maligned as a mere successor to George W. Bush. The truth is that an Obama administration would be a second Carter presidency - only far worse.

Think Bush weakened America? Just wait.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

America's First Far-Left Radical President?

2008-10-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

By Melanie Phillips
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=618

With all eyes glued to the collapse of global capitalism as we know it, attention has been somewhat distracted from the race to lead what still remains the most powerful nation on earth - the United States. We ignore it at our peril.

From the shockingly partisan presentation by the pro-Obama media on both sides of the Atlantic, you'd think this was a contest between twin pillars of rectitude and inspirational high seriousness on the Democratic side, and a joke Republican ticket consisting of an erratic old man and a brainless, wacko, gun-toting beauty queen, who in a fit of madness John McCain picked as his vice-presidential candidate.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the beauty queen in question, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, has struck an enormous chord with Middle America. As a result, Barack Obama's media supporters are making a huge effort to destroy her.
US Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama: Are we giving him a too much leniency?

US Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama: Are we giving him a too much leniency?

Inquiry

Now the Left thinks it has shot its moose. It has been crowing that an inquiry by Alaska's legislature has found Palin abused her office by firing Alaska's Commissioner of Public Safety for refusing to fire in turn Palin's former brother-in-law, Trooper Michael Wooten.

This really is a case of half-baked Alaska. First, the inquiry's conclusions were ambiguous. It found that Palin had violated public trust through using official action for personal interest; but it also said the firing was a proper and lawful exercise of her authority, and that personal interest had only been a contributory factor in the Commissioner's firing.

And just what was that personal interest? Palin wanted a state Trooper fired because he had assaulted his 11-year-old stepson with a stun gun, been caught drinking alcohol in his patrol car, and the Palins say was threatening to kill a member of their family.

Certainly, there was a conflict of interest because Wooten was the Governor's sister's ex-husband. But shouldn't the real question be why such a man was not fired?

What is really astounding, however, is the hue and cry over this non-event in Alaska while a raft of disturbing evidence about Senator Obama's connections is being either glossed over or not reported at all.

This may come as a shock to most people, but Obama is at the centre of a network of radical associations which he has tried to conceal.

Take for example his relationship with William Ayers, founder of the terrorist Weather Underground which bombed federal buildings in the 1960s and who has consistently maintained his radical views ever since.

Obama's own political career was actually launched in Ayers's Chicago house at a fundraising-event in 1995 which fired the starting gun for his run at the Illinois Senate.

Not only that, Obama and Ayers both sat on the boards of two organisations, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund. These organisations put into practice Ayers's revolutionary ideology by channelling money supposed to fund regular educational projects into extreme radical groups instead.

Obama now says he didn't know of Ayers's terrorist past and never endorsed his views, simply working with him on an educational project. But it defies belief he didn't know about Ayers, who was notorious in Chicago. In 2001, indeed, Ayers told a magazine: 'I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'

The crucial point was that this educational project was itself a vehicle for subversion; in the view of Ayers, its driving force, education was 'the motor-force of revolution'. Moreover, Obama wrote a rave review about Ayers' book on criminal justice, which compared America to South Africa under apartheid.

Scandal

If John McCain had such strong links with ACORDN, wouldn't he be torn apart for it?

Through the Woods Fund, Obama also funnelled millions of dollars to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Described by an academic sympathiser as 'a uniquely militant organisation', ACORN played a significant role in the sub-prime scandal - which detonated America's financial crisis - by physically intimidating banks into lowering credit standards for poor and minority customers.

The Obama campaign has paid an ACORN subsidiary $800,000 to register new voters. But now, numerous states are launching investigations into massive voter fraud being carried out by ACORN activists who are being caught falsifying voter registration cards, registering fictitious individuals and hounding voters to register multiple times.

But Obama's connections with ACORN go even deeper. Even though his campaign has denied this, for several years running he trained its activists and in 1992 even ran one of its voter registration projects.

Such radical links fit with other highly dubious associations Obama has made. We all
know that, under pressure, he distanced himself from his longstanding mentor Pastor Wright, who infamously coined the phrase 'God damn America!'

But Obama never distanced himself from the anti-white teachings of his church, which was heavily influenced by the philosophy of the black racist James Cone who claimed that 'whiteness is the symbol of the antichrist'.

And after the controversy over Wright, Obama has become close to another preacher, Jim Wallis, who spews out the same anti-American message - once calling the U.S. 'the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life'.

That's not all. ACORN is heavily involved with a Marxist group called the Chicago New Party, whose strategy is to force the Democratic Party to the far Left by infiltrating it and ' burrowing from within'. In 1996, the New Party exulted that one of its members who had just been successful in the political primary season was - Barack Obama.

Guilt

Whenever any of this surfaces, the Left tries to suppress it by screaming 'guilt by association'. Not so. This is guilt by participation.

The left cries 'smear' and 'racism'. On the contrary - if Obama wasn't a black Democrat, with this history his candidacy would have been toast before it got started.

Just consider if the boot had been on the other foot and McCain's political career had been launched by an abortion clinic bomber; his mentor for 20 years had been a Ku Klux Klansman, and he had paid nearly a million dollars to far-Right militias who strong-armed voters into fraudulent registrations.

Of course, there is no suggestion that Obama supports terrorism or intimidation. But the question is whether through expediency or ideological sympathy or a combination of the two, he has allowed himself to be associated with thinking that threatens the basic values of America and Western society.

This may sound too incredible for words. But what's really incredible is that, with dozens of reporters feverishly combing Alaska for any evidence to tarnish Sarah Palin, the mainstream media has largely refused to investigate any of this.

What's really incredible is that a man with such a background in anti-Western thinking can now stand on the verge of becoming the leader of the free world.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not a particular fan of John McCain. I think he is indeed erratic, and has run a lousy campaign. And the exhausted Republicans deserve to lose. But the prospect of Obama in the White House as America's first far-Left radical president is deeply worrying.

It would be a crowning triumph for the anti-Western ideology which has wrought such havoc on both sides of the Atlantic.

The reason Sarah Palin has struck such a chord is that Middle America sees her as the first candidate in its lifetime who stands against that destructive nihilism. That's why she is the key target for Western radicals who are now poised to gain the biggest prize of all.

Learning the Hard Way

2008-10-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

Learning the Hard Way

Naomi Ragen

Sitting here in Jerusalem reading the poll numbers, I have a feeling of deja vu. There was a time in Israel when the Oslo Accords and the sincerity of Yasir Arafat were, believe it or not, controversial subjects. More than that, anyone who was against Oslo, who believed Arafat was a terrorist and a liar, and that land for peace was a deception that would lead to terror and war, was villified. What didn't they call us realists? War-mongers. Partners with Yigal Amir. There was no debate, just hysteria and villification. I have to say that even my own family felt we should 'give peace a chance' and watched the handshake on the White House lawn (which I refused to watch and which made me ill) with hope. I was informed that since I wasn't going to be serving in the army, I had no right to suggest that signing this peace agreement was a bad thing.

You know what? It intimidated me. I started to think: how could it be that everyone was so happy and enthusiastic, and I was miserable and depressed? How could they see doves and handshakes, and all I could see was terrorist bombs and dead bodies?

So I tried to see the world through their glasses. I tried to be hopeful too. And when it came time to vote, I even voted for a Peace Now candidate, not because I thought there would be peace, but because I thought that it was better for the country to at least put into practice its wrong ideas,and to experience first hand how badly it was all going to work out. That there was no other way to have unity, because if they didn't get that chance, they would never shut up, and would always blame the opposition for not giving them a chance. I stopped speaking out. I went along.

What we got, of course, was hell on earth. Thousands were killed, thousands more were injured as Arafat unleashed unbridled terrorist attacks, using the guns our government had given him to kill Israelis, many of them women and children;using the free access into Israel to blow up pizza parlors and discos and bar mitzvah celebrations.

And then came my turn, sitting in the Park Hotel with my family, including my biggest political opponent, who was all in favor of Oslo, when the building blew up.

When I came out of that alive with my husband and children, I swore never to be intimidated again. I swore that next time when no-nothings asserted political beliefs that were blatantly wrong, and would lead to disaster, I would oppose them openly, come what may. I would also never again suspend my disbelief that other people knew better, including high level academics, intellectuals, and other elites. I would keep my common sense.

The Presidential election of the most liberal and inexperienced politician in America, a man with strong Muslim ties and a strong Muslim background; a man who is linked to domestic terrorism through Bill Ayers, and to numerous pro-Islamic and anti-American advisors - all of whom side with Israel's Leftist enemies (including Israelis) as well as to anti-American, anti-Semites like Reverend Wright; a man whose supporters are among the same people who brought down the American economy with their 'liberalism' in money-lending, is just about a fait accompli. I have no idea what has happened to the America I knew. I have no idea what happened to the American Jewish community's support for Israel, how it has been washed away by deceptive self-interest and propaganda lies. But when I think what is in store for the America which is doing this to herself, and the American Jewish community who thinks by selling out Israel it will somehow achieve "change" that will benefit it, my heart aches.

I know that I am helpless to stop this juggernaut towards disaster. Perhaps it is America's turn to experience first hand what we in Israel experienced: the consequences of electing a leadership which does not have the best interests of the country in mind; which has an agenda that has nothing to do with those interests. Sometimes people have to make horrible mistakes in order to learn that they are horrible mistakes. In Israel, this included over 25,000 terrorist attacks. Children dying in the streets. Being afraid to walk to the bus stop, or enter a store.

Americans have had a wonderful life in a wonderful country. Everybody in the world wants to live in America. Now, Americans want 'change.' They are about to get it.

May God watch over them.

Joe Biden’s Alternate Universe

2008-10-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

Joe Biden’s Alternate Universe
Michael J. Totten - 10.03.2008 - 8:10 AM
Commentary Magazine

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

It’s too bad debate moderator Gwen Ifill didn’t catch him and ask a follow up question: When did the United States and France kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon?

The answer? Never. And did Biden and Senator Barack Obama really say NATO troops should be sent into Lebanon? When did they say that? Why would they say that? They certainly didn’t say it because NATO needed to prevent Hezbollah from returning–since Hezbollah never went anywhere.

I tried to chalk this one up as just the latest of Biden’s colorful gaffes. Did he mean to say “we kicked Syria out of Lebanon?” But that wouldn’t make any more sense. First of all, the Lebanese kicked Syria out of Lebanon. Not the United States, and not France. But he clearly meant to say Hezbollah, not Syria, because he correctly notes just a few sentences later that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s government. He wasn’t talking about Syria. He was talking about Hezbollah all the way through, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of his outlandish assertion.

Like many who watched the debate, I was bracing myself for Palin to say something off-putting about foreign policy. She’s the one who needed the crash course, allegedly; Biden is supposedly Mr. Foreign Policy. He’s supposed to be the experienced elder statesman Senator Barack Obama chose to help him govern and fill in some of his knowledge and experience gaps. He’s supposed to know far more about foreign policy than she does.

I wasn’t exactly encouraged by Palin’s answer to one of Katie Couric’s foreign policy questions: “What happens if the goal of democracy doesn’t produce the desired outcome?” Couric used Hamas’ victory in the West Bank and Gaza as an example. Palin either dodged the question or did not understand it.

Biden, though, against all expectations and odds, managed to say something far more bizarre and off-planet than anything Palin has said on the topic to date.

»

George Bush Resigns

2008-10-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

BUSH'S RESIGNATION SPEECH

Well, not really. But it's a speech he might give, written for him by an ordinary Maine-iac [a resident of the People's Republic of Maine ].

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media.

Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied...People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

Now some of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan , a nuclear ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to re-elect him. He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel. Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'
Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well Fed Ex a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient hou se down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America.

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.
=

Obama, Rezko, Student Loans, Million Dollar Homes

2008-10-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is from a listmember's friend. I can verify that all this information is available online. Is it incorrect? Or is is true, and just being hidden by pro-Obama supporters in the major media? Please do some research, and let's see what we come up with. If you find anything below which is not true, please let me know and I will immediately correct.

Naomi

To All My Friends,

This is long, but, please take the time to read it.

This election has me very worried. So many things to consider.

I watch all the news channels, jumping from one to another. I must say this drives my husband crazy. But, I feel if you view MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, you might get some middle ground to work with. About six months ago, I started thinking "where did the money come from for Obama". I have four daughters who went to College, and we were middle class, and money was tight. We (including my girls) worked hard and there were lots of student loans.

I started looking into Obama's life. Around 1979 Obama started college at Occidental in California . He is very open about his two years at Occidental, he tried all kinds of drugs and was wasting his time but, even though he had a brilliant mind, did not apply himself to his studies.

"Barry" (that was the name he used all his life) during this time had two roommates, Muhammad Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, both from Pakistan .

During the summer of 1981, after his second year in college, he made a "round the world" trip. Stopping to see his mother in Indonesia , next Hyderabad in India , three weeks in Karachi , Pakistan where he stayed with his roommate's family, then off to Africa to visit his father's family.

My question - Where did he get the money for this trip? Nether I, nor any one of my children would have had money for a trip like this when they where in college. When he came back he started school at Columbia University in New York . It is at this time he wants everyone to call him Barack - not Barry.

Do you know what the tuition is at Columbia ? It's not cheap! to say the least. Where did he get money for tuition? Student Loans? Maybe. After Columbia , he went to Chicago to work as a Community Organizer for $12,000.
a year. Why Chicago ? Why not New York ? He was already living in New York .

By "chance" he met Antoin "Tony" Rezko, born in Aleppo Syria , and a real estate developer in Chicago . Rezko has been convicted of fraud and bribery this year. Rezko, was named "Entrepreneur of the Decade" by the Arab-American Business and Professional Association".

About two years later, Obama entered Harvard Law School . Do you have any idea what tuition is for Harvard Law School ? Where did he get the money for Law School ? More student loans? After Law school, he went back to Chicago .
Rezko offered him a job, which he turned down. But, he did take a job with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Guess what? They represented "Rezar" which Rezko's firm. Rezko was one of Obama's first major financial contributors when he ran for office in Chicago . In 2003, Rezko threw an early fundraiser for Obama which Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendelland claims was instrumental in providing Obama with "seed money" for his U.S. Senate race.

In 2005, Obama purchased a new home in Kenwoood District of Chicago for
$1.65 million (less than asking price). With ALL those Student Loans - Where did he get the money for the property? On the same day Rezko's wife, Rita, purchased the adjoining empty lot for full price. The London Times reported that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born Billionaire loaned Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before Obama's new home was purchased. Obama met Nadhmi Auchi many times with Rezko.

Now, we have Obama running for President. Valerie Jarrett, was Michele Obama's boss. She is now Obama's chief advisor and he does not make any major decisions without talking to her first. Where was Jarrett born? Ready for this? Shiraz, Iran! Do we see a pattern here? Or am I going crazy?

On May 10, 2008 The Times reported, Robert Malley advisor to Obama was "sacked" after the press found out he was having regular contacts with "Hamas ", which controls Gaza and is connected with Iran . This past week, buried in the back part of the papers, Iraqi newspapers reported that during Obama's visit to Iraq , he asked their leaders to do nothing about the war until after he is elected, and he will "Take care of things".

Oh, and by the way, remember the college roommates that where born in Pakistan ? They are in charge of all those "small" Internet campaign contribution for Obama. Where is that money coming from? The poor and middle class in this country? Or could it be from the Middle East ?

And the final bit of news. On September 7, 2008, The Washington Times posted a verbal slip that was made on "This Week" with George Stephanapoulos. Obama on talking about his religion said, "My Muslim faith". When questioned, "he make a mistake". Some mistake!

All of the above information I got on line. If you would like to check it - Wikipedia, encyclopedia, Barack Obama; Tony Rezko; Valerie Jarrett: Daily Times - Obama visited Pakistan in 1981; The Washington Times - September 7, 2008; The Times May 10, 2008. Now the BIG question - If I found out all this information on my own, why haven't all of our "intelligent" members of the press been reporting this?

A phrase that keeps ringing in my ear - "Beware of the enemy from within"!!!

Obama: Hamas and Hezbollah Have ‘Legitimate Claims’

2008-10-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

September 29, 2008

Exclusive: Sen. Obama Says Hamas and Hezbollah Have ‘Legitimate Claims’

Nicholas Guariglia
Sen. Obama’s former top foreign affairs advisor, Robert Malley, recently had to resign his role in the Obama campaign due to holding meetings with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Mr. Malley’s favorable views of Hamas have been widely known for years. Malley had written extensively, sometimes co-writing articles with the late Yasser Arafat’s advisor Hussein Agha, blaming Israel, not Arafat, for the failure of the Camp David talks.

Had Malley’s views on (and meetings with) Hamas not been unveiled, who knows where Mr. Malley would have ended up in a potential Obama administration? Perhaps he would have been the Secretary of State. This is a sad and frightening possibility, or probability, because Sen. Obama is the least-vetted man in U.S. political history.

Nobody likes “gotcha!” politics. Both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama have made serious gaffes during the course of this election, which began earlier and has lasted longer than any other election in American history. Both men are being recorded and watched at all times, and they’re human. Missteps and goof-ups are to be expected. Just ask Joe Biden.

But this issue is different. In a New York Times article, written by David Brooks on May 16th of this year, Sen. Obama made a very revealing admission that has gone overlooked by the mainstream press. The article, entitled “Obama Admires Bush,” focused on Sen. Obama’s views regarding the Middle East. The “Bush” in question was George H.W. Bush, the senior, and throughout the interview Obama displays his affection for old-school James Baker/Brent Scowcroft foreign polic y realism.

About midway through the interview, however, the man who wants to be President of the United States gave a whopper of a quote. In Brooks’ words:

The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims” (emphasis mine).

Why has no one to date has asked the would-be Commander-in-Chief what he means by “legitimate claims”? Certainly there is a large distinction to be made between Palestinian and Lebanese innocents vs. the terrible Hamas and Hezbollah organizations. The former have aspirations which, if addressed, would help the United States geopolitically. But the latter? To suggest these terrorist groups have legitimate claims? Something does not sit right, there.

To be fair, Mr. Obama acknowledges that the two groups are conducting vicious violence, and previously in the article asserts that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.”

Which is all well and good. So what does he mean when he says Hamas and Hezbollah, specifically, have legitimate claims? They both consider themselves at war with the West, they both want to destroy Israel, and they both want to impose a puritanical version of Islam over their people. Clearly, any grievances they might have – which to the amoral and relativist would seem “legitimate” – should be overlooked and ignored, no?

This is more than a gaffe. It occurred during an interview with a respected journalist. It is in print.

What are the implications of this statement? Is Sen. Obama implying he opposes Hezbollah and Hamas merely due to their actions and not their beliefs? Is he solely against20what these Jihadist groups do, and not what they represent? That’s like hating the gas chambers but excusing the fascism; opposing the gulags but delving into the nuances about the “legitimacy” of Stalinism.

The Third Reich complained about a raw deal at Versailles and a lack of Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the white race. The Bolsheviks harped about the excesses of the bourgeoisie. None of these “claims,” legitimate or not, were even considered by Western statesmen serious about the continuity of the Western way of life – and rightly so. Hamas and Hezbollah could stop the neck-slicing and car bombing tomorrow, and they would still be theocratic and neo-fascistic movements attempting to usurp their citizenry and democratic principalities in Palestine and Lebanon.

In fact, that is the route most Jihadist groups go: they use insurrection and terrorism to achieve governmental power and the apparatus of the state, then they morph into dictatorial regimes which no longer need to rely primarily on asymmetrical violence to brutalize their population and threaten their neighbors.

It is a disgrace that Sen. Obama has not had the chance to clarify himself, and an even further disgrace that nobody has held his feet to the fire on this issue (amongst others). Hezbollah and Hamas have combined to kill hundreds of Americans. Before 9/11, Hezbollah was the one terrorist group which had killed the most Americans throughout the world.

To put this statement by Sen. Obama into further context, consider this: Hamas and Hezbollah are both direct proxies of Iran. The same Iran which is blowing up Americans and Iraqis in Iraq.

The same Iran which Sen. Obama once promised to negotiate with without diplomatic preconditions.

The same Iran which Sen. Obama apparently believes does not, or would not, work with Sunni Jihadists (Iran being a Shi’ite country).

On top of all this, last year Sen. Obama voted against labeling Iran’s elite paramilitary unit, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, a “terrorist organization.” Sen. Obama did not want to des ignate the Revolutionary Guards – who created Hezbollah, and directly train and arm Hezbollah and Hamas to this day – a terrorist group.

The Revolutionary Guards, along with their surrogates, have been involved in some of the most egregious and destructive terrorist activities all across the world since 1979. And since 2003, they’ve killed U.S. forces in Iraq.

Again, Sen. Obama voted against calling them “terrorists” – and just several weeks ago, said Hezbollah and Hamas had “legitimate claims.”

More vetting of Sen. Obama’s views about the Middle East needs to happen before we have another foreign policy debate, let alone hold an election.

More context, still: Hamas actually endorsed Sen. Obama, to which Obama replied:

It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush.”

That’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.

While Hamas might not be confused about Sen. Obama’s views, I am. The press is supposed to be the watchdog for the American people. It took more than a year after the rantings of Rev. Wright were reported for the pastor’s hateful sermons to break the news nationally. It took prompting from Sean Hannity for George Stephanopoulos to finally question Sen. Obama about his connections to former domestic terrorist William Ayers.

This article might be from a few months ago, but this quote is too important to overlook. In not addressing this issue, Sen. Obama ends up concealing something which might be very unpleasant if further explored. Considering the context of this statement – his pro-Hamas advisor, the endorsement by Hamas, his refusal to label the Revolutionary Guards terrorists, etc. – the American public simply must know what Sen. Obama meant when he told David Brooks that Hezbollah and Hamas, mortal terrorist adversaries and theocratic extremists, had “legitimate claims.”

Before I walk into that voting booth, I need to know that. Period. Someone in the media, or in the McCain campaign, or at his rallies, needs to ask him what he means. And they need to ask him now.

Whose Behind 200 Million in Unidentified Contributions to Obama?

2008-10-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign

Monday, September 29, 2008 9:23 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

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

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.

(To continue reading this article and the information on foreign donations, click here )

________________________________

My Readers Respond: Pro and Con

2008-09-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

Obama and Palin: A Match Made(Almost) Made in Heaven
By
Leslie Sacks

Barack Obama is perfectly suited in the running for president. He has the ability to both energize and grow the grassroots base, to motivate voters with his superb eloquence and confidence. As a result, he has broken for all time the racial glass ceiling on viable presidential candidates, an accomplishment for which America should be grateful. He will, based on many current polls, quite likely succeed in his quest for the presidency.

On the other hand, Obama, according to a good portion of the country, is not yet experienced enough, and does not yet have the depth of judgment, to be president. Either way, perhaps the best argument for a McCain presidency is the (consummately American) end of divided government. Given the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress, a Republican president will provide a semblance of proportional representation and help ensure the checks and balances that are so central to our vigorous democracy.

Interestingly, Sarah Palin--the focus of much of Obama's current defensive attention--is an unusual case for America's feminists. Ms. Palin has singlehandedly, in a matter of weeks, made the feminist movement largely defunct. Before then, much of the feminist movement was rooted in the left-wing: pro-abortion and anti-Republican, often animated by an anti-male, anti-religious fervor.

Palin is the opposite: simple, patriotic, both gun-toting and feminine (horrors!). She is from a small town, an outdoorswoman, with a union-card holding husband. She is committed to religion, family values and independence. She is certainly not the Dolce Gabbana-pants wearing, urbane intellectual from Greenwich Village or San Francisco, steeped in all-is-relative Harvard political correctness.

And yet, she has captured the media's imagination and broken the (other) glass ceiling more effectively than any other woman to date. She has done so from primitive Alaska, small town Wasilla, with a family of five, happily married with conservative values - in short, she is an anathema to traditional feminists. That is why they hate and despise her. She stands for everything they are not and yet she has achieved everything they could not. And they will never forgive her for making them irrelevant, passé, an odd historical footnote.

Women have arrived - they are equal, they can and may indeed be Vice-President, lipstick and all. And who knows, maybe one day (God willing!) even president.

Sincerely,

Mr. Leslie J. Sacks
Los Angeles, California 90049
Leslie@LeslieSacks.com

LESLIE'S BLOG: http://LeslieSacks.Blogspot.com

======================================================================
Israelis have a right to criticize and comment concerning the American political scene. Surely, I have heard enough
Americans commenting over the years about Israel in both a good and a bad context to allow me to ask the question, "Why not the other way?"

Today's American Jewish liberal cares no more for the Israelis than did the Jews, sunning
themselves on Miami Beach, give a hoot for the passengers on the SS St. Louis. The
average liberal American Jew still worships Roosevelt; yet, has no concept of this president's contempt
for the Jewish people and how complacent he was in allowing the Holocaust to reach its
ultimate conclusion.

Most Jewish Americans--certainly the ones one the left--do not have a concept of history and have not learned a thing from what
little they have heard in passing. Sure, there are exceptions and some extraordinary ones at that--for example, National
Review's Yonah Goldberg; but as a people, we are living a scenario taken right out of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. In it there is a creature that is so dumb, if it doesn't see you, it thinks that you do not see it!

In my opinion, the American Evangelicals--regardless of their motives--have shown much more interest and serious concern
over the future of the Jewish State than the average Jewish American. And the interesting thing is that this has been
the case with them since the founding of the American Restoration Movement in the early part of the Nineteenth-Century.

Israel to the average liberal Jewish American is a nice place to visit for a whirlwind 10 day tour sponsored by B'nai Brith. It's nice to come
back to the USA and to say to your bridge club that you picked oranges on some kibbutz; or to say that you went on a special
"fact finding tour" with members from your super liberal Reform Synagogue.

Israel is a special source of Jewish pride and the American Jewish Left does not deserve to share in the benefits of this feeling. They are thieves.

Michael Hyman
San Diego, California

=================================================================
Yes, Naomi, this is the attitude of American Jews who "care about Israel", yet cannot differentiate between sending postcards and sending a son, husband, father, brother, friend off to fight yet another war OR being targets for another Jew hating maniac.

Fortunately for me, most of my relatives understand this. But we are mostly first generation Americans. I avoid situations where discussions about "abortions and lives" might occur, because my blood boils.

New York is full of Liberal Jews who have not observed or understood that most things have changed during their lifetimes. Even my late father who was a "verbrente Labor Zionist" understood the reality of the USSR and abandonned the idealism of his youth. I of course lived in Israel. My attitudes have surely been shaped by all the years I spent there. You have no idea how deeply embedded liberal politics and cultural relativism are in Jews here.

Yesterday, I went to the anti Ahmadinejad rally. It saddened me to notice that most of the crowd was orthodox, with very few secular NY Jews. I am not orthodox, but I think that the modern orthodox community is the only thing that stands between Jews and our demise both in the Golah and in Israel.

Not very pleasant thoughts erev Rosh Hashana. Still best wishes to you and your family for peace and health.
Sylvia Navon, NYC
==============================================================================

Dear Naomi:

I am not Jewish but I read with concern all your articles. I have a different perspective. I do not look at the "crisis" in the middle east as a purely "Jewish" calamity. This is something I think that you have being trying to make everyone, Jew and non-Jew alike realize.

I forward all your articles to my friends. Their response has been the same as mine. An outcry to our government representatives. Although we live in Canada, and the American Elections would not seem to concern us, we are in fact concerned, as should all of North America, and anyone who declares themselves allies of the U.S.A, or anyone who values freedom. Freedom of rights, freedom to live.

You are doing a wonderful job. There should be more people like you who are willing to suffer the barbs and criticism of their world and people, in order to bring to light the atrocities occuring on a daily basis in both Israel and the Middle East and the significance it has to the whole world.

Never let anyone forget the "Holocaust". Relate every action taken by the Muslim countries against Israel and the Jews to it. Remind them of how they vowed "Never again"! Point out the significance of the number of Jews now living in Israel (6 million) to number exterminated by Hitler.

Keep up the good work. I will keep forwarding your articles to everyone that I know, as they forward them to everyone that they know. From such small sparks great conflagrations can occur.

Sincerely,

Angella O'Hanlon
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Naomi,
You have my permission to write my response to the lady who objected to your politics.
I am a son of a German born Jew, who narrowly escaped Europe's inferno, and emigrated to the United States in 1940.Most of the Zinner family, relatives I would never know were murdered in concentration camps during the inferno that the free world allowed the Nazis to perpetrate.
My father was so grateful to America that, the moment the US entered the war, he enlisted.
When my Mother, who was expecting her first child asked him, "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?YOU ARE AN IMMIGRANT WHO ONLY JUST ARRIVED.YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO.", he replied, WHAT WILL I SAY TO MY CHILDREN WHEN THEY ASK ME WHAT DID I DO WHEN MILLIONS OF OUR PEOPLE WERE BEING MURDERED BY THE GERMANS?
My father was inducted, trained as an officer to interrogate German prisoners, shipped overseas and fought his way across Europe over 4 long years. He was highly decorated with a bronze star medallion for bravery in action. After the war he was offered military commissions that attested to his leadership and talents as an officer. He refused and quietly returned to his family and civilian life in America.
Please ask this lady to explain what she plans to say to her children when they ask what she did when Iran announced to the world, as Hitler did before him, that he would destroy the State of Israel and every Jew within it.
Thank you for sounding the bell. It is 1938 and America is sleeping.
Respectfully,

Bob Zinner.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmmm. Don't know why you sent this, as the comment from the "American" doesn't say much...

Like you, I would never vote for a "a pro-Islamic, soft on terror, ultra peace-now liberal to head the free world." Barack Obama is none of those things. I think you must be reading only anti-Obama false propaganda. I am excited to vote for Obama, and believe he'll be a good president (how did you feel about Bill Clinton? Most of us American Jews liked and voted for him, too.)

McCain, unfortunately, frequently lies and misleads, despite billing his campaign as the "straight talk" express. For example, McCain has repeated over and over that Obama supported "comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners." Well, yeah... the curriculum teaches them to not go with strangers, and other things to try to protect them from being molested by sexual predators... exactly what I do teach my own kindergartener. Yes, you can call that "sex education," but McCain intentionally misleads people into thinking Obama supported teaching them about sexual intercourse, or condoms... completely a lie! If Obama is so scary, you'd think the McCain campaign would find true things to scare us with, instead of having to resort to grossly misleading accusations.

Obama, on the other hand, does not lie about McCain.

I hope you will read Obama's two books, or his website, to get a better picture. I'm sure the sig. majority of American Jews will vote for him, as we have always voted Democratic by at least 60%, usually more, and it's not because we are ignorant! We vote in ways we consider consistent with Jewish values, and in our own best interests, including the safety of Israel.

-Rabbi Janice Garfunkel
Springfield, OH

PS - I do enjoy getting your emails.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naomi,

I have great respect for you as an author and have enjoyed being enlightened by many of your emails but you have been a citizen of Israel for many years and really don’t know the politics of the US. I am a liberal Jewish democrat who attends every rally, including yesterday’s, against the UN, against Jew bashing, in support of Israel and on and on. I am beginning to resent much of what you have to say about who I should vote for if I love Israel. My love for Israel can be questioned by no one. However, I believe strongly in woman’s choice, the right of women to work and be paid like men, the preservation of animals so that the endangered species don’t die off (wolves for example). I am not crazy about Obama but there is no way I can vote for another 4 years of the Bush agenda and that is what McCain represents. You seem to base much of your characterizations of Obama on blog myths. No one who is elected president of the US is going to abandon support of Israel. If you think the Bush government has been good for Israel and for the US you are really mistaken. He sent Condoleezza to Israel to work on divisions between Jews and Palestians including the division of Jerusalem. He has sent our economy into the gutter and that affects Israel and the world. McCain will be more of the same. Plus he is an older man (I myself am 71) who has not got a good health history and the thought of Sarah Palin heading the government of my country sends chills up and down my spine. She is ignorant of the world around her. Any speech she makes is written very carefully by the neo-cons and she is a quick study so she presents the words as if they were her own. They aren’t.

Please keep writing about Israel, you are one of the sources among many who keep me up to date. But at the same time, please don’t make generalizations about the US political scene. In one of your recent emails you said that there wouldn’t be any “liberal democrats” at the rally. I was there and I am one of those dreaded liberals.

Ethel Schwartz Bock

New York City

The Secret to His Success

2008-09-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

The Secret to His Success

Naomi Ragen

I got a ton of responses to my short e-mail “exchange with a reader.” Since then, I have been pondering long and hard what the reason could be for the enthusiastic, nay, evangelistic Jewish cheerleaders for Barack Hussein Obama, despite the many, many red flags that have gone up ever since he decided to run for President of the United States of America. One e-mail, in particular, opened my eyes to what could be the underlying reason. He wrote:

“You may think you are right but if McCain and Palin get elected, the U.S. will continue to go down hill, and if this country gets in worse shape financially this country will eventually blame the Jews …..”

Hmm. I never considered that. Could it be that the Jews of America are really not as comfortable there as they pretend to be? Could it be that the Reverend Wright, that home-grown anti-Semite who went to Libya to meet terrorist Qaddafi, and who gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for “leadership, ” being a heartbeat away from the Democratic nominee for President has scared the Jews of America out of their wits?

Could it be that these Jews are so incredibly grateful to Barack Obama for disassociating himself after 20 years with this anti-Semitic message and so terrified of losing his support, pushing him and his golden oratory back into the arms of people like Wright, that they are hell-bent on currying his favor and showing they are “good Jews?” (Caveat: it Obama’s throwing Wright under the bus is clearly a blatant attempt to improve his chances at gaining the Jewish vote --Farrakhan himself said on Nightline that he “admired“ Obama and understood if he needed to disassociate himself temporarily in order to win the Presidency).

Are Jews now beginning to feel the solid ground of the American haven that has sheltered them shaking beneath their feet? Is that the reason that they have listened to the golden-voiced Obama, who is really nothing more than an evangelical preacher, saying: “ Who are you going to believe, your eyes or me?” and dismissed their own vision? Are they truly so enraptured that they are willing to place all their hopes in this unknown with a very hazy past, to protect them from the Ahmadinejads, to “negotiate” for them their way out of the hellhole being dug out for them by the Muslims, and the European Union, and the U.N. and homegrown Black Antisemitism, and anti-Zionist Peace-Nowers-J-Streeters- let’s-blame-Israel-for-daring-to-existers, the Israel- should- give- up -and -give in-ers? Can it be that some American Jews are ashamed to be Israel supporters, and feel they will be safer if they side against their own people and by supporting a clearly, blatantly anti-Israel candidate they are fulfilling that need? Or is it that Obama is not so much a mesmerizing speaker, as he is a person with a message that is music to Jewish American ears; the foolish idea that they don’t have to take sides in this election. That they can be pro-Israel and elect a candidate that says his is also pro-Israel, despite so much evidence to the contrary, including a belief in “diplomacy” i.e. pushing Israel into suicidal concessions to placate enemies like Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, and Hamas? He represents a way out of ancient Jew-hatred, a way thousands of generations of Jews hadn’t thought of? Is that the secret to his success among Jews in America?

Who are you going to believe? Your eyes, or Barack Hussein Obama?

Millions for Radicalizing Kids: The Real Obama

2008-09-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

From the Wall Street Journal.opinion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

* SEPTEMBER 23, 2008

Obama and Ayers
Pushed Radicalism
On Schools
By STANLEY KURTZ

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
[Obama and Ayers] AP

Bill Ayers.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.

Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Your Abortion or Your Life

2008-09-24T02:37:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Just a word of reason: I also don't want the U.S. to go back to the bad old days of backroom abortions. But even if Roe vs. Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court, that would not stop individual states from allowing abortions. There is no way a woman won't be able to get an abortion in New York or California. So I don't think this is a real campaign issue, or fear. Nuclear Iran is. Please keep things in perspective, as Caroline Glick points out in her well-written article which follows.

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Our World: Your abortions or your lives!

Sep. 22, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.

Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US.
And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.

After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.

PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.

From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people.
She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women.
Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats - and Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations.
Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Obama: What Do You Really Know About Him?

2008-09-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

From http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/the_man_who_never_was.html

September 24, 2008

The Man Who Never Was

By Tony Blankley

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.

Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."

I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.

To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater -- all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.
More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."

That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/the_man_who_never_was.html at September 24, 2008 - 12:56:30 AM PDT

Obama and Harvard

2008-09-23T05:27:00.000-07:00

Why Obama is mum about Harvard
Exclusive: Jack Cashill offers reason Barack, Michelle don't talk about editor post

Posted: September 11, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Jack Cashill

On the surface, at least, Barack Obama's single most impressive accomplishment has been his 1990 election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.

This position also provided Obama his only real executive experience as he supervised the law review's staff of 80 editors.

One has to wonder, then, why neither he nor wife Michelle emphasized this singular honor during the up-by-the-bootstraps biographical sections of their respective speeches in Denver.

In fact, neither of them so much as mentioned Obama's time at Harvard, this despite his vulnerability on the executive experience charge.

Their silence likely derives from one verifiable fact: Obama's record at Harvard was no more authentic than John Kerry's record in Vietnam.

Kerry was justifiably swift-boated because he fraudulently positioned himself as a war hero. Obama seems to have learned from Kerry.

In the age of the Internet, the less said about a dubious credential the better, and Obama's law presidency credential is dubious on any number of levels.

(Column continues below)

For starters, Obama did not do nearly well enough at his previous stop, Columbia University, to justify admission to Harvard Law.

According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors.

In the age of affirmative action and grade inflation, a minority in a relatively easy major like political science had to under-perform dramatically to avoid minimal honors. Obama apparently did just that.

The specifics we may never know. As the New York Times concedes, 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."

Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!

There are any number of possible reasons for Obama's reticence about Columbia: his grades, the courses he took, his writing samples and, of course, his associations.

At that time, for instance, both Bill Ayers and Obama fell within the orbit of left-wing Columbia superstar Edward Said. Just recently out of hiding, Ayers was attending the Bank Street College of Education, which adjoins the Columbia campus.

Five years after leaving Columbia, Obama decided on law school. His lack of resources did not deter him from thinking big. Nor did his B-minus effort at his Hawaii prep school or his equally indifferent grades at Columbia.

As Obama relates in "Dreams From My Father," he limited his choices to only three law schools – "Harvard, Yale, Stanford." (It must be nice to be Obama.) He does not mention his connections.

Harvard Law School is notoriously difficult to get into. Annually, some 7,000 applications apply for some 500 seats. Applicant LSAT scores generally chart in the 98 to 99 percentile range, and GPAs average between 3.80 and 3.95.

If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission, we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets.

We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard.

As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf.

An orthodox Muslim, al-Mansour has not met the crackpot anti-Semitic theory he could not embrace. As for bin Talal, in October 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent his $10 million relief check back un-cashed after the Saudi billionaire blamed 9/11 on America.

For an insight into the Khalid al-Mansour connection, see see this video.

These are not connections that Obama would like to see broadcast, which further explains his shyness about the Harvard experience.

There is more. Obama did not make the Harvard Law Review (HLR) the old-fashioned way, the way HLR's first black editor, Charles Houston, did 70 years prior.

To Obama's good fortune, the HLR had replaced a meritocracy in which editors were elected based on grades – the president being the student with the highest academic rank – with one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition.

This competition, the New York Times reported in 1990, was "meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review."

It did just that. At the end of his first year, Obama was named, along with 40 or so of his classmates, an editor of the HLR.

Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.

In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any limits on abortion, citing the government's interest in "preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair."

Obama's timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency of the HLR, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.

Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.

This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.

Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African-American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.

"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported, "sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."

In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all-day affair, Obama's fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR's small conservative faction threw him its support.

Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. 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."

One more thing: The 1990 Times article about Obama's election notes that the president of the HLR usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice.

Not the Mansourian Candidate. Here, oddly, his ambition deserted him. He told the Times that he planned "to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing."

In this unlikely surrender to Chicago politics, the realist sees insecurity at best and, at worst, the quid for al-Mansour's quo.

Jews: The Democratic Party is not Your Religion

2008-09-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/09/21/open-letter-to-my-fellow-jews-the-democratic-party-is-not-your-religion-or-anybodys/

- Roger L. Simon - http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon -
Open Letter to My Fellow Jews: The Democratic Party is not your religion (or anybody’s)
September 21, 2008 - by Roger L Simon
From the days of FDR, the vast majority of American Jews have identified with the Democratic Party almost if it were their religion. This included most especially secular Jews like me whose blasé attitude toward their faith and toward religious observance in general made such a replacement all the more important emotionally. This same Jewish majority also identified with the cause of social justice and, as Barack Obama among many others has noted, were some of the most active participants in the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. That was all how it should have been and was a perfectly logical and praiseworthy epoch in the development of our country.
Hello – those days are over! The events leading up to Monday’s anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration by Jewish organizations at the UN put the final nail in an already long-moldering coffin. Jews should no longer align themselves with the Democratic Party any more than they should align with the Republicans. They should act and think for themselves, devoid of ideological or partisan bias. They should first be Americans, not Democratic Party Americans.
The reasons for this are many, but paramount among them is that being hostage to one political party is tantamount to giving up your freedom and relinquishing your ability to confront reality and act in your own interest, not to mention the interest of others. Many Jewish Americans still do this for reasons that are at best sentimental and nostalgic, and at worst self-destructive. But a tipping point may be approaching. The virtual night of the long knives played out between the Democratic Party and various Jewish organizations surrounding the Iran demonstration, including allegations that party operatives were threatening the loss of tax exempt status over Sarah Palin’s appearance, with more unpleasant revelations undoubtedly to come, is obviously causing people to reconsider this allegiance to the Democratic Party that approaches fealty.
I urge my fellow Jews to keep thinking about this and not to retreat into the cocoon-like safety of an outmoded tradition. Change is difficult. But remember that Hillary Clinton – that paragon of the Democratic Party, a woman who calls herself a “progressive” (oh, desecration of the English language!) – was willing to forego the protest of the man who is arguably the most significant enemy of the Jews since Hitler for partisan and (most likely) personal pique reasons. How morally repellent is that!
And then Joseph Biden told us he was busy–too busy to protest a nuclear-armed madman who fervently believes that his mysterious Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) is destined to unite a chaotic globe under Allah. (And don’t tell me that evangelicals believe similar things. If you think there is an equation between evangelicals and Khomeinist Islamists, you need a cold bath.)
No, those Democrats thought of themselves and their party first, the citizens of this country and the world later. When Republicans behave in a similar reprehensible manner, we should condemn them with all ferocity. But fellow Jews, stop being slaves to the Democratic Party. End this illicit love affair – not just for your own good, but for the good of humanity.
________________________________________
Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/09/21/open-letter-to-my-fellow-jews-the-democratic-party-is-not-your-religion-or-anybodys/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2008 Roger L. Simon. All rights reserved.

________________________________________
Looking for simple solutions to your real-life fin

Obama send grandkids to convince grandparents to vote for him

2008-09-23T05:18:00.000-07:00

Friends,

I'd appreciate hearing from my many readers in Florida about this. Note the condescending tone of the grandchild sent to
talk his doddering old grandmother into voting for Obama.

________________________________________

Off on the Great Schlep
Jewish grandkids get an earful in Florida as they try to woo relatives toward Obama. Joel Stein/Opinion/ Los Angeles Times

September 19, 2008

FORT LAUDERDALE , FLA. ˜ If you need proof that this is the most important election in a generation, get this: Jewish grandkids are flying to Florida to visit their grandparents -- without being guilted into it - without being guilted into it -- to talk their elders out of voting for John McCain.

The Jewish Council for Education and Research -- a new pro-Obama political action committee -- is organizing "The Great Schlep," in which hundreds of Jews will make the Southern exodus on Columbus Day weekend, Oct. 10-13. They will travel to the Fort Lauderdale area, where they will visit their grandparents, organize political salons in their condos and eat incredibly bad food. The grandkids also will meet up at a bar one night, which -- if the psychological impact of spending a few days with frail, elderly, widowed relatives is taken fully into account -- may do more to repopulate the world's Jews than the creation of Israel.

More than hockey moms or gun-toting God lovers, old Floridian Jews are the most important demographic in this election. They make up about 5% of the voters in a swing state with 27 electoral college votes. They never miss so much as a condo board vote and are normally reliable Democrats.

Barack Obama's trouble winning over older Jewish voters has been difficult for pollsters to explain, so I came here this week to visit my grandmother, Mama Ann, and find out what the hang-up is. After a long discussion about policy, I asked her if the reason she was leaning toward voting for McCain was because Obama is black. She assured me that it was not. Though during dinner, she did casually mention that her grandfather used to express a superstition that if you ate marrow, you'd date a black man. I had no idea that for so many generations, Jews have hated marrow.

Mama Ann thought the three days of the Great Schlep would be very effective. "Oh boy, the grandparents will start cooking three days ahead," she said, making me worry that many Schleppers won't last through three days of canned pineapple and dry chicken. "If they see their grandchildren, they'll go along. They just need more assurance on Israel ." Israel , Mama Ann explained, is the key issue her condo friends vote on. When McCain sings about bombing Iran , he is singing a sweet serenade to Florida 's elec toral collegians.

To persuade Mama Ann to vote for Obama, I used many of the talking points suggested to me by Great Schlep organizer Mik Moore. These included the fact that Obama went to Columbia and Harvard, and McCain got bad grades in college; that Obama has been criticized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and that Obama ran the business side of his campaign better than any other candidate. I did not know that I could be so racially offended by my own people.

After convincing Mama Ann not to vote for McCain, I then had to persuade her not to write in Hillary Clinton, who the old Jews here love for her feisty, scrappy Estelle Getty-ness.

Feeling confident, I headed down to the condo Hadassah meeting, where I asked some people who they were voting for. A few had Obama buttons in Hebrew. One wanted to tell me how Lyndon Johnson helped the Jews more than people know. Seven wanted to set me up wit h their granddaughters despite the fact that I was wearing my wedding ring.

But many more were sure Obama was Muslim and that extremist Arabs "had his ear." I strongly urge Obama to take one day off campaigning and go to a courthouse to legally change his middle name from "Hussein" to "Seriously, People, I'm Not a Muslim."

Having tackled the Hadassah meeting, I drove over to Palm Beach with Mama Ann to talk to her first cousin, Rochelle Bramsen. When Rochelle's daughter and son-in-law, whom she lives with, argued for Obama, she bristled. I joined in, and asked -- as suggested by the talking points -- if she inaccurately thought Obama was a Muslim. Both Aunt Rochelle and Mama Ann said yes, they thought he was. When we all tired of arguing about that, I asked if it would be such a big deal if Obama were a Muslim. This was, I quickly realized, not on the list of recommended talking points for good reason.

"For me, personally, that would be an issue," said Rochelle. Thinking we'd trapped her in a rhetorical corner, her kids and I asked why Muslims in office would be worse than Christians. To which Rochelle deftly responded, "Who says I'm OK with Christians?"

Rochelle was also upset that Obama didn't wear an American flag lapel pin at first. I asked Rochelle if she wore a flag pin. "No, but I expect more from our leaders," she said. I am pretty sure Rochelle just doesn't trust anyone who doesn't wear at least some jewelry.

Still, by the end of our discussion, Rochelle seemed to have joined Mama Ann as an Obama supporter. But there's a fair chance that by Columbus Day, both Mama Ann and Aunt Rochelle will have forgotten that.

So it's important that other grandchildren -- hopefully some who are vaguely my age and shape -- fly down here for the Great Schlep salons. Ev en if they fail, they won't be sorry: I saw a movie for $3.50, had dinner for $10 and was treated like whatever the Jewish equivalent of a saint is by everyone in the condo complex just for stopping by. I say we do this every Columbus Day. Next year, hopefully, we'll be hanging poolside with retiree John McCain.
Jerry Balash

History of the Buchanan Smear

2008-09-22T13:36:00.001-07:00

Friends,

I'm getting so many e-mails repeating the Democratic party smear that Gov. PALIN
was a supporter of Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan. This was started by Moveon.org, the organization founded by notorious anti-Israel, JEWISH self-hater George Soros, who has used his gazillions to destroy the Jewish state and to support anti-Israel candidates. Below, some facts.

The statement
MoveOn.org
"(Palin) supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."

MoveOn.org on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 in an e-mail.
Palin wasn't in Buchanan's Brigade
False

Gov. Sarah Palin's conservative credentials have excited the GOP base, and perhaps in equal fashion have ignited the passions of liberals.

Palin remained Topic A during the Republican National Convention and her resume has been picked over by friends and foes alike. In the foe category would be MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group, which on Sept. 2 sent an e-mail to an estimated 3.2-million supporters, offering their views of Palin's flaws as a public official.

One item caught our attention. The e-mail said Palin, Alaska's governor since 2006, "supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000."

“This is information the American people need to see," the email said. "Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family."

In making its allegation, Move.on picked up on a charge made by others, most notably Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., a longtime Barack Obama supporter. The charge relies on a single Associated Press story from July 1999 about Buchanan's campaign stop in tiny Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor at the time. The article described Palin as "among those sporting Buchanan buttons."

We won't delve into the question of whether Buchanan really is a "right-wing extremist." Those are the kinds of judgments voters can make for themselves. But the allegation that Palin was a Buchanan supporter might carry some weight, especially among Jewish voters, many of whom consider him to be anti-Israel. Wexler, in his charge, said Buchanan had "a uniquely atrocious record on Israel," and the Anti-Defamation League calls Buchanan a "racist, anti-Semite."

So the question is this: Did Palin support Buchanan in 2000?

No. Shortly after Buchanan's visit to Wasilla, and after the AP story, Palin wrote a letter to her local newspaper making clear that her appearance at the Buchanan event wasn't an endorsement of his candidacy. Published July 26, 1999, the letter said:

"As mayor of Wasilla, I am proud to welcome all presidential candidates to our city. This is true regardless of their party, or the latest odds of their winning. When presidential candidates visit our community, I am always happy to meet them. I'll even put on their button when handed one as a polite gesture of respect.

"Though no reporter interviewed me for the Associated Press article on the recent visit by a presidential candidate (Metro, July 17), the article may have left your readers with the perception that I am endorsing this candidate, as opposed to welcoming his visit to Wasilla. As mayor, I will welcome all the candidates in Wasilla."

Not long after, Wasilla endorsed Steve Forbes' unsuccessful bid for the 2000 GOP nomination.

The one complication is that Buchanan appeared on CNBC's Hardball on Aug. 30 and claimed that Palin and her husband had been supporters during is '96 campaign. "She was a brigadier for me in '96, as was her husband,'' Buchanan said. "She's a terrific gal. She's a rebel reformer." Buchanan called his supporters the Buchanan Brigades.

But on Sept. 3, Buchanan told PolitiFact in St. Paul, Minn., that while he knew Palin attended his rally in Wasilla because of press accounts, he did not know if she actually supported him as a candidate in 2000 or previous campaigns. "I can't confirm anything,'' he said.

Campaign finance reports on CQ Moneyline show she never donated money to Buchanan or Forbes. The McCain campaign is emphatic in refuting the charge.

"Governor Palin has never supported Pat Buchanan," the McCain campaign said on its "Stop the Smears'' Web site, and called on Wexler to retract his comments.

But Wexler spokesman Josh Rogin said that won't happen.

"Buchanan says she was a supporter,'' Rogin said.

Buchanan doesn't say that anymore. We may never be sure of Palin's position in 1996, but if she says she wasn't a Buchanan supporter and Buchanan says he can't prove that she was, we don't have much to go on.

But for our purposes, the question of 2000 is more important because that's what Moveon.org alleges in a widespread e-mail. The letter to the editor that Palin wrote back in 1999 seems pretty clear to us. Even back then she wanted to make it clear that Buchanan wasn't her choice for president in the 2000 race, which leaves us with nowhere to go but False.

The Obama Voter-Not This Jew

2008-09-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

No matter what your religion is this lady sums up all the points that are relevant to this election.

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200809201991/editorial/the-obama-voter-not-this-jew.html

The Obama Voter - Not This Jew

September 20, 2008
by Joan Swirsky
For the most part, American Jews are politically liberal. For decades they have supported leftwing politicians who are antagonists if not outright enemies of Israel. Why does this matter? It matters to me because the Holocaust in which the Nazis wantonly murdered six million Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s has been the defining event of my life - the event against which I measure the political philosophies and actions of both individuals and nations.

I was a baby when that blight on human history took place, but I fully appreciate that if my twin brother and I had been born in Germany during the ghastly Nazi reign, we would have been victims of the unspeakable "experiments" of Dr. Mengele.

It matters to me because the wretched survivors of the Holocaust, against all odds - including ships of refugees that were turned back from our own shores by FDR, only to be returned to the death camps - somehow managed to arrive in their ancient homeland and create one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, whose advanced scientific institutions contribute to research and development of medicines, therapies, technology and cures for the world's devastating horrors

It matters because Israel, the locus of Jewish prayer and survival, is but a sliver of land, not much larger than 8,000 square miles, which is comparable to New Jersey, our 5th-smallest state. This tiny country is populated by six million Jews and one-million Arabs and surrounded by 22 Arab Muslim states with a population of over 300-million - most of them dedicated to Israel's annihilation, the rest sly participants in the charade of a "peace process."

While Israel's Arab minority is accorded full citizenship and education, freedom of speech, congregation, religious autonomy and even participation in Israel's parliament, the Arab nations that surround it - including Jordan and Egypt, which are ostensibly at peace with Israel - afford Jews absolutely no rights and no protection.

Again, why does this matter? It matters to me because, for millennia, "wandering" Jews were deprived of living in their homeland and destined to travel the earth looking for safety and freedom, only to be subjected to - where to begin? - the Crusades, the Inquisition, European pogroms, and the Holocaust. Only America, from its inception a mere 232 years ago, welcomed the Jews, until the State of Israel was born in 1948, becoming the last best hope of a people whose manifest destiny was spelled out to them in the Bible.

Today, there is a worldwide renaissance of anti-Semitism, including on the campuses of our own country, in the ranting of various "religious" leaders, in the literature of some of America's so-called intelligentsia, and, yes, even in the Congress of the United States.

Yet again, why does this matter? It matters to me because unlike the purveyors of Islamic jihad and their brothers and sisters in suicide-bombing, death-adoring ideology, I love life and don't want to see our country succumb to the encroaching horrors of Sharia law (including "honor killings "), Sharia finance (in which money must be donated to Islamic charities, including those that promote Jihad and suicide bombing), or any of the other Islamic-dictated demands that are utterly anathema to and in egregious violation of both U.S. law and the freedoms cherished by all Americans.

It matters to me because while Obama makes the perfunctory and requisite statements of support for America and Israel, his policies - and those who formulate them - would do irreparable harm to both nations.

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he is the most liberal politician in the U.S. Congress, as judged by the non-partisan National Journal and based on the cold hard facts of his far-left voting record.

It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he has zero experience in foreign policy and has never managed or run anything of substance that requires executive experience - not a company, not an agency, not even a senate committee!

It would have been enough to know that Obama makes John Kerry's acrobatic flip-flopping look like child's play.

* He'll pull the troops out of Iraq in 16 months, now he'll "refine" that policy.
* He'll filibuster the FISA bill, but he voted for it.
* He'll campaign with public financing, but he rejected that option.
* He'll renegotiate Nafta, but now he won't.
* He's against gun rights but supported the Supreme Court's Heller decision for gun rights.
* He'll debate Sen. John McCain anywhere, anytime, but he has refused to.
* Iran poses no serious threat, but oops, Iran poses a grave threat.
* He supports an undivided Jerusalem, but 24-hours later said he "misspoke."

It would have been enough to appreciate Obama's sponsorship of the "global poverty" act, which lays the groundwork for the United Nation's draconian tax on America, and also that he fervently supports that cesspool on 2nd Avenue, which for decades has been a consistent purveyor of virulent anti-Semitic bias.

It would have been enough for me to consider Obama's oft-repeated promises to raise taxes to unprecedented heights, open our borders further to the flood of illegal aliens, appoint his socialist cronies to the Supreme Court, reinforce his death-wish for America's unborn babies, institutionalize socialized medicine, and support the anti-free-speech return of the so-called > Fairness Doctrine.

In what Investor's Business Daily calls Obama's "stealth socialism," the Democrat candidate also promises:

* Free college tuition.
* Universal" 401 ks.
* Free job training (even for criminals).
* Wage insurance (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
* Free childcare and universal preschool.
* More subsidized public housing.
* A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
* And [again] the Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

It would have been enough for me to witness - with revulsion, I might add - Obama apologizing to a throng of Germans for America's "mistakes."

It would have been enough to learn that Obama's recent, $500,000 overhaul of his 757 included the removal of the American flag and its replacement with a symbol of his own campaign .

All of this, and much more, would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama. But it is not only his florid narcissism and Marxist policies that offend me.

It is his judgment, particularly when it comes to the people he admires, associates with, looks to for mentoring, and especially listens to.

I happen not to inhabit the politically correct world of liberals who believe that a person cannot be judged by his associations. It is precisely Barack Obama's longtime, continuing, and newfound associations that strike fear into my heart - as they should in the hearts of all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.

LIE DOWN WITH DOGS, WAKE UP WITH FLEAS

But who are those associations that, as an American and especially as a Jew, I am so worried about? Obama's 300-plus foreign policy advisors include high-ranking people who are known for their undisguised contempt of Jews , in general, and their loathing of Israel, in particular:

General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who Sen. Obama once considered a potential V.P., was his campaign co-chairman and top military adviser. When asked by The Oregonian to name the problem preventing peace in the Middle East, McPeak said: "New York City. Miami" - code-names for Jews. Obama refused to remove him from his campaign, but he slunk out anyway.

Samantha Power, a former senior policy advisor to Obama (before she resigned for insulting Hillary Clinton) has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has written of her willingness to "alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]...it may more crucially mean sacrificing...billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine."

Robert Malley, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, left the Obama campaign when it was revealed that he'd been conducting meetings with Hamas. Two years ago, after the terror group won a majority in the Palestinian parliament, Malley advocated international aid to their newly formed government. He stated that the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian "anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat's imprisonment, [and] Israel's incursions..."

Rashid Khalidi, a longtime friend of and fundraiser for Obama, is a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to WorldNetDaily, at a 2003 farewell party for Mr. Khalidi, Obama sat in attendance as a young Palestinian-American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism...and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. Obama has credited Mr. Khalidi with uncovering "my own blind spots and my own biases" regarding the plight of the Palestinians. Obama funneled $75,000 in grants to the Arab American Action Network (run by Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona), a group that calls Israel's independence Al-Nakba (the catastrophe).

Anthony "Tony" Lake, Obama's top foreign policy advisor, served in the Carter ("Israel practices apartheid") administration, notorious for its animus toward Israel. As national security advisor to President Clinton, Lake shaped the policy that treated Islamic terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, which paved the way for the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, and the disaster of September 11, 2001.

Susan Rice, another of Obama's senior foreign policy advisors, was John Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. Kerry's idea for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint not one but two diehard enemies of Israel - James Baker and Jimmy Carter - as negotiators. Faced with a firestorm of criticism, Kerry backed down and blamed his staff, which consisted of Susan Rice.

Madeleine K. Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, lobbied Congress for increased foreign aid to the terrorist Arafat and arranged for him to become the White House's most frequent guest. She consistently touted negotiations, rather than confrontation, with terror regimes.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, has been one of Israel's most consistently hostile critics and Hamas's most ardent supporters, as well as a staunch admirer (both in writing and verbally) of Stephen Walt's and John Mearsheimer's virulently anti-Israel book, "The Israel Lobby," which, among other things, contends that Jewish pressure, and not shared values, binds America and Israel together. Brzezinski's son, Mark, is also among Obama's foreign policy advisors.

Lee Hamilton, a former congressman who served as the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, waxed adoringly of Arafat, calling him a "moderate" leader.

James {"F... the Jews") Baker, Reagan's former Chief of Staff and the first President Bush's Secretary of State (a department whose Arabist tilt is well-known), is among the harshest detractors of Israel, has often engaged in raw anti-Semitic remarks, is known for coddling Middle East dictators (including Syria's Assad), and has been heavily invested (through the Carlyle Group) in the Israel-hating country of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Baker's law firm defended the Saudi Defense Minister who was sued for alleged complicity by the families of the World Trade Center victims.

Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was one of James Baker's "Jew Boys," which included, among others who militated against Israel, Dennis Ross (of the Clinton administration). Kurtzer recently said: "It will be impossible to make progress on serious peace talks without putting the future of Jerusalem on the table."

And this is the short list!

MORE DOGS, MORE FLEAS

I haven't even mentioned the terrorists William Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn, his indicted Chicago crony Tony Rezko, his first and most influential mentor, the Communist Frank Marshall Davis; or Father Michael Pfleger, the liberal Chicago priest and longtime friend of Obama, who delivered an explosive, racially charged sermon at Obama's church, which forced the Democrat candidate to - what else? - dispense with him! You can Google these enemies of America!

Nor have I mentioned the hearty endorsements Obama has received from America-reviling Hamas (from whom he receives money ), Hugo Chavez, Farrakhan, Michael Moore, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, and "Hanoi" Jane Fonda.

Among the other people Obama has chosen to affiliate himself with are:

George Soros, the multibillionaire, self-hating Jew who has devoted a good part of his life to vilifying Israel and funding groups that work unstintingly to destroy the tiny state. With his 527 groups, he has funded people - like Obama - to shatter the bonds between Israel and America.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for over 20 years, has shrieked his Black Theology anti-American and anti-Semitic "sermons," to which the current candidate for president had not a word of objection! Until, that is, Wright's venom came to light and Obama had to dispense with him in the same way he dispensed with the "typical white woman" - his grandmother - who raised him. Wright, remember, is an ardent supporter of Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a "gutter religion" and said Jews are "bloodsuckers".

These are only a smattering of people who, in Obama's "judgment," are worthy of being his mentors and political advisors.

As Ed Lasky of the American Thinker - to whom I am indebted for much of this material - has written: "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates." And, I would add, anti-American advocates!

I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don't hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven't found one yet!

Any voter - whether Democrat, Republican or Independent - should find Obama's far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-of mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.

Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.

If the corrupt ACORN group he so heartily supported in the Chicago machine - where he "made his bones" - doesn't rig the election with the votes of millions of dead people and convicts, as they have so many times in the past. I trust the electorate will do the right thing.

The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.

Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America - which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel - would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.

Who Invited Ahmadinejad to dinner?

2008-09-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

ALLISON HOFFMAN, Jerusalem Post
The head of the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement criticizing Mennonite and Quaker leaders for hosting a dinner reception for Iran’s president in New York later this month.
The dinner, scheduled for September 25, is touted as a dialogue by the pacifist religious groups, which advocate diplomatic engagement with Iran’s political leadership.
It follows a similar meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held at a chapel last year during his annual visit for the opening of the United Nations’ General Assembly.
“Ahmadinejad represents a rejection of everything these religious groups stand for,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said in a statement Wednesday.
“His speech at Columbia University a year ago showed the futility of attempting to dialogue with a dictator who makes crystal clear his antipathy toward the West, who denies the Holocaust, and who defends the Iranian regime’s willful neglect of basic human rights.”
Foxman said the dinner “tarnished” the reputations of the participating religious groups as peace-seekers.
A spokesman for the Akron, Pennsylvania-based Mennonite Central Committee, which is organizing the dinner, said no one was immediately available for comment.
Other groups involved in hosting the dinner - including the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee - either did not immediately return messages left seeking comment or referred questions to the Mennonite organization.
Representatives from a broad range of Christian ecumenical organizations, including the Episcopal Church, plan to attend the dinner.
“Meeting with people does not mean you agree with them,” said Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations in Washington. “The more there is inflammatory language going back and forth, the more we feel there needs to be a way for our two countries to communicate.”
Shea, whose group joined a delegation of Christian religious leaders to Iran in 2007, joined the head of the American Friends Service Committee and the international director of the Mennonite Central Committee in sending a letter last month to the Bush administration, encouraging the State Department to open a US office in Teheran, similar to the one in Havana, Cuba. She said she had not received a response.
She said Foxman did not speak for all of American Jewry on Iran, noting that other Jewish groups support diplomatic engagement.
Yet even the most pro-diplomacy Jewish groups aren’t planning to attend the dinner reception for Ahmedinejad.
“We are not going to sit with him, no,” said Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. “Our position does not endorse unconditional contact and engagement.”
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the UN on September 23.
UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, who sharply rebuked Iran’s UN ambassador for accusing Israel of making threats on Iran and Ahmedinejad’s safety, declined to comment on the dinner plan.
.
The event is touted as a dialogue by the Mennonite Central Committee, World Council of Churches, and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee. Representatives of the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations plan to attend the dinner.
Representatives of the churches previously visited Iran in February of 2007 and hosted a similar event for Ahmadinejad with the National Council of Churches in September of 2007 at the United Methodist Women's' Building in New York.
Also in attendance at this America haters soiree:

The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest from Nicaragua who publicly criticizes the United States's anti-terror war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, who also heads the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights.
Quakers and Mennonites feel a sense of mission to forge peace on a global stage whenever possible. That means being open to long-term dialogue, even with a figure who holds reprehensible views, according to Mark Graham, director of external affairs for the American Friends Service Committee.

"You can't just engage with people with whom you agree on all issues," Graham says. "That leads to a very myopic view of the world. And you miss a lot of opportunities with that approach."
At this point, some pacifists see Ahmadinejad more as an outcast -- at least when he visits the United States -- than a prestigious host or esteemed guest. That leaves them with only one option whenever he extends a dinner invitation.

"At this point in time, there are virtually no other places for the president of the Iran to have discussions with people in the U.S.," Klassen says. "There's an opportunity for discussion, and we don't believe we can just step out and say, `no.' God has given us an opportunity, and it's our responsibility to say `yes."'

July 24, 2008, Jakarta (ENI) Ecumenical News International. An Indonesian religious leader has told a visiting World Council of Churches delegation that Christians in his country are praying for the US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

"We are praying for Obama because we feel he can help reduce the widespread stigma and misperception that Muslims in Indonesia are fundamentalists," said the Rev. Ishak Pule, chairperson of the Christian Church of Central Sulawesi synod.

Pule was speaking on 19 July as he met members of a WCC group known as a Living Letters team during its visit to communities in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, an eight-hour drive from the Central Sulawesi provincial capital of Palu.

"We in the synod actually communicate more easily with Muslims than with Christian fundamentalists," added Pule, who also invited three Muslim leaders to meet the Living Letters team at his Tentena office.

National Council of Churches -
Partial List of Denominational Membership
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
Alliance of Baptists
American Baptist Churches in the USA
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Church of the Brethren
The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America
The Episcopal Church
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Friends United Meeting
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Hungarian Reformed Church in America
International Council of Community Churches
Korean Presbyterian Church in America
Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
Mar Thoma Church
Moravian Church in America Northern Province
and Southern Province
National Baptist Convention of America
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
Orthodox Church in America
Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Polish National Catholic Church of America
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
Reformed Church in America
Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada
The Swedenborgian Church
Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America
United Church of Christ
The United Methodist Church
Their agenda: The NCC wants diplomatic relations with the terrorist-sponsored State of Iran, and, indeed, a delegation from the NCC visited Iran in February 2007. Does your tithe support this cause?

The NCC met with the President of the terrorist-sponsored State of Syria, President Bashar Assad in

The sanctuary of our borders are dismissed by the NCC: "...churches are implementing exciting ministries and are seeking additional support and ideas to enhance their support of neighbors who are sometimes dismissed as 'aliens.

Washington, June 29, 2006 --The National Council of Churches USA and other faith groups applauded remarks Wednesday by Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) testifying to his faith in Christ and calling upon progressive politicians to reach out to evangelical Christians.
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey," Obama told Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2006. "It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith ... The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That, said Obama, is "a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."
An NCC spokesperson said, "The senator speaks a profound truth for all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address."
"Between 2001 and 2005, revenue from member denominations dropped 40%, from $2.9 million to $1.75 million. During the same period, non-denomination revenue rose from $800,000 to $2.9 million, a jump of 362%. And in June of 2005, for the first time, outside giving ($1.76) surpassed denominational giving ($1.75), officially making the National Council of Churches financed more from non-church sources than from the people in the pews they claim to represent. "Several of these [non-church] groups that the NCC has turned to for financial and other forms of support are so blatantly partisan that they can be accurately described as . . . the shadow Democratic Party," the report's main researcher, John Lomperis, told reporters.

http://nccinterfaith.blogspot.com/2007/02/iran-delegation-press-conference.html

U.S. Religious Delegation Finds Hope in Iran
February 25, 2007

As Christian leaders from the United States, we traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries. We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within the global community.

We are a diverse group of Christian leaders from United Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite traditions. The Mennonites have 17 years of on the ground experience in Iran. We were warmly welcomed by the Iranian people, and our time in Iran convinced us that religious leaders from both countries can help pave the way for mutual respect and peaceful relations between our nations.

During our visit we met with Muslim and Christian leaders, government officials, and other Iranian people.

Our final day included a meeting with former President Khatami and current President Ahmadinejad. The meeting with President Ahmadinejad was the first time an American delegation had met in Iran with an Iranian president since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The meeting lasted two-and-a-half hours and covered a range of topics, including the role of religion in transforming conflict, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What the delegation found most encouraging from the meeting with President Ahmadinejad was a clear declaration from him that Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons, as well as a statement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political, not military means. He said, “I have no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some goodwill.”

We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S. – Iranian relations. The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran. We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.

As additional steps in building bridges between our nations, we call upon both the U.S. and Iranian governments to:

* immediately engage in direct, face-to-face talks;
images; and* cease using language that defines the other using “enemy”
religious leaders, members of Parliament/Congress, and civil society.* promote more people-to-people exchanges including

As people of faith, we are committed to working toward these and other confidence building measures, which we hope will move our two nations from the precipice of war to a more just and peaceful relationship."

If you vote for Obama, you invited Ahmadinejad to dinner. If he wins, expect alot more invitations.

Sarah Palin:Cherishing Life

2008-09-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Friends,
I understand 400 Rabbis have signed a pro Obama petition. I also understand, by watching a heartbreaking video of a nurse who testified before Obama about signing into law a bill that would limit what is euphemistically called "late term" abortions (the babies are born, then carried to the morgue and allowed to die) that Senator Obama refused to vote in favor of that law. Jews love life. Even our enemies taunt us with that as a weakness. I believe that women should have a choice over their bodies. Jewish law allows abortion if a fetus endangers a woman's life or her well-being. But there is no question that Jewish law is completely pro-life and allowing a baby born alive to die is against Jewish law in every respect.

One of the 400 Rabbis is (surprise!) reform, from a temple called Sukkat Shalom which prides itself on being "freed from the confines of strict ideological definition of Judaism, open to diversity of members personal lives."

I'm taking a wild guess that this means they embrace intermarriage and gays, and probably abortions. Correct me if I'm wrong. Just the right kind of "Rabbi for Obama."

Sarah Palin, poor thing, doesn't have rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College. But in having her Down's Syndrome baby, she showed her values are very similar to my own Jewish values. I guess I just can't embrace the "diversity" of automatically murdering a fetus which might not be perfect.

I applaud this personal integrity, courage and faith that allowed her to make this choice despite pressure to abort. Below, her words on this subject. They are heartwarming.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Gives Birth to Down Baby Despite Abortion Pressure

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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 22, 2008

Juneau, AK (LifeNews.com) -- As many as 80 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome become victims of abortion, but Alaska Gov, Sarah Palin didn't let her child become a statistic. Palin, who has deeply-felt pro-life views, gave birth to her fifth child this week and the baby was diagnosed with the condition.

On Tuesday, Palin confirmed her baby, named Trig Paxson, has Down syndrome.

"Trig is beautiful and already adored by us," Palin said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained.

"We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives," she said.

'We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed," the 44 year-old governor added.

Trig was born on Friday, one month before his due date, and he weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces.

Pro-life advocates heaped praise on Palin about the news and said she and her family made a courageous decision to keep the baby.

“I can't help but remember Governor Palin’s campaign slogan ‘Take a Stand,'" Debbie Joslin, the president of Eagle Forum Alaska told LifeNews.com.

"Her choice to value life in a very personal way speaks volumes and gives those of us in the pro-life community in Alaska cause to believe that we truly do have a pro-life leader in charge of our state," she said.

"When so many in our culture have chosen to devalue the lives of those who face special learning disabilities, Governor Palin shines as a great positive role model," Joslin added.

Billy Valentine, a pro-life student leader who worked on the presidential campaign of Sam Brownback, was equally excited.

"Thanks be to God that Gov. Palin is pro-life and the baby wasn't one of the 80% of Down syndrome lives that are aborted each year," he said.

"Say a prayer for Gov. Palin and her family and thank God that the baby is blessed with a pro-life family," Valentine added.

The Palins have four other children including Track, 18, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13 and Piper, 7.

Left-wing women: Stop impaling Palin

2008-09-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Left-wing women: Stop impaling Palin
BY S.E. Cupp

Saturday, September 20th 2008, 11:08 AM

Burbank/AP
Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin arriving at the Orlando, Fla. airport on Friday, with son Trig, 5 months, in her arms. Palin has been assailed by women for many of her views.

I have a message for the self-styled guardians of womanhood who have decided that Sarah Palin is public enemy No. 1 - please stop talking. You're embarrassing yourselves and women all over the country.

You are making otherwise thoughtful, careful, intelligent, tolerant and modern American women of every political bent look and sound ridiculous. As a woman myself, I'm begging you to stop. Put the pen down, close out the blog, push the E! microphone away. Your trash-talking is disturbing and humiliating. In fact, it's setting back the true cause of feminism - the advancement of women - far more than your imagined nemesis.

Stop using and abusing Palin to pump up your own overweening egos. You are not the next Sojourner Truth, and Palin is not your next punch line. She's a mother, a governor, a wife and, yes, a real woman, whether you like it or not.

I have been reluctant to point fingers at Barack Obama for being sexist toward Palin. First, because I don't think he has treated her unfairly just because of her gender. Second, because Palin doesn't need to be rescued; she's capable of defending herself.

But the attacks on Palin by so-called feminists cannot be ignored. Many of the same voices who claimed the right-wing was attacking Hillary Clinton just because she was a strong woman are now attacking Palin not for her beliefs, but for her very gender identity.

Comedian Margaret Cho has said that Sarah Palin is "the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11." She also makes it clear that for her, feminists by definition must believe what she believes, writing on her blog, "to call [Palin] a feminist is as laughable as calling evangelicals 'Christians,' " a warm and fuzzy, open-armed double punch that she continues by crassly suggesting she'd also like to have explicit sex with Palin.

In a similar conceit, Sandra Bernhard promised that Palin would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she came to Manhattan. Congratulations, Ms. Cho and Ms. Bernhard. You've officially joined the ranks of male misogynists everywhere.

Pink, the recording artist, flatly declared, "This woman hates women." Rosie O'Donnell haiku-ed, "Women who hunt in high heels gives one pause." Say again? On second thought, please don't.

It's not just blowhard celebs who are in on the act; politicians are taking part, too. South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler had the considerable bad taste to say that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion."

I was beginning to like Hillary Clinton after Obama won the Democratic nomination. Whether it was the droning echoes of her leftover supporters or just something in the air, I grew more and more convinced that she would have made the better candidate for Democrats than Obama, and probably a better running mate pick than Joe Biden. But the 18 million cracks in the ceiling that Hillary made are apparently last month's news - for when Clinton heard that Palin was going to the same Iran protest rally she had planned to attend, Hillary canceled, in a move right out of Tina Fey's "Mean Girls." Oh, the irony.

Could anyone imagine men behaving this badly? Can you picture men like Biden, Howard Dean, Mitt Romney, George Bush or anyone else bickering over whether or not Barack Obama is "man" enough to care about other men? Or whether John McCain is a man who hates men? Or suggesting they'd like to have to sex with one of the candidates?

Could anyone imagine a Democratic woman of stature and accomplishment (Nancy Pelosi or Claire McCaskill, for example) being torn down as a bad woman? The question answers itself.

Sarah Palin is of course fair game for critics - as a politician. Feel free to say what you will about her record and her positions. Feel free to arduously and passionately disagree with her. But to smear her as an embarrassment to women (nearly half the population) is, well, an embarrassment to women.

In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered a now-famous speech to a women's convention in Akron, Ohio. In it, she had the courage and dignity to tell a mostly male and white crowd, "And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

More than 150 years later, American women can hear a loud rumble in the distance. Is it the proud applause for Truth, for Margaret Thatcher, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Margaret Mead, Golda Meir, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Day and Susan B. Anthony ringing through the streets? No, sadly, it's just the sound of Cho, O'Donnell, Bernhard and the rest testing out their megaphones.

Apparently, women like Sarah Palin don't have to worry about being slandered by men. Women are doing it for themselves.

Cupp is author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right," with Brett Jospe

Personal threats and intimidation

2008-09-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

I got the following from someone I assume will be voting in Obama.

After reading your blogs (and practically losing my lunch in the process) you can rest assured this (former) reader of your books will no longer spend a dime on a future novel of yours. Your take on American politics in insulting and without merit. Can't wait to pass along yor ridiculous political comments to the rest of my Book Club members so that they can be just as disappointed in you as I am and I look forward to watching a dip in your Amazon/Borders/Barnes& Noble receipts

I wrote her back: Voting in Obama is the biggest punishment you could give me and my family, so shove your threats.

I hope this will encourage you all to buy my books, if only that this woman can lose her lunch again. Please do this right after you vote for McCain.

Obama's Finance Manager: Penny Pritzker

2008-09-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Penny Pritzker: Obama's Finance Campaign manager

Pritzker is one of the most active of celebrated Chicago patriarch Abraham N. Pritzker's 12 living grandchildren. A Harvard-trained attorney, Pritzker, 46, was chosen by her late uncle Jay to help oversee the family's vast portfolio of investments, including the Hyatt hotel chain and the Marmon Group industrial conglomerate. (Forbes Lists 2005)

One reason Barack Obama might not want to talk about the role of financially irresponsible bank board members in creating the subprime mortgage foreclossure financial disaster is that the national finance chair of Obama's campaign, Penny Pritzker, is a former board member of the failed Superior Bank S&L that engaged in irresponsible subprime mortgage lending during the 1990s.

Apparently Penny was into subprime lending before it became all the rage starting in around 2000. It continues:
Penny Prtizker's chairmanship was apparently "to concentrate on subprimelending, principally on home mortgages, but for a while in subprime auto lending, too," after the Pritzkers' bank acquired its wholesale mortgage organization division, Alliance Funding, in December 1992.

Their bank, Superior, went bust in 2001, costing the government a billion dollars. The Pritzker's came to a settlement in which they agreed to pay less than half of that to the government.

Obama's Jewish Ruse

2008-09-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I read all the support Obama is getting from the Jewish community, I just depair.

What is the matter with you people?

Have you not understood anything about Obama's loyalties from listening to Rev. Wright, who said Louis Farrakhan "epitomizes greatness" as his church handed him an award? Do you not remember who Louis Farrakhan is? He's the man who said:"The real anti-Semites are those who came out of Europe and settled in Palestine, and now they call themselves the true Jews, when in fact, they converted to Judaism," as Farrakhan told Al Jazeera on March 18, 2007. The Farrakhan who said in a Swing magazine interview: "Until Jews apologize for their hand in that ugly slave trade; and until the Jewish rabbis and the Talmudic scholars that made up the Hamitic myth -- that we were the children of Ham, doomed and cursed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water -- apologize, then I have nothing to apologize for." Or as he said in the Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 3/19/95: "German Jews financed Hitler right here in America...International bankers financed Hitler and poor Jews died while big Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust...Little Jews died while big Jews made money. Little Jews [were] being turned into soap while big Jews washed themselves with it. Jews [were] playing violin, Jews [were] playing music, while other Jews [were] marching into the gas chambers..."

The award Obama's church gave Farrakhan lauded his: "depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation." It praised "his integrity and honesty." Wright called him "an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose." As Mr. Cohen wrote in the Washington Post: "These are the words of a man who prayed with Obama just before the Illinois senator announced his run for the presidency. Will he pray with him just before his inaugural?"

With the help of certain Jews, the answer is yes.

Yes, Mr. Obama has distanced himself from Wright. Even Mr. Farrakhan understands why. As Farrakhen said on ABC's Nightline: "I like him [Obama] very much. ...He has a fresh approach...If avoiding me would help him to become president, I'd be glad to stay in the background."

Below, information about Obama's ties to Palestinians before he figured out he needed the Jewish vote in Florida.

My fellow Jews, maybe your vote for Obama will mean the difference between a win or a lose in this, and other, key states. I understand you can't move to Israel, but you can vote in a U.S. President who cares about Israelis, and did not align himself with anti-Semites over the last 20 years. What is it you don't understand about Obama's new found love for Jews and support for Israel? Are you REALLY that naive? Or brainwashed by the NY Times, that Israel-bashing piece of Leftist propaganda masquerading as a newspaper? And I'll tell you something else - don't think he is the best choice for you, and that you are doing yourself a favor. Maybe this is the way G-d intends to get all you American Jews to move to Israel, by having Obama and his friends take over America. You'll get "change" all right. Maybe the Jews won't like it though. Maybe they'll be forced to relocate.

Below, some facts, and some photos.

Naomi

Monday, March 05, 2007
Obama's Jews Ruse

Obama's sudden support for Israel seemed somewhat suspect and expedient. Looks to me like Obama wants to use the Jews to get elected, and then what? Steadfast support for Israel? I think not.

Barack Obama, D-Illinois, delivered a very pro-Israel address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of Chicago at the end of last week. "Our job is to rebuild the road to real peace and lasting security throughout the region," Obama said. "Our job is to do more than lay out another road map. That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: Our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point."

But now comes a very interesting blog entry by the pro-Palestinian blogger Ali Abunimah at The Electronic Intifadah, who alleges that Obama has moved to stridently pro-Israel position as his national aspirations developed. "The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood," Abunimah writes. "He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. "As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough pri'mary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.' He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, 'Keep up the good work!"

As the various Democratic rivals compete for Jewish support, big pro-Israel donors ought to see this. A strawman for Israel is the last thing the free world needs in the fight against the global jihad.

Barackobama483

HOW OBAMA LEARNED TO LOVE ISRAEL The Electronic Intifada

[...]

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
[...]

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Read it all
Photo: From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah)

Posted by Pamela Geller on Monday, March 05, 2007 at 09:41 AM in Jewicidal Jews, Dhimmi, Leftard and Democrat, Muslim in the White House?, Taqiya:Deception to advance Islam, White House 2008: PICKING THE CANDIDATES | Permalink

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Eve Ensler's Meshugah Monologue

2008-09-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

The Monologue from the Vagina (it certainly didn't pass through Eve Ensler's brain)

The e-mail currently circulating from Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues (which, by the way, I found nauseating in the extreme) is the stupidest thing I’ve read so far about Sarah Palin. Maybe the stupidest thing I've read, period. Not believing in evolution=not believing in positive change? Those who believe G-d created the universe are evil? Feminism = saving the earth? Maybe feminism means making choices as a woman – like having a Down’s Syndrome baby instead of doing the trendy Leftist thing and aborting it, or encouraging your teenage daughter not to abort her baby and dealing with the consequences, even if it makes you look bad during a Presidential campaign. Maybe it means having a family, raising five kids, and trying to make your little town a little better, and then your State, which is exactly what Sarah Palin has done. How many kids has Eve raised?

I met Eve Ensler. I thought perhaps, just from that brief encounter, she might be-- this was my initial impression-- a psycho. This letter confirms it.

There is no such word as incested. And if Eve is voting for Obama, it’s one more reason to vote for McCain.

But that’s just my opinion as a feminist.

Naomi

This is from Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

Eve Ensler

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

2008-09-15T23:54:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Sarah Palin doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is? Guess what - neither does Charlie Gibson! Below, the man who first used the term explains.

==========================

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

By Charles Krauthammer

Saturday, September 13, 2008; Page A17

"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "

-- New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush Doctrine.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Let's Keep this Discourse Civil

2008-09-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Civility, not Civil War

I was wandering through blogland today to peruse some of what is being said out there, and watching some youtube videos of the various candidates.
I hate how bitter and vicious this discourse among Americans has become. I admit, I too have felt heatedly about these subjects, and I haven't always expressed my opinions in the most moderate way. You know what? I regret that. I think we should be able to disagree without wishing our opponents harm and calumny.

And so, in the name of civilized discourse, let me say the following.
Both candidates are talented men. Barack Obama is a wonderful, inspirational speaker, and I really believe he has a great deal to contribute to the world,and to America. But I don't think the job of President of the United States is the way for him to express his talents. It's a job that requires one to be steadfast. There isn't room for enormous creativity, given the wolves and jackals at America's door. As we in Israel have learned the hard way, "creative" ways of dealing with your enemies (siging peace agreements, and giving them guns) can unleash hell on earth. Remember Shimon Pere's "New Middle East"? It ushered in years of our children's blood staining our streets, and even now, years later, the first responders- policemen and medics- are still waking up at night with traumas from their experiences.

America has had its warning call in 9\11. It has managed with steadfast and boring consistency to prevent other attacks. While Barack Obama's heart might be in the right place, he is inexperienced. International politics, and the position of leader of the free world, is not for the faint-hearted creative souls of this world. It's for experienced politicians and warriors who know what it means to sacrifice all to keep your people safe.

Yes, I would have preferred a younger candidate than McCain. He is not a charismatic speaker, often mumbles and doesn't hold a candle to Obama's golden voice or his powers of persuasion. Nevertheless, given the circumstances, McCain is still the best candidate for the office of president. He won't bring huge, creative surprises. Neither will he let us down. I also believe he wants the best for his country, and really feels this is his way of serving what he loves. I'm not so sure about Obama. He spent the first term in the Illinois Senate plotting his way into the U.S. Senate. He spent his years in the U.S. Senate plotting his way to the Presidency. In the meantime, he has had many ideas, but few accomplishments, which is why his campaign is often so negative.

Sarah Palin is not a sophisticate. She didn't know what the Bush Doctrine meant. But you know what? If someone asked me, I wouldn't have known either unless you explained the term. She is pro-life, which is a good thing. But I don't think we should allow women who want abortions to be sent to back-room butchers like in the bad old days. Fortunately, she as V.P. won't be in a position to change the current laws, nor will she be able to prevent schools from preaching Darwinism. By the way, I happen to think G-d did create the world, not the big bang (they tried the big bang theory this week in a Swiss lab. Guess what? Big thud.) Senator Biden is a decent man, with a great deal of experience in foreign relations. But I think Ms. Palin is a fast learner who will be up to speed in no time. The important thing is that she cares about her country enough to have sent her son to defend it. She has succeeded in everything she's done. I believe she will make a wonderful V.P. Someone we will all be proud of. Considering the men who have held this post in the past (Dan Quayle and Richard Nixon's bribe -taking V.P. Spiro Agnew)she is a marvelous choice, who will do us all proud.

Here, you see? A whole column with no name -calling, just a reasonable expression of opinions. I just wish we could all keep our opinions civil, and stick to the real issues. I, for my part, will try.

Obamanomics

2008-09-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

Seeing through Obamanomics

By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist / September 14, 2008

ALL THROUGH the spring and summer, opinion polls tracked a growing confidence that Barack Obama could handle the economy better than John McCain. Just before the Democratic convention in August, Gallup had Obama leading McCain on the economy, 54-38 - a 16-point margin. But now Obama's lead has nearly vanished. Gallup's latest numbers show the candidates nearly tied. Just 48 percent say Obama would be more adept at superintending the economy; 45 percent choose McCain.

Looks like voters have started paying attention to Obama's economics.

On Sept. 8, Fox News broadcast an interview between Obama and Bill O'Reilly that focused on taxation and the economy. Obama repeated his pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on the tiny fraction who earn more than $250,000.

"That's class warfare," O'Reilly objected. "You're taking the wealthy in America, the big earners . . . you're taking money away from them and you're giving it to people who don't. That's called income redistribution. It's a socialist tenet. Come on, you know that."

"Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill," Obama replied. "Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax." He acknowledged that he doesn't enjoy paying taxes either - "you think I like writing the check?" - but that "there are certain things we've got to do." His tax proposal, he explained, was a matter of civility:

"If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, I'm going to pay a little bit more? That's neighborliness." If that is Obama's rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it's no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude.

"Neighborliness." Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoined the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't is not usually spoken of as neighborly. If Citizen Obama, "sitting pretty," reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip.

Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

Perhaps he doesn't. Eager though he may be to compel "neighborliness" in others, he has not been nearly so avid about demonstrating it himself. Barack and Michelle Obama's tax returns show that from 2000 through 2004, when their adjusted gross income averaged nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year, their annual charitable donations amounted to just $2,154 - less than nine-tenths of 1 percent. Not until he entered the US Senate in 2005 and began to be spoken of as a presidential possibility did the Obamas' "neighborliness" become more evident. (In 2005-2007, they gave 5.5 percent of their income to charity.)

Obama claims his proposal would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans, but well over 43 million tax returns, one-third of all those filed, already reflect an income tax liability of zero. In fact, Obama says, his plan would eliminate income taxes for an additional 10 million taxpayers. What he is really proposing, therefore, is not tax relief but a bald transfer of cash - $1,000 per family, he pledges - from the wealthiest Americans to everyone else. In 1972, George McGovern advocated something similar - a $1,000 "demogrant" for every US citizen. Just last year, Hillary Clinton suggested that the government start off every new baby with a $5,000 savings account. Voters didn't take the bait when McGovern and Clinton offered it. Here's betting they won't take it now.

Why not? Because you don't have to be rich to be skeptical when a candidate argues that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, who already pay 40 percent of federal income taxes, aren't being taxed enough. Nor do you have to be an economist to wonder about the grasp of a nominee who tells 95 percent of the public that they can have something for nothing. Obamanomics may look pretty at first glance. But voters are focusing more closely now, and they can see beyond the lipstick.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Obama and Ayers: Even Hillary isn't buying his explanation.

2008-09-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlnoXZWRjgE

In this debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton they discuss Obama's relationship to William Ayers, the terrorist who bombed the pentagon in the sixties, and who said he "was just sorry he didn't do more." Apparantly, even Hillary doesn't believe Obama's story that he knew Ayers only slightly, and that his relationship with him shouldn't be held against him.

Penetrating Analysis of Obama

2008-09-11T11:30:00.001-07:00

Check out this really penetrating analysis of Obama, and how he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JI03Aa02.html

The Sleaze Factor

2008-09-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

I got this e-mail attacking John McCain which is so beyond the pale disgusting, that I couldn't believe it.

From: IKatzSent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:07 PMTo: nragen@netvision.net.ilSubject: pure sleaze September 10, 2008 PURE SLEAZE.... Last night, Hilzoy tackled the substance of John McCain's latest TV ad -- the one that suggests Obama's support for giving sex-ed lessons to kindergartners -- and explained why it's breathtakingly wrong..... [L]et's not be surprised. McCain is pure sleaze. Sound harsh? Sure. But any other interpretation of the man at this point amounts to willful obliviousness or an embrace of the fantasy that he somehow doesn't know what his campaign is doing in his name. This is the race he's decided to run.....

Now I'm mad. I'm really, really mad. You can say you don't like John McCain because you don't agree with his politics, or he's not a good enough dancer, or he's the wrong color, or age, or (most probably) belongs to the wrong party, but no one, especially no American, should ever, ever call him names, or denigrate him! John McCain is a man of integrity and character who has served his country with honor and never, ever boasts about it. This e-mail calling him a sleaze has crossed every red line.

Dear Obama supporter who wrote this: Do you have any idea who John McCain is? He is war hero that refused to leave prison even though he was seriously injured with broken limbs and he was getting no medical care. His father was the admiral in charge of all U.S. forces in Vietnam and wanted to get him out. But John McCain refused: he said he wasn’t going until all the prisoners that had been in longer than him got out first. For this, the Vietnamese hung him by his broken arm and knocked out all his teeth. They tortured him for days, until finally he agreed to sign some stupid statement. He still refused to go. But he felt so bad about signing the stupid statement under torture, that he said he contemplated suicide. John McCain a sleaze? What have any of you ever done for your country, or your fellow human beings on such a level? What courage have you ever shown, what character? If you want to see a sleazy person, look in the mirror, or a picture of your poster boy, the man who has never done anything for his country but explain how flawed it is, and how he is the one to set her straight. You make me sick! You and every other Obama supporter, and Obama - the "great savior"- himself, Mr. Former Cocaine Taker and “community organizer” brainwashing black kids to hate America and take it for all they can get are not worthy to lick John McCain's boots and while we're at it, Sarah Palin's heels.

Who's the Pig?

2008-09-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning in Jerusalem, and absolutely couldn't believe that Barack Hussein Obama made the lipstick- on- a -pig comment. As a woman, I felt personally offended for Sarah Palin. You may not agree with her, but getting into politics doesn't mean she has to put up with this kind of crap from any man. Sarah, I'd punch him in the nose for you if I could!

But then I thought: What do we really know about this man? He admits in his book to cocaine drug abuse years ago. Maybe he's still using? That would explain the over the top comment. He's going to have to be in much more control if he wants to get away with his attempt to sell himself as a "new" kind of politician. The real Obama keeps getting loose.

On a television show, he made a Freudian slip, talking about his "Muslim faith" and had to be corrected by the interviewer. His claims about his heartfelt desire to care for the poor seem forced considering he couldn't care less that his own half-brother lives in a shack in Kenya. He met Obama once and said that there wasn't much interest there. If the guy had a dollar a day, he'd be able to manage. If Obama doesn't even care about his own family enough to send the guy a dollar a day, what does all his talk about "helping the poor and needy" really amount to?
Charity starts at home. From your own pocket, before you can pick the pocket of the nation to support all your pet "community organizer" causes.

I looked at the web to see if other women reacted as strongly to the pig comment. This is what I found as a response on one blog:

As a life long Democrat have to say that I have been totally embarrassed by our party. And today I 'opened my eyes', and thought about it.
As a Woman, I am so angry that I have wasted so many years working for this party, supporting the candidates, attending rallies, placing signs, sending checks. Our Party has proved once and for all that it is nothing but a Good Old Boy's elite club.
Please, hear me out about why I felt this way.
First, I really do not understand why we, as Democrats, would hire and pay entire groups of people to attend the Republican Convention to shout obscenity's, hold up banners containing misinformation and attempt to totally disrupt and dishonor the opposing candidates acceptance speech over, and over, and over again. What was the purpose?Sadly, I have got to say that I almost never see this occur in our Democratic acceptance speeches by attacking Republicans. In fact, I remember Mr McCain actually having a commercial that said "job well done" during our own convention. However, for years now, I have seen this disruption and dishonor by bad mannered fellow Democrats occur during the Republican speeches, and they are hired to do so. This really truly portrays our party in a very bad light.
Everything that Joe Biden spurts out is either misinformation, disinformation, or sexist anger! How dare he say a "Woman's place should be in the home", and "Palin is obviously sacrificing her family values by running for Vice President. Biden is Washington elitist through and through. Change? Now that's a joke, Biden is as far from change as it is humanly possible to get. Just another Dick Chaney.
To tell the truth, it is very embarrassing for both me, our family, and our many Democratic friends.
Obama, (a once shining star), has even changed, he talks down to everyone. Either his personality has changed, or his true nature is coming out. He's coming across as really arrogant, elitest, and snobby. He talks about being on food stamps while living in Hawaii, but the when I searched it online the Punahu school he attended is the absolute most expensive private elitist school in the State. Something about the food stamps story and the exclusive private elite school really does not make sense to me. And to tell the truth, the statements like, "I am the one the World has been waiting for"....are kind of scary.
Also, the obvious Media slant, spin, and one sided focus towards our Party, and, 'against the republican party' has become so transparent that this too, (is insulting to me), on an ethical and moral basis. ( CNN, TIME magazine). Call me crazy, but I do not feel comfortable in having to 'cheat to win'. Seriously.... Is it just me?,... or does it feel that our once very proud Democratic Party seems to be losing it's sense of honor and values?
I hate to say it, but it makes me feel 'embarrassed to be a Democrat'. I am certainly finding it increasingly difficult to have to explain to my children that although this is unacceptable behavior, it IS the Party WE support?
Who is responsible for these dishonorable attacks, all this misinformation (like the stem cell research), personal attacks on women with children working, Do they not understand that this makes our party look like we have lost our values, of not our minds.? Don't preach to me about Family Values, then lie, deceive, vilify Woman with children for having a career, slander and attack a Woman who knowingly brought a disabled child into this world, AND SAY SHE DOES NOT HAVE COMPASSION FOR OTHER MOTHERS IN THE SAME SITUATION. How dare you Joe Biden! How dare you use a disabled child as an attack weapon! You should be ashamed! Obviously, you and Senator Obama have somewhere along the line lost your compassion, empathy, moral values and ethics. I never thought that we could have a Vice President as bad as Chaney in terms of values, but Mr. Biden, with your comments in the last week, I believe you just surpassed Mr.Chaney.
I have to say that from everything I've read, heard, and researched on Palin, she is one hell of a Woman, "a real person," and not a (slick elitist spin master like yourself). For me she is like "breath of fresh air in American Politics!". And you know what? After reading what she did to the good old boy politicians in Alaska (like yourself), I can't wait to see her clean up the Washington bunch. She will go in their like a tornado and shake up the system. And I believe that John McCain, who has never bought into the good old boy Washington cocktail set, will back her 100%.
Sadly Mr Biden, to win at all costs using unethical behavior to do so, I have to ask the question: Is this really a win for the American people? I don't think so! You know, we should have seen this coming during the Monica Lewinsky situation, where she was just a sex object in the Good Old Boys club.
Am I alone, or are there other Mothers out there in America who finds this behavior of our Party disturbing? What do you tell your young kids?, ... When everyone in society condones cheating, lying, stealing, societies totally collapse....remember that was the reason of the fall of the Roman Empire.
Seeing the attacks the Democratic Party did to Hillary Clinton, and seeing the attacks the Democratic Party has done to Palin really truly opened my eyes!
And I'm sure that Women all over America and the World are witnessing the same thing with amazement! As of today, I no longer will support a party of Women haters, good old boys, and cheaters.
I instead am switching my time, money and energies to getting involved with the Republican party. Yes, it's true that we have quite a bit of differences in opinions and causes,.... but by getting involved, but I know that as a Woman, my voice will be heard, and I will work to change that party for the better.
I know that if I stay with the Democratic party I am just seen as a worthless Woman in a skirt, to be seen and not heard, who is not part of the Elite Boys Club, and their Greek columns and mass California type extravaganza of a convention (which reminded me of the 1938 Olympic spectacle that Adolf Hitler produced to wow the world with.
Women of America....you are wasting your time if your working for the Boy's Club Democratic party! OPEN YOUR EYES! Today I did!And I FEEL GOOD ABOUT THE DECISION!!
As for Sara Palin, YOU GO GIRL!
Sincerely,
S. Chambers

Why Do They Hate Sarah Palin?

2008-09-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering at all the vitriol and pornography about Palin, a decent person, a wife, mother and the most successful and highly rated politician in America. And all the outright lies about Pat Buchanan, and being against stem-cell research, and banning books, and teaching creationism....Every day the Dems knowingly send out these lies. They've got forty researchers in Alaska right now digging up whatever dirt they can. And if they don't hit paydirt, they'll create it. But why? Now radio host Andrew Tallman puts his finger on it! I love Sarah Palin, and I'm not afraid to say it out loud. She's real, and Obama is a phony, and that's why they can't stand her. She doesn't talk about being pro life. She is pro-life, choosing life even in situations we've been brainwashed to think we should get an abortion. Anyone who loves life is a person who can be trusted to save life, and fight the death -lovers and terrorists.

Why do they hate Sarah Palin?
By Andrew Tallman
http://townhall.com/columnists/default.aspx

Preface: There Is a Pathology
The natural first reaction of a Palin-hater to this column is to deny the hatred. They will say it’s her politics, her religion, or possibly the whiff of scandal some have managed to ladle upon her. But if they’re honest with themselves, they’ll have to admit three simple facts.
First, the reasons they give aren’t the reasons they hate. If they didn’t have these, they’d manufacture others. There’s an old story about a man asking to borrow his neighbor’s lawn mower and being told, “No, I’m making potato soup.” “What does that have to do with me borrowing your lawn mower?” the incredulous man replies. “Nothing, but if I don’t want to loan you my lawn mower, one excuse is just as good as another.” Likewise, Governor Palin is not hated because of whatever reasons they offer. These are afterthoughts to an animosity which is embarrassed to admit it was born prior to reason. Hence, refuting them will prove futile.
Second, even those who persist in asserting such reasons as their motive will have to admit that all of them put together still can’t justify the disproportionate vigor of their attacks upon her. To use an aging phrase, this is the politics of personal destruction; a nuclear response to what their own arguments admit is a merely conventional threat.
Third, no one can hate this deeply this quickly. Conservatives generally despise certain political figures such as Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and John Paul Stevens. But it’s taken us years, sometimes decades to detest these people. Similarly for liberals, contempt only begins to describe their feelings toward George W. Bush, Rick Santorum, and Antonin Scalia. But, again, at least such a sentiment has developed over time. It took Sarah Palin less than a week to receive treatment these men have taken years to earn. Such an immediate mauling of someone’s character says far more about the predators than about their prey.
So, what explains this pathology? I have two mutually compatible theories.
Theory 1: The Cult of Personality
Barack Obama is the left’s messiah. Their hopes, their dreams and even their patriotism are at this point invested in him. He cannot be criticized. He cannot be joked about. And he most certainly cannot be mocked. All such response to him (perfectly normal with any other politician) is viewed as blasphemy rather than politics. Not only is the left salvifically invested in him, they secretly fear they have been too rash to the altar call. Calm reflection proves Barack Obama isn’t ready to be president yet, but who can resist the hope beyond hope that he’s more than just a golden voice reading a teleprompter?
So when little Sarah Palin comes along and castigates him with condescending satire, they react as any devastated schoolgirl with a crush would. Her speech stated every major flaw with his candidacy. Not just honestly, but with a Reagenesque comedic flair. And since their deepest fear is that everything she said about him is right, the only option to reconsidering their betrothal was to destroy her.
It’s pretty simple. If we disagree, you correct me. If I am silly, you ignore me. But if I articulate your own fears in attacking something you cherish irrationally, you excoriate me … as cover. As Robert Pirsig explained in his lovely novel on motorcycle maintenance, no one jumps up and down screaming that the sun will rise tomorrow. Highly emotional responses indicate fear and uncertainty, not the opposite.
Sarah Palin’s on-target reductio of Barack Obama turned their messiah into a joke, earning the very predictable treatment a heretic deserves. Disabusing people of a savored fantasy always does.
HER NON-FEMINIST FEMINISM
I used to marvel at the rudeness so often publicly shown to parents with many children. But then I saw how the very existence of such families exposes the guilt and self-doubt others feel about their own decisions to stop having children. The surest way to avoid dealing with these stifled concerns is to assault the character or intelligence of parents who dare to expose them with their large families.
So, too with Sarah Palin and the left. Her very life rebukes them.
She has five children, two of them after the age of 40. When her infant son was diagnosed with Down syndrome, she chose life. And when her own daughter was discovered pregnant, she helped her choose life, too. Without ever saying a word about being pro-life (to say it would have been superfluous), she demolished all the common arguments used in favor of abortion and family planning, totemic doctrines of the left.
But it’s more than just doctrine. It’s that so many people on the left have condoned abortions, helped others obtain abortions, or even had abortions themselves in the very same circumstances under which Sarah Palin chose life. Honest people are an affront to liars. Law-abiders are an affront to criminals. And the woman who has made pro-life “choices” is a stinging affront to modern feminism, which has spent decades trying to convince women that an unwanted pregnancy is like a disease and the unborn child something like a parasite.
They must demonize her because her choices so clearly condemn their own. Make no mistake, when your example disproves someone else’s deeply internalized rationalizations, they will try to destroy you. After all, the only other option would be to repent.
Conclusion
In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche said, “Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men … let nobody doubt that whoever stands that much in need of the cult of surfaces must at some time have reached beneath them with disastrous results.” His critique of religion so perfectly fits probamaism that one is forced to conclude the latter is but a new flavor of the former.
There may be other pathologies at play here, but these explain both the left’s tsunamic response and why it struck last Thursday morning. It was the speech, stupid.

The "Gimme" Patriot: Ask Only What Your Country Can Do For You

2008-09-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

The "Gimme" Patriot: Ask Only What Your Country Can Do For You

By Naomi Ragen

I started thinking the other day why this election is so important to me, and why Obama's candidacy touches me so deeply. It is not just about Israel. It is about America, the wonderful country in which I was born and educated, which is the leader, and last bastion of freedom in a world that is too confused to stand up against the forces joined against human freedom.

Yes, I firmly believe that from the very beginning of his career, Barack Obama has been supported and aligned with forces that are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Yes, I believe that he has surrounded himself with anti-Israel advisors. If these facts have anything to do with his Muslim father and step-father, or his early education in a Muslim school in Indonesia, I don’t know, and frankly I couldn’t care less. There are plenty of anti-Semites with Jewish fathers who grew up in Israel. So his family background or ethnicity doesn’t matter to me.

If I really thought- despite this- Obama was a good choice for America, I wouldn’t hesitate to say so. Because having a strong, freedom-loving leader that is committed to American values as head of the free world , helping America to stand fast against its haters, is more important than anything else.

And no, there is no conflict of interest with my concern for Israel. Because there is no way a person like that could be against the struggling little democracy in the Middle East I live in.

What concerns me is that Senator Obama has not shown that commitment, that love, that strength. Quite the opposite.

What concerns me is that even though he and his wife have benefited from every opportunity America has to offer in their education and employment, they don’t seem grateful.

I was a little girl when John F. Kennedy ran and won the Presidency. I remember his inauguration speech well. He said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Obama keeps asking his country: What have you done for me and mine, now or ever? He is a "gimme" patriot.

Barack Hussein Obama and his wife belonged to a church filled with Black bigots, which damned America, feeling no gratitude at all for all the progress made in civil rights, and the many, many, many white people (predominantly Jews by the way) who were at the forefront of the civil rights movement and affirmative action, all things that allowed the poor son of a twice divorced white woman to get an education at Columbia and Harvard and to rise quickly and without impediment to one of the most powerful positions in America. I have never heard him express any gratitude for that. What I hear is how the country is so terribly flawed and how he and his friends are going to fix it by taking money from rich white folks.

And even then, he won’t be grateful. His grandparents, who took him in, brought him up, and cared for him, when his divorced mother sent him there, he has called : “white folks.”

Americans have had years of brainwashing to convince them not to be proud of what America stands for. The Obamas are a product of that.

Obama and his wife with your vote would like to take over the last bastion of freedom in the world and change it into “something” they would be proud of. I don’t know what that “something” would be. But it’s the same “something” that CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Guardian, would be proud of, and why they are trying so hard to get him elected. These newspapers are ashamed of Israelis who fight back against terror. They blame Israel for Palestinian atrocities. They ignore crimes against Muslim women by Muslim men in the name of multiculturalism. They claim not to understand the word “terrorist” and never use it if they can help it. They think the war in Iraq that freed the world from Saddam Hussein and his missiles was a mistake. They thought the “surge” which has brought victory was a mistake. They think that Islam is a religion of peace. They ignore- or ridicule- real freedom fighters, like Ayaan Hirsin Ali and Brigitte Gabriel. They ignore vast human rights abuses in Muslim countries, and the vast hypocrisy of the U.N. when it comes to human rights, but believe that 9/11 was brought about because America is arrogant, and not sensitive enough to Muslim “concerns.” They think the solution is to open more mosques, and more medrassas run by the Muslim Brotherhood funded by Saudi Arabia. They believe America must take in more illegal immigrants;practice reverse discrimination favoring Blacks and Muslims; and tax to the hilt anyone who works hard and builds up a nest egg in order to subsidize those who don’t work at all.

The Jewish community in America has been a major beneficiary of American values which has allowed it to flourish in freedom without discrimination. They should be more concerned than anyone that the America that has sheltered them is going to be taken over by those who don’t view that as a miraculous and wonderful accomplishment. By those who aren’t grateful. Jews, more than anyone, should be concerned about a leader who is not proud of all America has accomplished, not grateful, and who wants to pick their pockets to achieve unspecified “change.” I fully expect that the part of the American Jewish community who haven’t attended a synagogue for years, don’t know a word of any of the prayers, are all in favor of abortions and intermarriage, and gay marriage, are going to be more afraid of any candidate with ties to Jews for Jesus, than they are of a candidate with ties to Louis Farrakhan and Kadaffi. That was statistically proven in the last election. But this time, it’s not a John Kerry they’ll get. They’ll get exactly what they voted for, even if they haven’t yet figured out it’s the opposite of what they should want for themselves and their children.

Unfortunately, the results of their vote has the power to weaken the dikes guarding our little Middle-Eastern democracy as well, so there will be no place for them to run. If this sounds alarmist, it is. I am alarmed. More than I can say.

THE ELECTION BLOG

2008-09-09T04:23:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Oh, the elections. Oh, the e-mails I'm getting. Hysterical. Angry. There is no way I can answer all of them. The mailing list you've joined at www. naomiragen.com is really devoted to what's going on in Israel. And while I am an American, and I think that the U.S. elections are the most important thing that's going on in Israel, I got some friendly advice from a listmember saying that stories about Palin and Obama isn't what he signed up for. I respect that. I also respect the fact that many of my listmembers are not Americans, and won't be able to vote.

I therefore have come to the conclusion that the best thing is not to keep my mouth shut (sorry Jews for Obama!) but to put some distance between my mailing list and my election information and editorials. Instead of clogging your inbox with voluminous information you may or may not appreciate, I'll give you the choice of coming to see it at this blog. Then it's your choice to read or not. I'll also give you the ability to react and post an opinion, something you can't do on my mailing list. And since I can't answser everyone who writes me, you can talk to each other and hash it out in the best way possible. So, here goes!

Subject: Anti-Palin allegations from Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident Date: Monday, September 8, 2008 Everyone is reading this poison pen letter. Here is the letter with some comments about the points being made. The Kilkenny is like a neighbor I used to have, very nasty, delusional about the facts, and happy to get into the limelight by tearing someone else down, especially someone smarter than her. Kilkenny's address is included. Drop her a few lines of your own if the spirit moves you.

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

1.
I am a resident of Wasilla , Alaska . I have known Sarah since 1992.
Sarah lived in Wasilla since 1964 and so for 28 years Kilkenny did NOT know her. Paliun was elected in 1992.
2.
I also am on a
first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law.
This mother-in-law was a political opponent of Palin - stood un-successfully as a pro-choice Democrat for Mayor after Palin, who opposed her.
3.
I attended more
City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the
residents of the city.
Normal behavior, or obsession or vendetta ?

4.
She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular
girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and
won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because
she is a 'babe'.
You dont make a speech like hers at the Convention, or defeat a 3-term Mayor, just by being a *babe*.
Or get re-elected both to the Council and as Mayor.
Or elected as President of the Alaskan Conference of Mayors.
Or defeat the incumbent Republican Governor in the internal Party primary, or then a Democrat in the general election who is himself a former Governor - all just by being a *babe*.

5.
It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret.
Is that not a very positive recomendation ?
Shows discretion and strength and judgment.

6.
She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just 'puts things out
there' and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.
She offers leadership but knows you also need support. And is ready to move on, if blocked.
7.
Nor has her life-style ever been anything
like that of native Alaskans.
If she is in Alaska since she was 3 months, 44 years ago, when does she become a native ?

8.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running
this small city was turned over to an administrator.
Her role as Mayor, as leader of the Council, was to set policy and then monitor implementation, like the Board of Directors of a Company, not do everything herself.

9.
As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus
in Alaska . Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will
make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she
proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.
Maybe she is not a Socialist and does not believe governent should run business - not even oil ?

10.
While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected
City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from
the library some books that Sarah wanted removed.
Were these books eg lauding Democrats, or attacking Republicans, or perhaps books some might judge as porn ?

11.
As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska 's top
cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure
and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that
an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't
fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper.
The Trooper who [a] tasered his step-son of 10 years, and [b] drove many times while drunk.
Incidentally divorced 5 times.

12.
She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help.
So does she not still have an unprecedented 80% positive poll rating as Governor ? Exactly who feels resentment ?

13.
She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party
leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them.
She exposed the corruption of the Party Chair, and tackled the Attorney-General. That alone would fully explain why the guilty, and their associates, hate her.

14.
Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah.
They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness.
But a man would be admired for being tough and determined !!
Golda Meir got away with the *harmless old woman* act, but she was a Barracuda. You never get to the top without being very tough.
15.
Before she became so powerful, very ugly
stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be madepoint guard on the high school basketball team.

Not a whiff here of detail or evidence - just throw mud and hope it sticks.
16.
CLAIM VS FACT
•“Hockey mom”: true for a few years
•“PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementar school, not since
But Palin was first elected to the Council in 1992, at 28, already a mother of 2, and no doubt had enough to do to handle both family and Council commitments from then on. And she never claimed to she ran the PTA all the time.
17.
“Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has
residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska .
Harry Truman came from LAMAR in SW Missouri with 4,500 people.
And the duties of any Governor are similar.

Anne Kilkenny
annekilkenny@hotmail.com
August 31, 2008
____________________________________________________

From: Tom Gross
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008Subject:
How dare they be working class – and how dare she be a woman?

* The New York Times retracts one Palin story, but other smears continue, as the elitist media try and destroy her candidacy.* Personally, I don't find it funny when New York magazine runs a headline "Levi Johnston and Fat Girlfriend Arrive in St. Paul." Or when The Washington Post's online magazine, Slate, launches a "Name Bristol Palin's Baby" contest.* I don't want to even begin imagining the outcry if The Washington Post had instead compared Barack Obama to an animal.* The snobs on The New York Times editorial page will never forgive Sarah Palin for going to the University of Idaho, or for having a husband who isn't a lawyer or an investment banker, but a member of the United Steelworkers union, who doesn't have a degree, whose mother (who is part Yup'ik) is a former secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and whose grandmother is a member of the Curyung tribe.* America appears to have got over its race problem, but sexism is alive and kicking.

* Taxpayer-funded Canadian TV columnist: Palin looks like a "porn actress."
[This dispatch does not concern the Middle East. A dispatch on Mideast issues will follow tomorrow.]www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000972.html---------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
1. The NY Times retracts one Palin story, but other smears continue (By Tom Gross)
2. Women's organizations celebrate the advancement of women (Two cartoons)
3. "If the Dems want real change, quit nominating lawyers" (By Victor Davis Hanson)
4. "When Barack's berserkers lost the plot" (By Nick Cohen)
5. "The liberal media gangs up on a 17-year-old" (By Tom Gross / Sam Schulman)
6. "What Sarah Palin didn't say" (By Claudia Rosett)
7. "Madam President: Hillary Clinton -v- Sarah Palin in 2012?" (By Tom Gross)
8. "Canadian TV repeats lies even after Daily Kos moves on" (By Tom Gross / Jon Kay)
9. Taxpayer-funded Canadian TV columnist: Palin is a "porn actress"
10. "ABC TV on Obama's parentage: whoops" (by Tom Gross)---------------------------------------------------------------
YOU DON'T HAVE TO SUPPORT PALIN TO BE DISTURBED BY THE SMEARS. I attach an article by myself published in America yesterday. It was also scheduled to be published in leading newspapers in Britain and Canada. However, senior editors at those papers overruled their commissioning editors, saying they would publish it but didn't want to draw their readers' attention to the fact that they too were caught out by the "Palin membership of the Alaska Independence Party" hoax. At least The New York Times, unlike other papers, have to their credit apologized to their readers for being caught out and running that hoax of their front page.I also attach various other blog items and articles of interest on the U.S. elections.-- Tom Gross ---------------------------------------------------------------FULL ARTICLESHOW DARE THEY BE WORKING CLASS - AND HOW DARE SHE BE A WOMAN?The NY Times retracts one Palin story, but other smears continueBy Tom GrossNational Review OnlineSeptember 8, 2008http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MTExYmYyYmQwMjFhNzU1YTE1MmQ3N2E1MmQ1OTI2OTI=New York Times writers are still sneering at Sarah Palin and her family on a daily basis. After all, these snobs will never forgive her for going to the University of Idaho, or for having a husband who isn't a lawyer or an investment banker, but a member of the United Steelworkers union, who doesn't have a degree, whose mother (who is part Yup'ik) is a former secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and whose grandmother is a member of the Curyung tribe.But at least The New York Times has now retracted the outrageous fabrication it printed on the front-page of Tuesday's edition: that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990s.Other papers around the world continue to print this falsehood (in London, The Guardian's front page had a banner headline which read "My fellow Alaskans") and other lies generated by left-wing smear blogs continue to be lapped up by many in the mainstream media.No, Sarah Palin didn't support Pat Buchanan in the 1999-2000 campaign; she was an official on the campaign of Republican presidential contender Steve Forbes.

No, she's not a "porn actress" as one taxpayer-funded Canadian TV columnist called her.
No, her eldest son Track (who is deploying to Iraq this week) didn't join the National Guard because he was a drug addict.No, her daughters Willow and Piper aren't named after witches on TV.No, she's not anti-Semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office, and quietly turned up for services at a newly opened Wasilla synagogue to pay her respects.No, she didn't cut funding for unwed mothers, but increased it by 354 percent (and no, The Washington Post doesn't appear to have corrected its story about this despite being asked to do so).NO, SHE'S NOT A HORSEBut, yes, she did try to cut her own salary by $4,000 a year when she was mayor of Wasilla; and yes, she voted against the $4,000-a-year raise while on the city council.And yes, she (like John McCain) did get it right when she supported the surge in Iraq, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden got it badly wrong.And yes, she did take on the corrupt Republican Party establishment in Alaska, while hardly anyone is asking why Obama failed to ask questions about the notoriously corrupt Democratic Party machine in Chicago, or was happy to take huge donations from the now-jailed crook Tony Rezko.Whatever else happens in this too-close-to call 2008 presidential election, I think we can happily conclude that America has come a long way in getting over its race problem. Thankfully, there has been very little racism directed against Barack Obama by anybody except for people on the absolute fringes.But, as Hillary Clinton came to realize when she was given unfair treatment by the Obama-infatuated media, and as Sarah Palin has seen to a much greater extent in the period of a mere week, clearly the same cannot be said of America's sexist problem.Personally, I don't find it funny when New York magazine runs a headline "Levi Johnston and Fat Girlfriend Arrive in St. Paul." Or when The Washington Post's online magazine, Slate, launches a "Name Bristol Palin's Baby" contest.Richard Cohen, leading columnist at The Washington Post thought it was acceptable (even amusing) to compare Sarah Palin to a horse, and so, judging by many of their online comments, did his readers. I don't want to even begin imagining the outcry if The Washington Post had instead compared Barack Obama (or any other political candidate) to an animal.I'm someone who shares the left's purported views on equal rights, and essentially agrees with them on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and gun control (though firmly disagreeing with them on bigger issues such as the economy, foreign policy, and helping spread democracy abroad). But it is precisely the kind of McCarthyite-style witchhunt we have witnessed in the past week against the Palins by the left's phony feminists and snooty media establishment that makes me - and many others I know - stay well clear of the official left.(Tom Gross is a former Middle East correspondent for London's Sunday Telegraph.)---------------------------------------------------------------TWO CARTOONSWomen's organizations celebrate the advancement of women.Two Palin cartoons here:http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjI5NDE2YTBlZjg1MTI1OTRiNDY3YjllZjAwYWU0ZTg=---------------------------------------------------------------THE PROBLEM WITH LAWYERSTom Gross writes: In this article, historian Victor Davis Hanson points out that the Democratic Party keeps losing presidential elections because they keep nominating lawyers as candidates. Every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections - except Al Gore, who dropped out of law school to run for Congress - has been a lawyer.If the Republicans win this year, it may well be because - like George Bush and Dick Cheney, and Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush - John McCain and Sarah Palin aren't members of the legal culture.As Hanson writes, "The problem is that lawyers usually do not run companies, defend the country, lead people, build things, grow food, or create capital.""If this year Democrats were looking for populist candidates from diverse backgrounds and training who talked and thought differently from those of the past, then why didn't they nominate someone who was not trained in writing legalese?"***The Dems' Legal Eagles: Want real change? Quit nominating lawyers!By Victor Davis HansonThe National ReviewSeptember 5, 2008The 2008 presidential campaign is supposed to be a referendum on "change" - who brings it and who doesn't.Real change, however, hasn't yet proven to mean new politics.The "hope and change" Barack Obama sounds like a traditional Northern liberal who always wants to raise taxes on the upper classes and businesses, expand government services, and provide more state assistance to the middle class and poor."Maverick" John McCain talks like a conventional Western or Southern conservative in favor of spending cuts, across-the-board lower taxes, and smaller government.This year the media seem to think change means race and sex - whether Barack Obama's background of mixed racial ancestry or the gender of Democratic primary candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.It's certainly true that either the next president or next vice president will not be a white male. But does that mean de facto that the country will be run any differently?There is, however, one area where we might have seen real change. The Democrats could have not nominated another lawyer. This may partly explain why former military officer John McCain and working-mom Sarah Palin are polling near even with Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, in a year that otherwise favors the Democrats.A snowmobiling, fishing, and hunting mom of five who was trained as a journalist seems like a breath of fresh air - and accentuates the nontraditional background of former naval officer John McCain. If the Republicans win, it may well be because - like George Bush and Dick Cheney, or Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush - they weren't members of the legal culture.On the Democratic side, Barack Obama got out of Harvard Law School, worked for a firm, offered his legal expertise as a community organizer, and went into politics. Joe Biden graduated from law school and almost immediately ran for office.In the Democratic primary, winner Obama, runner-up Hillary Clinton, and third-place finisher John Edwards were all lawyers. In 2004, both Democratic nominees, John Kerry and Edwards, were lawyers. Al Gore, who ran in 2000, left law school without a degree and went into politics. His running mate, Joe Lieberman, was a Yale-trained lawyer. Mike Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, was a Harvard-trained lawyer and ran with lawyer Lloyd Bentsen.In fact, every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections - except Gore, who dropped out of law school to run for Congress - has been a lawyer.What saved Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 was the presence in the race of third-party conservative candidate Ross Perot - and the image of Clinton as a Southern moderate, which seemed to reassure voters that this particular Yale-trained lawyer was nevertheless not quite another Democratic nominee like Walter Mondale or Dukakis.Of course, there have been Republican nominees and presidents who were lawyers - Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Bob Dole - but recently far less so than the Democrats, as the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes attest.So, what's wrong with the Democratic nominee once again being a lawyer? After all, legal minds are trained to think precisely and evaluate both sides of an issue.The problem is that lawyers usually do not run companies, defend the country, lead people, build things, grow food, or create capital.If this year Democrats were looking for populist candidates from diverse backgrounds and training who talked and thought differently from those of the past, then why didn't they nominate someone who was not trained in writing legalese and working the government legal labyrinth?Instead, they needed different sorts, candidates who might have sounded a little rougher, a little less condescending, and a little more like most voters. Most Americans have never been in - and never want to be in - a courtroom.In the past, law school has not necessarily been considered ideal presidential training. Harry Truman was audacious perhaps because he had tried and failed as a haberdasher. Dwight Eisenhower learned about leadership from his years as a general. George H. W. Bush was a businessman and Ronald Reagan an actor. Even unpopular presidents like Jimmy Carter (farmer) and George W. Bush (businessman) brought different perspectives to the job.Change for Democrats this year was not a new strain of liberal politics or a different race or gender. Instead, they needed to have run candidates who talked, thought, and acted differently from their usual run-of-the-mill sorts.And that meant someone other than the same old, same old legal eagles who appear glib - but so often manage to lose in November.---------------------------------------------------------------MY COLLEAGUES IN THE AMERICAN LIBERAL PRESS HAD LITTLE TO FEAR AT THE START OF THE WEEK...Tom Gross writes: This article was published yesterday in The Observer, which is the Sunday edition of Britain's left-liberal Guardian newspaper. Columnist Nick Cohen writes: "Journalists who believe in women's equality should not spread sexual smears about a candidate, or snigger at her teenage daughter's pregnancy, or declare that a mother with a young family cannot hold down a responsible job for the pragmatic reason that they will look like gross hypocrites if they do..."In Britain, the most snobbish attacks on Margaret Thatcher did not come from aristocrats but from the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who opined that Thatcherism was the 'anarchism of the lower middle classes' and the liberal Jonathan Miller, who deplored her 'odious suburban gentility.'"***When Barack's berserkers lost the plotBy Nick CohenThe Observer (UK)September 7, 2008My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the start of the week. Their charismatic candidate was ahead in virtually every poll. George W Bush was so unpopular that conservatives were scrambling around for reasons not to invite the Republican President to the Republican convention. Democrats had only to maintain their composure and the White House would be theirs. During the 1997 British general election, the late Lord Jenkins said that Tony Blair was like a man walking down a shiny corridor carrying a precious vase. He was the favourite and held his fate in his hands. If he could just reach the end of the hall without a slip, a Labour victory was assured. The same could have been said of the American Democrats last week. But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska.For once, the postmodern theories so many of them were taught at university are a help to the rest of us. As a Christian, conservative anti-abortionist who proved her support for the Iraq War by sending her son to fight in it, Sarah Palin was 'the other' - the threatening alien presence they defined themselves against. They might have soberly examined her reputation as an opponent of political corruption to see if she was truly the reformer she claimed to be. They might have gently mocked her idiotic creationism, while carefully avoiding all discussion of the racist conspiracy theories of Barack Obama's church.But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor's office.On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter's. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.In this, American liberals are no different from the politically committed the world over. David Cameron knew that he would never be Prime Minister until he had killed the urgent hatred of the Conservative party in liberal England. A measure of his success is that hardly anyone now is caught up by the once ubiquitous feeling that no compromise is too great if it stops the Tories regaining power. Hate can sell better than hope.When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did. American liberals forgot that the public did not know her. By the time she spoke at the Republican convention, journalists had so lowered expectations that a run-of-the-mill speech would have been enough to win the evening.As it was, her family appeared on stage without a goitre or a club foot between them, and Palin made a fighting speech that appealed over the heads of reporters to the public we claim to represent. 'I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,' she said as she deftly detached journalists from their readers and viewers. 'I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country.'English leftists made the same mistake of allowing their hatred to override their judgment after the Iraq war. If they had confined themselves to charging Tony Blair with failing to find the weapons of mass destruction he promised were in Iraq, and sending British troops into a quagmire, they might have forced him out. They were so consumed by loathing, however, they insisted that he had lied, which he clearly had not. They set the bar too low and Blair jumped it with ease. 'When a man believes that any stick will do, he at once picks up a boomerang,' said GK Chesterton, and when the politically committed go on a berserker you should listen for the sound of their own principles smacking them in the face.Journalists who believe in women's equality should not spread sexual smears about a candidate, or snigger at her teenage daughter's pregnancy, or declare that a mother with a young family cannot hold down a responsible job for the pragmatic reason that they will look like gross hypocrites if they do. Before Palin, we saw hypocrisy of the right when shock jocks who had spent years denouncing feminism came over all politically correct when Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.In Britain, the most snobbish attacks on Margaret Thatcher did not come from aristocrats but from the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who opined that Thatcherism was the 'anarchism of the lower middle classes' and the liberal Jonathan Miller, who deplored her 'odious suburban gentility'. More recently, George Osborne, of the supposedly compassionate Conservative party, revealed himself to be a playground bully when he derided Gordon Brown for being 'faintly autistic'.In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does. Barack Obama knows it. All last week, he was warning American liberals to stay away from the Palin family. He understands better than his supporters that it is not a politician's enemies who lose elections, but his friends.---------------------------------------------------------------
JOHN EDWARDS HAD A BABY?
The liberal media gangs up on a 17-year-oldBy Tom GrossThe National Review (Media Blog)September 7, 2008As I noted in my article (above), the campaign by America's phony feminists and snooty media establishment against Sarah Palin and her family that began mere seconds after John McCain picked her, has produced many outstandingly nasty comments.But perhaps the most telling bias of all can be observed when one compares the coverage Palin's poor teenage daughter received with the complete pass given by the liberal media to the would-be Democratic Party presidential candidate John Edwards, whose adultery during the campaign, even as his wife lay terminally ill, they did so much to cover up.Sam Schulman makes some good points too:1. Bristol Palin's pregnancy was broadcast to the world as soon - or sooner than - it was discovered. John Edwards's mistress Rielle Hunter's pregnancy was covered up by major media sources even though it was well documented.2. Rielle Hunter received: Rent-free housing. $15,000 a month from John Edwards's campaign treasurer. The use of a private jet. Bristol Palin received: the support of her community, Wasilla, the fourth-largest city in Alaska. The support of her mother and father. The love of her baby's father. Period.3. Rielle Hunter and John Edwards received: Privacy and solicitude from The New York Times, The Washington Post, network news, cable news - everyone in the respectable world media, except Mickey Kaus.Bristol Palin received Internet rumor-mongering widely reported in the mainstream press.4. Rielle Hunter and John Edwards continued to lie about their relationship after it was revealed.Bristol Palin's family gave a simple, dignified statement of the truth of the situation after it was revealed.5. Bristol Palin and the father of her baby are 17 or 18 - and their relationship concerns themselves and their parents.The combined age of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter is close to, if not over, a century. John Edwards has a mortally ill wife and three other young children to be concerned about.6. The number of column inches and network TV coverage devoted to Bristol Palin compared to John Edwards is - immeasurable.---------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT SARAH PALIN DIDN'T SAYS
arah's speechBy Tom Gross
The National Review (Media Blog)September 3, 2008
Sarah Palin is preparing to take the stage at the Republican convention, and here is a sneak preview of what she might say (as told to writer Claudia Rosett):"There are a few more things you need to know about me."As a troubled teenager, I myself used cocaine and marijuana (yes, I inhaled), and as an adult, I attended and took my family to (and my inspiration from) a church where the preaching included hate-speech about America and assorted ethnic and religious groups."In my business career, before entering politics, I had talents that allowed me, simply by reading the newspaper, to earn a 10,000% return on a $1,000 investment in cattle futures in the space of 10 months."While holding elected office, my experience included the pursuit of assorted adulterous liaisons, including intimate activities in my landmark government office with an intern less than half my age, though as I regard it, I did not have sex with that person (depending on the meaning of "is"). When I got caught, my spouse denounced my critics as members of a vast political conspiracy."I could add a great deal more to this list (though please remember that when I got caught taking home state silverware, I eventually did send it back), but let us now turn to the mighty issue of the hour..."That scene, of course, is fantasy, as Claudia Rosett points out: "Sarah Palin won't say these words, because they do not apply to her. But they do apply to the three most prominent political figures who paraded across the stage at the Democratic convention in Denver last week, Barack Obama, and Hillary and Bill Clinton - to wild ovations from the crowd."---------------------------------------------------------------MADAM PRESIDENT
Click here to see a cartoon and note by myself welcoming the possible 2012 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin: http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWZjOGYyNGRlY2U4MGM0OTIwZGFhYTJkZGI2YTJmZGU=---------------------------------------------------------------CANADA'S STATE-FUNDED TV, IN THE FOOTSEPS OF DAILY KOSCanada's CBC continues the lies even after Daily Kos has moved onBy Tom GrossThe National Review (Media Blog)September 4, 2008On Monday, even the Daily Kos admitted that the disgusting smear that they had helped spread - that Sarah Palin wasn't really the mother of her 4-month-old baby Trig - wasn't true.The rest of the media then moved on to bashing Palin's defenseless teenage daughter, Bristol.Yet on Tuesday, star reporter Neil McDonald of Canada's taxpayer-funded CBC reported this gutter lie as if it might be true.How, asks Jonathan Kay in the posting below, could CBC sink so low? See: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/09/03/jonathan-kay-the-cbc-s-appalling-smear-on-sarah-palin.aspx

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TAXPAYER-FUNDED CANADIAN TV COLUMNIST: PALIN IS A "PORN ACTRESS"This commentator, Heather Mallick, is a columnist at the taxpayer-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC). What she says about Sarah Palin and the people who support her is jaw-dropping.Her article begins:I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.So why do it?It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America....John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.... Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a f**kin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?(You can read it all, if you must, here: www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html)
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ABC TV ON OBAMA'S PARENTAGE"A moment for the history books." Whoops.www.youtube.com/watch?v=YooKkyikXw0

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ORGANIZER IN CHIEF
BARACK'S CONTROVERSIAL ROOTS
By STEVEN MALANGA

Obama: Cut his teeth in a group that feeds on taxpayer money.
Posted: 3:56 amSeptember 8, 2008
Barack Obama represents the first appearance in a presidential race of a rela tively new political type: the community organizer.
His past as a local activist in Chicago has provoked sneers from Republicans and questions from most voters. What the heck is a community organizer, where do these folks get their money - and why are they so controversial?
The roots of community organizing stretch back to the 1930s and the efforts of organizer Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation and author of "Rules for Radicals," to organize people in low-income areas into a political force to combat the political machine that ran Chicago.
Alinsky won many admirers on the Left, but it took President Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty to supercharge community organizing by directing billions of federal dollars to neighborhood groups with the naive and ambiguous goal of "empowering" communities.
The federal cash, eventually supplemented by state and local tax funds, helped create a universe of government-funded groups headed by local activists running everything from job-training efforts to recreation programs to voter-registration drives - far beyond anything Alinsky could've imagined.

Thousands of groups - eventually, 3,000 in New York City alone - arose to snatch government money. One startling sign of the growth: Today, New York now has more jobs at social-service agencies, most funded with government money, than on Wall Street.
Yet those who designed Johnson's programs endowed them with vague goals such as "community empowerment" and often failed to demand specific, achievable results from those they funded. Thus, money went to inexperienced local activists to run job-training programs that failed to find people jobs. Other grants went to local groups to help businesses in poor neighborhoods get loans - with little sense of whether their clients could actually ever pay back the money.
Nothing symbolizes the failure and waste better than a federal boondoggle known as the Community Development Block Grant program. Obama calls it "an important program that provides housing and creating [sic] jobs for low- and moderate-income people and places" - yet, over the last 40 years, the CDGB has funneled some $110 billion through community groups with little sense that it has done much good.
One visible sign of failure: Buffalo, the city that's gotten the most CDGB funding (per capita), is worse off today than it was 40 years ago. An investigation by The Buffalo News several years ago found that much of the money had been wasted in grants to organizations run by politically connected activists.
New York City has seen it, too. Earlier this year, several City Council aides were indicted for sending grants to a community nonprofit they controlled. Several years ago, investigators looking into illegal loans by a well-connected Bronx nonprofit found that it was paying its top executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to run such programs as "homework empowerment" for teens - with no notion of what these programs achieved or how they worked.
Despite such ongoing boondoggles, the funding keeps on flowing, largely because the activists who head these groups moved into politics, wielding the power that tax dollars had bought them to build a base of neighborhood supporters.
In New York City, operators of huge social-services groups like Pedro Espada in The Bronx and Albert Vann in Brooklyn won election to state and federal posts after heading up large, powerful nonprofits. By the late '80s, nearly a fifth of City Council members were products of the tax-funded nonprofit sector - and they were among the council's most strident advocates for higher taxes and more government spending. In cities from Chicago to Cleveland to Los Angeles, the road to electoral success increasingly runs through tax-funded social services.
Meanwhile, groups like the radical ACORN have used government funding to run voter-registration drives that are supposed to be nonpartisan efforts but that have concentrated in signing up voters in heavily Democratic districts to elect politicians who advance ACORN's political goals and protect funding for community activists.
As a result, spending to these groups has boomed while the sector has staved off reform. "The nonprofit service sector has never been richer, more powerful," former welfare recipient Theresa Funiciello wrote in her book "Tyranny of Kindness." "Except to the poor, poverty is a mega-business."
Obama began his organizing life in the mid-'80s in a community group whose progress mirrored the industry's: the Developing Communities Project, formed on Chicago's South Side as a "faith-based grass-roots organization organizing and advocating for social change." Though founded with resources from a coalition of churches, over time the DCP evolved into a government contractor, with nearly 80 percent of its revenues deriving from public contracts and grants.
Obama adopted the big-government ethos that prevails among neighborhood organizers, who view attempts to reform poverty programs as attacks on the poor. Speaking in 1995 to The Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly, Obama said, "These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock 'em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress."
He also derided the "old individualistic bootstrap myth" of achievement that conservatives were touting and called self-help strategies for the poor "thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs."
Obama stuck by those ideas as a state senator. His supporters count among his biggest victories his work to expand subsidized health care in Illinois with social-justice groups like United Power for Action and Justice (an offshoot of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation). Meeting last November with the leaders of ACORN, he declared: "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," including representing the group in a court case in Illinois. ACORN's affiliated political-action committee soon endorsed Obama for president.
An Obama presidency is likely to be a huge boost to tax-funded nonprofits - because his antipoverty agenda is right out of the 1960s. His platform ranges from a commitment to boost funding for CDGB to a plan for providing "a full network of services, including early-childhood education, youth-violence prevention efforts and after-school activities . . . from birth to college" to low-income neighborhoods.
The activist community knows he's one of them. As an organ of the National Housing Institute, a social-justice group, has observed: "Barack Obama carries lessons he learned as a community organizer to the political arena. Both organizers and politicians would be wise to study them closely."
Adapted from the summer issue of City Journal, where Steven Malanga is senior editor.