October 2008 Archives

Watching the fraudulent activities of ACORN here in Ohio has left me wondering how they've been getting away with it. It sure seemed plain to me that our Secretary of State, the über-partisan Jennifer Brunner, has a soft spot in her heart for this merry band of fraudsters. I couldn't point to any blatantly obvious connection between Brunner and ACORN (other than shameless Obama-worship), but I had a hunch there was more than meets the eye.

Thank God for Maggie Thurber:

Gillette is identified on Jennifer Brunner's 2006 campaign website as a consultant. A blog entry by Brunner's husband Rick talks about that relationship, saying: "our candidate had gone earlier in the day to have some meetings and work out of Karyn Gillette's office." He also describes Gillette as "very helpful to the campaign."

According to campaign finance reports that were filed, Gillette was paid $21,250 by Brunner's campaign. She has a longtime history of serving as a fundraising consultant to Ohio Democrats.

...

But that's not all. Gillette is not Brunner's only tie to ACORN. Members of the group's voter registration arm, Project Vote, regularly advise Brunner on election strategy, previously serving on her Voter Rights Institute and even recently issuing a news release claiming credit for Brunner's directive banning challenges to suspected fraudulent voter registrations.

So our Secretary of State shares a campaign advisor with ACORN, takes direction from ACORN's voter registration arm, and refuses to verify over 200,000 mismatched registrations while claiming there is no voter fraud going on in Ohio...and that attention to such frivolous issues distracts her from doing her job.

Let's see Brunner try to wriggle out of this.

A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous.

If you're interested, participate here.

I suspect the stench was pretty pungent afterward.

Rather than pursue the American Dream, [Barack Obama] insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us -- today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved -- for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

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

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

-- Mark Levin

Joe the Plumber wasn't the first to catch Barack Obama talking about spreading the wealth:

Here's the transcript:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I'd be o.k.

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical.

It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

...

I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn't structured that way.

State Senator Obama didn't think it was feasible to change the federal courts to a Marxism-friendly system, but a President Obama can easily make it happen, especially with a liberal Democratic supermajority in the U.S. Senate. Don't take my word for it; listen to him say it. Here's the entire interview.

Do you think it's the federal government's job to decide how much success is too much for you to achieve? Is it up to the federal courts to pick winners and losers based on the philosophy of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" ... that is, Marxism? Does Barack Obama know better than you when it comes to deciding who deserves your hard-earned money? If this is what you want, then vote for Barack Obama.

If you don't like that Barack Obama intends to radically change America for the worse, then do something about it.

While searching through Amazon.com for a better litter box for my pair of furballs, I came across a review of the Cat Genie. After I stopped laughing, I realized I'd found a challenger to Tuscan Whole Milk for the title of Funniest Review Ever.

Here's the entire Cat Genie review, verbatim:

An expensive way to smell poo

Cat Genie takes the small unpleasantness of daily cleaning the litter and it saves it up and releases that unpleasantness as one big unscheduled, unpleasant inconvenience every week or two. Advanced monitors will ensure that the device failure will occur during the workday, as you prepare for your important meeting with your prospective client. Nothing like cleaning out wet cat poo in your nicest suit. Or, you may be pleasantly awoken in the middle of the night by the repeating three beeps of "there's poo and hair in the hopper." You will become more familiar with your cat's feces every day as the cat genie gently fills your home with the aroma of baking excrement. Plus, you get to pay over $300 for technology that was "designed" and built for less than $2. The "processor" unit was designed in 1967 and allows all the functionality of the most advanced microchip devices of its era. It has both on and off modes. (Note: off mode available only while unplugged.)

Actually, the real reason for the high cost of the device is to cover the costs of all the customer support that they must provide and to cover the costs of all of the returned units. The question is not IF, but WHEN you will find yourself hunched over your cat's feces floating in a pool of fetid water, picking small plastic pellets out of the opaque, pungent water with your fingers so that you can get the device put back together.

And your cats will thank you by depositing their love bundles beside the machine that's half filled with water and beeping away forlornly if you happen to be away when it fails.

We have three cats, they had no trouble adjusting to the machine over about a week. The small plastic pellets getting everywhere in the house is not really any big deal. Roomba takes care of most of them well. We've now had the machine for three months. We received a replacement base last week for a leaky drain hose. We've called their customer service line enough times that we now know the "secret" diagnostic techniques of their experts. We don't know if we're going to keep it or return it. If we keep it, we're definitely going to install an exhaust fan in the laundry room, and set it to a timer to go when the unit is on. For some reason there are little bits of poo that fall between the tines of the hopper, and they get slow baked every time the unit dries itself. The stench is really outstanding. It's hard to describe. I'm a doctor, and I've rarely ever smelled anything so bad.

My recommendation is to wait for the next generation cat sanitation solution. That device will need to be a complete redesign to solve the myriad of problems with this unfortunate device. To say something positive, the customer support line is manned by kind, well-meaning kids who really do feel badly that you're having a hard time with your mechanical poo soup maker.

If you do buy this device, get some thick rubber gloves and a couple of towels that you won't use for anything else.

The basic allegation is that Barack Obama had an affair with a staffer from his 2004 campaign named Vera Baker, Michelle Obama found out, and she had Baker shipped off to Martinique. I'm not clear when the alleged affair was supposed to have happened. I offer the interview between two contributors at BLACKFIVE for your consideration:

Background at BLACKFIVE, JammieWearingFool, Ace of Spades, Confederate Yankee, and HillBuzz.

October 27th, 2008 Update: Pictures of Vera Baker, plus a follow up interview with the tipster.

I have my doubts, and so does John Hawkins.

Focus, John! You've got to defeat this slick, socialist Chicago punk!

No, not Raila Odinga. That's old news to the mainstream media. I'm talking about William Ayers, genocidal thug.

If you don't believe Larry Grathwohl's statements above, and you don't believe he foiled two of Ayers' attempts at mass murder, then believe Ayers' own words. He laid out his darkest goals in his 1974 book Prairie Fire, a manifesto of violent communist revolution.

But of course Barack Obama was innocently unaware of this deviant swine's beliefs. Riiiiight.

To quote the blogger who goes by "Zombie":

Ayers and Obama worked together for years on a school reform program called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Ayers and Obama also served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a separate charity organization.

Obama had his political coming-out party in William Ayers' home.

Ayers mentions Obama by name in a book he wrote in 1997, and mentions that the two are very close neighbors.

Obama gave a short glowing review of that same Ayers book for the Chicago Tribune.

Obama and Ayers were both presenters together on a panel about juvenile justice (organized by Michelle Obama).

Both Obama and Ayers were close friends with the same person, Rashid Kalidi.

There are also several unverified rumors swirling around that have not been documented: That Ayers may have helped to write part (or all) of Obama's autobiography; that Obama and Ayers shared an office space together for three years, on the same floor of the same building in Chicago; and that Ayers and Obama may have known each other as far back as 1981.

Nope. Nothing to see here.

Good thing big brother's looking out for us, especially if we're deployed with the military right now.

A group of half-wits in Fairfax County, VA decided to invent a new rule applied to Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots that stretches beyond the related state and military guidelines. To make matters worse, these requirements only apply to those ballots most widely used by members of the U.S. military and their families -- this rule does not apply to any other type of absentee ballot.

We better make sure that civilians and those not currently deployed (also known as 'folk who don't see the most pressing military needs') decide who will be the next Commander in Chief.

Just imagine the bumper sticker often touted : "I support the troops not the war."

Ace form of support in this grand piece of legislation.

My new sticker: "Keep the care packages and the ballots. -- Fairfax County Registrar"

An unknown wit once said: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury." When it comes to voting ourselves goodies from the treasury, we Americans stand near the point of no return.

I've addressed this lopsided situation before in a post on war funding, but this is a much more general discussion.

The federal government levies taxes on some of us, and it sends handouts to some of us. Some Americans pay more in taxes than they receive in handouts. I'll call them "givers." Others receive more in handouts than they pay in taxes. I'll call them "takers."

The Tax Foundation studied taxes and handouts from 1994-2004 (see the FAQ), and came to some startling conclusions. Below you'll see a diagram of their 2004 breakdown of dollars received in handouts per dollar taken in taxes. Pay special attention to the blue bars (the total handouts per dollar of taxes). Look at the bottom 3/5ths of our population. Those groups get more in handouts than they pay in taxes; they're the takers. The top 2/5ths are paying more in taxes than they get in handouts; they're the givers.

Since the American form of government (thankfully a representative republic, not a democracy) responds fairly quickly to the will of American voters, we have the ability to force our elected representatives to give us tax dollars as handouts. If our representatives refuse our demands for goodies, a majority of us can replace them with more pliable politicians.

So what happens when the takers outnumber the givers at the polls on Election Day? We hit the "tax tipping point." Since everyone gets one vote (unless ACORN is involved) regardless of their tax-to-handout ratio, the takers force the government to soak the givers. Eventually, the givers get tired of being punished for their success. The result is predictable:

Calculating how far society's top earners can be pushed before they stop (or cut back on) producing is difficult. But the incentives are easy to see. Voters who benefit from government programs will push for higher tax rates on higher earners -- at least until those who power the economy and create jobs and wealth stop working, stop investing, or move out of the country.

...

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

Barack Obama claims he'll give a "tax cut" to 95% of Americans (for the sake of argument, let's ignore the impossibility of doing that while also paying for his massive expansion in government spending). His magic "tax cut" for those who pay no income taxes is really a tax credit. That's a handout to the takers, funded by higher taxes on the givers. The chart above will get more lopsided, with the blue bars on the right shrinking and the blue bars on the left growing.

America cannot keep confiscating more and more money from the givers and sending it to the takers. There's no such thing as a free lunch. If you're one of the givers creating jobs and capital, you'll only tolerate punishment for so long before you take rational steps to reduce your vulnerability. You'll start shifting your capital away from productive uses and into tax shelters dictated by loopholes in the law. You'll cut costs by hiring fewer employees or getting rid of current employees. You might even decide to escape the punishment of the takers by closing down your business or moving it overseas to a country with friendlier tax policies.

Now multiply this scenario to include all of America's private sector, and you'll start to understand the inevitable result of a tax-and-spend policy like Barack Obama's. He believes he can tax and spend his way to prosperity, but he can't (or won't) see that he'll push our economy over the tax tipping point and into either a severe recession or an actual depression. Our current economic downturn is already worsening as Obama's victory grows more probable, and one hundred top economists recently warned of the impending disaster of Obamanomics.

Barack Obama is more than Jimmy Carter on steroids. He's about to repeat Herbert Hoover's tragically foolish response to an economic downturn. If Obama wins this election, he will drive us into a Second Great Depression.

Obama's campaign removed the safeguards that prevent fraudulent online campaign donations that exceed federal limits, come from overseas, or come from false addresses ... and they've just been caught red-handed. I wonder how much of Obama's war chest consists of illegal donations?

ACORN must be proud.

By the way, the McCain web site has these security features enabled, so it rejects fraudulent donations.

Trevor Loudon of the blog New Zeal has more details on Barack Obama's membership in The New Party, a socialist political party in Chicago.

This post is for journalists who care about the future of their country more than their careers.

I have previously posted about Barack Obama's involvement in the socialist led Illinois New Party here, here and here.

Below are scans from New Party News Spring 1996.

They prove that Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois New Party and was endorsed by them in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race.

Here's the first of several screenshots from the New Party News. Click to enlarge:

Read the rest and ask yourself why the American media continues to avert their eyes from this relevant background information about Barack Obama, the socialist.

To understand the New Party's "fusion" strategy, and their connection to ACORN, read Stanley Kurtz.

H/T: Power Line

Barack Obama's socialism illustrated:

Foolish peasant. The Obamessiah knows how to spend your money better than you do.

What follows is a re-post of Matt Hurley's original piece.

Rough Transcript:

Senator Obama, you are Number One.

Your 2007 voting record makes you the most liberal member of the US Senate. Left of Hilary Clinton, Left of Ted Kennedy, and even Left of your running mate, Joe Biden -- Barely. He was Number Three. You, Senator Obama, are Number One.

What happens when we elect America's most liberal Senator to the White House? Please America, let's never find out.

Paid for by Let Freedom Ring, which is responsible for the content of this ad.

It is actually worse than the ad makes it sound. Obama isn't just a liberal, he's to the left of the only declared socialist in the US Senate!

Last week, Ohio Senator George Voinovich was quoted saying that Barack Obama was to the left of Ted Kennedy and that Obama was, in fact, a socialist. Governor Mitt Romney, an actual McCain-Palin surrogate, might have a problem with that (see clip) but I think that the evidence exists to make a pretty strong case that Obama is a socialist.

What shall we use as a measuring stick? How about a politician who is a declared socialist? There is one in the United States Senate and his name is Bernie Sanders. The National Journal has Sanders ranked #4 in 2007. Barack Obama was top of the class. But it might interest you to know who else was "to the left" of the socialist. Barack Obama chose him to be his running mate: Joe Biden finished third. Even George Voinovich gets this one:

"There's a guy in the senate, Bernie Sanders" said Voinovich, "who brags about being a socialist. And if you compare Barack Obama's record with Bernie Sanders' record, they're not too far apart."

Obama's response to Joe the Plumber's question about why Obama wanted to punish him if he were to achieve the American Dream and achieve success was that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." If that isn't a restatement of the socialist doctrine of redistribution of wealth, I don't know what is.

Let's not find out, America...

A cut is not a cut when you're playing games with the federal budget.

Imagine that the Federal Whatchamacallit Administration (FWA) has a current budget of $100 billion for 2006, and the Bush administration requests $120 billion for 2007.

Now imagine that the happy little piglets on the House Appropriations Committee draft their 2007 budget with another $30 billion in the FWA authorization bill ... the better to fund several Congressmen's pet projects. Pretty straightforward so far, and sadly very predictable:

Now let's say that the full House of Representatives, backed by the Bush Administration, objects to the pork. They change the FWA's 2007 budget back to $120 billion, which looks like this:

Naturally, if you're a tax-and-spend Washington politician and you hate being told "no", you immediately call a press conference to denounce the horrible "cut" in the FWA budget.

But wait! How can it be a "cut" if the budget went up? It's a common scare tactic that comes from a system called "baseline budgeting", and it's a deceptively easy way to scare uninformed voters into supporting the tax-and-spend piglets in expensive suits.

The Congressional Budget Office defines the baseline as a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in federal revenue or spending, with the assumption that current budgetary policies or current services are continued without change. The baseline includes automatic adjustments for inflation and anticipated increases in program participation. Baseline, or current services, budgeting, therefore builds automatic, future spending increases into Congress's budgetary forecasts.

Baseline budgeting tilts the budget process in favor of increased spending and taxes. For example, if an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds. The federal government is the only place this absurd logic is employed.

-- Citizens Against Government Waste

You can also sometimes see the flip side of this silliness in action when politicians try to paint themselves as budget-cutters, while actually spending more. You've heard of stores that fool consumers by artificially raising prices just before a "deep discount sale", right? Politicians pull the same trick regularly.

So the next time you hear scary stories like "Republicans will cut veterans' benefits", or "McCain will cut Medicare", don't swallow the bait without thinking. First, find out whether those sneaky politicians are playing the baseline budgeting game again.

Would you rather eat a thick slice from a small pie, or a slightly thinner slice from a much larger pie?

If you can grasp this concept, then you can figure out why tax cuts increase tax revenue.

Mark Goldblatt and Gary Wolfram hammer the point home.

What follows is a re-post of Jay Anderson's original piece.

NOTE: This is the third of what will be 13 daily posts from various members of the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance (SOB Alliance) on why Barack Obama is a dangerous, objectionable, and objectively unfit candidate to be president of the United States. Parts 1 and 2 of this series are linked below.

Let's Never Find Out: Part 1 -- The Mortgage Meltdown and Obama

Let's Never Find Out: Part 2 -- Drill, Baby, Drill

The daily videos involved will be from NeverFindOut.org, a project of Let Freedom Ring.

This post is part of the HOPE ON Project (Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now).

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Video -- "Punished with a Baby" (direct YouTube link is here):




Transcript:

Punished

WOMAN: Senator Obama, I'm afraid. In March, you told America:

OBAMA: "I've got two daughters. If they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

WOMAN: Punished. I'm afraid because I'm a mother and I can't imagine what this country would become if its President could look upon a baby as a punishment. And I'm afraid, because those children that you spoke of as a punishment would be your very own grandchildren.

ANNOUNCER: What happens when we elect a President who has disregard for human life? Please, America, let's never find out.

__________________________________________________________

My Comments:
I've been pointing out on a regular basis (almost daily, sometimes with several posts per day on the topic) that Sen. Obama is an unfit candidate for the presidency from a pro-life perspective. But, without a doubt, the most comprehensive critique of Sen. Obama's record on life has come from Princeton Professor Robert P. George. As the Catholic Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, recently put it:

Anyone interested in Senator Obama's record on abortion and related issues should simply read Prof. Robert P. George's Public Discourse essay from earlier this week, ''Obama's Abortion Extremism,'' and his follow-up article, ''Obama and Infanticide.'' They say everything that needs to be said.

In a nutshell, Professor George points out that

Sen. Obama supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions, and which has been credited with saving over a million lives.

Sen. Obama has promised that "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act", which would create a federally guaranteed "fundamental right" to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including "a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined 'health' reasons", and would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry.

Sen. Obama, unlike even many "pro-choice" legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice.

Sen. Obama has referred to a baby conceived inadvertently by a young woman as a "punishment" that she should not endure.

Sen. Obama has stated that women's equality requires access to abortion on demand.

Sen. Obama wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need.

Sen. Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies.

Sen. Obama, as an Illinois state senator, opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist's unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability. The Obama campaign lied about his vote until critics produced documentary proof of what he had done. In fact, Sen. Obama continues to lie about his inhuman voting record in regard to the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even stooping so low as to run a disgusting television ad attacking the disabled survivor of a botched abortion.

As Professor George notes, "You may be thinking, it can't get worse than that. But it does." Just keep reading.

And Professor George is, of course, 100% correct in concluding that "Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States." Let's not provide Sen. Obama the opportunity to put his anti-life principles into practice. Let's never find out what it's like to live in an America with such a man at the helm who deems the least of these our brethren to be an inconvenient "punishment".

You've no doubt heard the well-known story of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts. But did you know that what you've heard is drastically inaccurate?

According to the writings of William Bradford, the colony's first governor, the hardships and near-starvation of the entire population occurred because the colonists turned their backs on capitalism. They believed the old lie that an economy based on the concept of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" can actually work. They instituted a socialist system, and found out that socialism causes disaster:

The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

What happened?

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

For more on the lessons the pilgrims learned, see this piece by Rick Williams, Jr.

Sarah Palin's comments opposing gay "marriage" in a recent interview:

Allah over at Hot Air worries about the federalism implications of a federal marriage amendment:

Normally I'd call this another reason for the base to love her, but the implications for federalism make me wonder how reaction will shake out. Althouse, who's been pretty high on her (but isn't a member of the base, needless to say), finds it "genuinely dismaying." I find it more perplexing than anything else given that she's on record recently as supporting a federalist approach to abortion. I can understand the opposite position, of banning abortion at the federal level via amendment (as Huckabee wants to do) but letting the states handle marriage on grounds that the dire moral imperative in protecting innocent life should trump normal conservative inclinations towards state rights, but what's the argument for Palin's vice versa? Is it simply a question of identifying which issue federal judges are more likely to tinker with at this point and taking that issue out of their hands before they can act? McCain shares that concern -- but thinks that any amendment can and should come after a problematic ruling, not before.

Allah needn't worry. Amending the Constitution is an inherently federalist process (emphasis mine):

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

U.S. Constitution, Article V

Through their legislatures, the states get the last word on any proposed amendment, and the citizens of the states have a helluva lot of influence over state legislators. If a federally-introduced amendment does not have the support of the vast majority of the citizenry, it will not be ratified.

She's a class act and a credit to the Ohio blogosphere.

What follows is a re-post of Dave Stacy's original piece.

Part of a series:

Let’s Never Find Out: Part 1 - The Mortgage Meltdown and Obama

Here’s Part 2:

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Transcript:

WOMAN: Senator Obama, you say that punitive taxes on oil companies will solve our energy problems. But economists say windfall taxes will only raise the price of gasoline. You say you're against offshore drilling. But experts say we need to maximize oil supply while we develop alternative energy. Senator, you are running for President, not us. Why do we need to explain this to you?

ANNOUNCER: What happens when we elect a Senator who doesn’t understand supply and demand? Please, America, let's never find out.

On energy the choice couldn’t be more clear. Here’s Barack Obama:

On one side we have a liberal who is beholden to the environmentalist lobby. He would rather we keep sending our cash to the Middle East rather than keep it here. And on the other side we have an bonafide energy expert, Sarah Palin, who has successfully managed Alaska’s natural resources (at least in the areas where the Federal government so graciously allows Alaskans to use their own land)

Kudlow: How long would it take? How long would it take? I hear so many, Senator Obama says this, and a lot of Democrats say this, some Republicans, how long will it take Governor? What's your estimate on this? To start lifting out of ANWR?

Palin: It's going to take at least five years. You know, and there are other areas in Alaska too, that have the reserves that need to be tapped, certainly offshore. There's trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and billions of barrels of oil there too that need to be tapped. We also have a natural gas pipeline that is underway now, a process to get that constructed, where we can build infrastructure and allow known reserves of natural gas up on our North Slope - it's already there, it's already proven - to be tapped and flow through a natural gas pipeline. Our legislature is dealing with that issue right now, getting ready to license a company to build that gas line. Again, to feed these hungry markets.

and more of Sarah Palin doing her thing here:

If you are at all concerned that energy costs might skyrocket out of control again, or about the fact that we are trading billions of dollars to the Middle East where it distorts the influence of those countries on us and our foreign policy, then you vote McCain/Palin

Obama’s energy policy: solar, electric cars and miracle fuels (Same Stuff Jimmy Carter did to no avail), campaign conversions on coal and a very late campaign “conversion” on offshore drilling.

McCain/Palin: solar energy, electric cars, efficiency, nuclear energy, clean coal, offshore drilling + Energy expert Governor Palin.

Not even a close choice. Jobs and cheap energy: McCain/Palin

A brief explanation of why he is what he is:

What follows is a re-post of Tom Blumer's original piece.

Note: This is the first of what will be 13 posts on why Barack Obama is a dangerous, objectionable, and objectively unfit candidate to be president of the United States (while many of the other candidates are not).

The daily videos involved will be from NeverFindOut.org, a project of Let Freedom Ring (donation link is here).

This post is part of the fledgling HOPE ON Project (Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now). Other SOB participants today include these (will update as time allows) Maggie Thurber, Buckeye RINO, NixGuy, Freedom’s Right.

________________________________________________

Video — “Part of the Problem“:

Transcript:

Part of the Problem

WOMAN: Senator Obama, the papers say that you are benefiting politically from the financial crisis.

MAN: But if America knew the facts, I don't know how they could vote for you.

WOMAN: John McCain tried to blow the whistle on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over two years ago. In 2006, he told the Senate, "For years, I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.... The GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises) need to be reformed without delay."

MAN: No wonder he didn't get their political contributions. And who opposed the reforms John McCain was calling for? Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, and John Kerry.

WOMAN: Wait, it gets better. Guess who received campaign contributions from the people who drove Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into the ground? Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and John Kerry.

MAN: John McCain saw this coming. You, Senator Obama, have been part of the problem.

ANNOUNCER: What happens when we elect a Senator who's part of the biggest financial crisis in U.S. history? Please, America, let's never find out.

Additional Commentary:

This could be a book (and should be), but here is a chronology of what happened:

The Jimmy Carter-”inspired,” Bill Clinton-”enhanced” Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) intimidated banks and the GSE into lending money to people who were unreasonable credit risks.

The GSEs facilitated the extension of risky credit by buying risky mortgage loans the banks originated. They did so by reducing the credit-score approval thresholds built into their credit analysis software programs (Desktop Underwriter at Fannie Mae, Loan Prospector at Freddie Mac) for both conventional and subprime (i.e., very risky) loans.

GSE executive management was heavily populated by Democrats who had been in government service (e.g., Franklin Raines, who is, incredibly, a current Obama adviser). Managements at both companies cooked the books and let accounting chaos reign. Both companies paid out wildly excessive bonuses based on fictitious earnings.

Attempts like McCain’s to reform the two GSEs were met with cries of “racism” by Democrats in Congress who thought lending money to people who had a high likelihood of not paying it back, thereby ruining their credit, was a good idea.

The high default rates on loans purchased by the two GSEs led both companies into receivership, and shook the mortgage lending industry to its foundations, and lead to the most serious declines in real estate values in generations.

The collapses at the two GSEs created contributed to problems that were so far-reaching that the government felt compelled to formulate a “bailout” plan that could very cost future generations hundreds of billions of dollars.

The financial-sector problems that can be laid at the feet of the GSEs are negatively affecting the rest of the economy. After 6 years of virtually uninterrupted growth, a recession could occur.

Barack Obama’s role in all of this was one of contributing to the problem as a young lawyer/”activist” (suing a banking giant to intimidate it into making irresponsible loans), and failure to act to prevent the GSE train wreck while a US senator.

This is not “Judgment to Lead.” Electing someone so beholden to so many who are so corrupt is more like a recipe for calamity.

Sucks to be you, Joe.

Oh, really? It took me five minutes to find these.

 

 

 

These are political guided missiles. Given enough airplay, they'll punch through the static of election season to make a lasting impression on undecided voters and moderates torn between Obama and McCain.

   

   

There are nine more where these came from. Spread the word.

H/T: Gateway Pundit

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Update: I told you so:

The following names appear on a petition supporting William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist with numerous close ties to Barack Obama.

Cleveland State University: Dinah Volk

Kent State University: Richard P. Ambrose, Janice Kroeger, Teresa J. Rishel, Tricia Niesz, Walter S. Gershon, Nancy Mellin McCracken (Prof. Emerita)

Miami University: Deborah Lyons, Dennis Carlson, Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Sheri L. Leafgren

Oberlin College: Marc Blecher, Martha Collins, Stephen Crowley, Steven Volk

Ohio Center for Native American Affairs: Regina Landeros-Thomas

Ohio State University: Amy Shuman, David Bloome, Rick Voithofer , Suzanne Damarin, Amy Wolfe, Cynthia Dillard, George E. Newell, Joshua J. Kurz (PhD Student)

Ohio University: Jaylynne N. Hutchinson

University of Akron: William H. Thelin, Rebecca A. McElfresh, Sandra Spickard Prettyman

Here's the text of the petition:

We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack. Ayers is a nationally known scholar, member of the Faculty Senate at UIC, Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association, and sought after as a speaker and visiting scholar by other universities because of his exemplary scholarship, teaching, and service. Throughout the 20 years that he has been a valued faculty member at UIC, he has taught, advised, mentored, and supported hundreds of undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. students. He has pushed them to take seriously their responsibilities as educators in a democracy - to promote critical inquiry, dialogue, and debate; to encourage questioning and independent thinking; to value the full humanity of every person and to work for access and equity. Helping educators develop the capacity and ethical commitment to these responsibilities is at the core of what we do, and as a teacher he has always embraced debate and multiple perspectives.

All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted. Without critical dialogue and dissent we would likely be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings to this day. The growth of knowledge, insight, and understanding--- the possibility of change--- depends on that kind of effort, and the inevitable clash of ideas that follows should be celebrated and nourished rather than crushed. Teachers have a heavy responsibility, a moral obligation, to organize classrooms as sites of open discussion, free of coercion or intimidation. By all accounts Professor Ayers meets this standard. His classes are fully enrolled, and students welcome the exchange of views that he encourages.

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers --- "unrepentant terrorist," "lunatic leftist" --- are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It's true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution --- including publishing 16 books --- to the field of education. The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of "exposés" and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue. Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

We, the undersigned, stand on the side of education as an enterprise devoted to human inquiry, enlightenment, and liberation. We oppose the demonization of Professor William Ayers.

It's possible that some of the names were entered by someone else, since conservative pundits Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez and Mark Levin appear on the list. But how likely is it that some prankster would go to the trouble of looking up the names of actual university employees? Padding a petition doesn't require that much effort. The most plausible explanation is that the names are legitimate.

Do students, their parents, and alumni want their tuition money and their donations paying the salaries of these people? Do Ohio taxpayers want their tax dollars supporting these terrorist sympathizers?

H/T: American Thinker

Jim Hoft has put together a comprehensive guide to ACORN voter fraud. It's an essential read.

The Buckeye Institute has targeted ACORN and Project Vote in Ohio:

COLUMBUS - The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based think tank, today filed a state RICO action against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on behalf of two Warren County voters. The action filed in Warren County Court of Common Pleas alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN's dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities.

Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN's actions deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process. They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters.

"The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right," Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said.

"ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state's roles in the process," Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. "Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes," he added.

In the complaint, Thompson cites an accumulation of evidence showing numerous instances of admitted fraud by ACORN employees, as well as individuals solicited by ACORN.

"In light of its hiring, training and compensation practices, ACORN should have known its conduct would cause fraud," Thompson said. "It also should know that its conduct will cause fraud in the future."

Here's a copy of the filing. What are they asking for?

(1) The dissolution of Defendant ACORN, pursuant to R.C. 2923.34(C)(3).12

(2) The revocation of any license or permit that allows Defendant ACORN to carry on its business in the State of Ohio, pursuant to R.C. 2923.34(C)(4).

(3) The imposition of restrictions upon Defendant ACORN's future political and elections-related activities, including restrictions that prohibit the Defendants from engaging in the same type of activity that has produced the pattern of corrupt activity articulated in this Complaint, pursuant to R.C. 2923.34(C)(2).

(4) The imposition of a restriction prohibiting ACORN from circumventing such a court order through the use of third-party operations or sham organizations.

(5) The awarding of attorneys fees to Plaintiffs, pursuant to R.C. 2923.34(G).

(6) The awarding such other and further relief as the court shall deem just and equitable.

Bravo! Nail their asses to the wall.

Incidentally, this recent letter from the director of Cleveland ACORN is good for a laugh.

Update 1: When you hear ACORN claim that it's a non-partisan organization, just read this e-mail from ACORN soliciting paid canvassers for Obama.

Update 2: In order to dissolve ACORN or revoke its licenses, Ohio law [O.R.C. 2923.34(C)] requires the Ohio Attorney General to intervene (legalese for "join") in the Buckeye Institute's suit:

Relief pursuant to division (B)(3), (4), or (5) of this section shall not be granted in any civil proceeding instituted by an injured person unless the attorney general intervenes in the civil action pursuant to this division.

Upon the filing of a civil proceeding for relief under division (B)(3), (4), or (5) of this section by an allegedly injured person other than a prosecuting attorney, the allegedly injured person immediately shall notify the attorney general of the filing. The attorney general, upon timely application, may intervene in any civil proceeding for relief under division (B)(3), (4), or (5) if the attorney general certifies that, in the attorney general's opinion, the proceeding is of general public interest. In any proceeding brought by an injured person under division (B)(3), (4), or (5) of this section, the attorney general is entitled to the same relief as if the attorney general instituted the proceeding.

Fortunately, Ohio's Attorney General isn't corrupt Democrat Marc Dann anymore; he was impeached and resigned in disgrace.

Unfortunately, the interim AG is Democrat Nancy Rogers, who isn't staying in the post. Since she doesn't want to keep the AG job, she has no incentive to intervene in the RICO suit. She has nothing to lose by ignoring Ohio voters' anger over ACORN.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the Ohio Attorney General to take any action against ACORN.

Update 3: What a kind thing to say!

These idiots are going to help choose our next President. Here's reason #5,832 why I don't want to encourage every eligible citizen to register to vote.

I wish these geniuses would just stay home on Election Day.

H/T: Red State

Those are not "Obama flags" behind the Obamessiah; they're official Ohio flags.

This is the Obama flag:

ACORN submitted roughly 5,000 new voter registrations to officials in Lake County, Indiana. Of the first 2,100 registrations reviewed so far, the running total of fraudulent registrations is: 2,100.

ACORN only admits to making a few bad hires, and mainly blames election officials who supposedly are "not doing their jobs."

Riiiiiight.

These ACORN crooks are Barack Obama's allies.

H/T: Ace of Spades

Righty blogs aren't the only ones pointing out this scuzzy meme. I hope most voting Ohioans react appropriately on Election Day.

A registered independent voter and professional filmmaker by the name of Molotov Mitchell has put together an 11-minute video that summarizes a brewing controversy about Barack Obama's eligibility to be President. A lifelong Democrat named Philip Berg is suing Obama to force him to prove that he satisfies the Constitution's minimum eligibility requirements for the highest office in the land.

Here's the relevant citation from Article II:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

Mitchell's video frames the dispute and asks Berg to explain the situation. As you watch it, focus on one key question: if Barack Obama can instantly defeat Berg's lawsuit by handing the judge his original Hawaiian birth certificate, why doesn't he do so?

If Barack Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen, why is he acting like he can't prove it? What is he hiding?

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Update: A rebuttal

It's no longer just a news item for conservative talk radio, righty blogs, and Fox News. CNN has been forced to cover the fraudulent activities of ACORN, the group of community organizers that Barack Obama once worked for.

ACORN has been very busy in Pennsylvania lately, not to mention in Ohio. What does Obama know about ACORN's voter fraud schemes?

H/T: Hot Air

... to God's ears.

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Update: More from Alfonzo Rachel.

Update 2: And from Barack Obama's mouth ...

Note the tune and the Cyrillic subtitles.

Absolutely fricken' priceless! Glenn Beck knocked this one out of the park.

Don't forget this clever ad, and this snarky scripture.

Though he may deny it, Barack Obama worked for ACORN, the fraud-riddled left-wing community organizers' association. His former employer, Project Vote, is a front group created and run by ACORN.

ACORN submitted fraudulent voter registrations in Cuyahoga County? Say it ain't so:

Cuyahoga County Election Board members grilled representatives of a community group Tuesday about their links to suspicious voter registration cards.

In one case, a Cleveland resident was registered to vote three times in a single day, listing two different addresses.

The man's registration was submitted to the Board of Elections by ACORN.

The board discussed several other cases of multiple registrations at their meeting. ACORN was involved in each case, although not for all entries by the same individuals.

...

Election officials subpoenaed three voters to appear before the Board next week to explain their mulitple registrations.

The list includes a Cuyahoga County resident whose name appears on 22 registration cards submitted in six months.

I'm as surprised by ACORN's fraud as I am by each morning's sunrise. C'mon, it's what they do.

Barack Obama's favorite community organizers are at it again:

The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election.

"Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot."

Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and identify employees who were responsible.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas ... especially when it's "lazy crack-heads" helping Obama get elected.

More here and here.

Feel free to use these on your own blog. All I ask is that you save your own copy of each image, and don't hotlink to the image on my web site. If you hotlink, it will drive up my bandwidth costs.

Oh, and here's one for that bailout bill:

Enjoy.

Remember Jeremiah Wright? This is the man who Barack Obama chose to be his mentor, chose to be his friend, chose to conduct his marriage, chose to baptize his daughters, chose to guide him in his faith, chose to support financially, chose to listen to for 20+ years ...

... and only when it became politically expedient did Obama distance himself. Obama hopes you'll swallow the lie that he was surprised and shocked at Jeremiah Wright's hateful anti-American beliefs, and that you'll believe him when he says he doesn't share Jeremiah Wright's views.

Don't you believe it. Even Jeremiah Wright knows better.

BILL MOYERS: Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago. Wanted to know about the neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion. He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You led him to the faith.

You performed his wedding ceremony. You baptized his two children. You were, for 20 years, his spiritual counsel. He has said that. And, yet, he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things about you. How did those words...how did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?

REVEREND WRIGHT:
It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're two different worlds.

I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician.

The emphasis is mine, but the plain message is Wright's: Obama only abandoned him to keep his political career alive.

And when Obama protests any mention of Jeremiah Wright, just remember that Obama himself declared it "fair game."

Andy McCarthy sums it up nicely:

We have a disaster here -- which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.

Here's what Obama needed to do tonight: Convince the country that he was an utterly safe, conventional, centrist politician who may have leftward leanings but will do the right thing when the crunch comes.

Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical Left? Did you sense that he funded Leftist causes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? Would you have guessed that he's pals with a guy who brags about bombing the Pentagon? Would you have guessed that he helped underwrite raging anti-Semites? Would you come away thinking, "Gee, he's proposing to transfer nearly a trillion dollars of wealth to third-world dictators through the UN"?

Nope. McCain didn't want to go there. So Obama comes off as just your average Center-Left politician. Gonna raise your taxes a little, gonna negotiate reasonably with America's enemies; gonna rely on our very talented federal courts to fight terrorists and solve most of America's problems; gonna legalize millions of hard-working illegal immigrants.

McCain? He comes off as Center-Right .. or maybe Center-Left ... but, either way, deeply respectful of Obama despite their policy quibbles.

Great. Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.

If that's what the public thinks, good luck trying to win this thing.

With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side. I'm dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so. Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do. What am I missing?

Does McCain even have a prayer anymore? I have serious doubts.

The playlist below contains the full video "Obama & Friends - History Of Radicalism", aired just this past weekend on Hannity's America. As each segment ends, the next one should start automatically. If there's a hitch between segments, just click the big arrow that will appear at the right side of the box and you'll manually fast forward to the next segment.

Barack Obama's defenders accuse arguments like this one of irrelevance or unfairness. Assigning guilt by association can certainly be unfair to someone with an unsavory friend or two, especially if the target of the accusation clearly doesn't share the lowlife's beliefs or actions. Every nationally-known politician has a lot of friends and associates, so it stands to reason that some of those people will be less than stellar examples of moral uprightness. The law of averages plays a part in the makeup of any large group of people.

But some politicians surround themselves with crowds of bad people. Consider Richard Nixon, the former Republican President who resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment. He selected the advisors and political operatives who helped him climb the political ladder all the way to the top. These surrogates were masters of dirty politics, who committed the Watergate break-in that brought down Nixon's administration.

When Nixon uttered his famous "I am not a crook" line, nobody took him seriously. While he didn't personally break into the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Hotel, he surrounded himself with the crooks and scumbags who did. He knew exactly how immoral and un-American his friends and associates were, so he delegated the dirty tricks to them. He hoped to keep his own hands clean by claiming he had nothing to do with a few overzealous bad apples, but Washington Post journalists Woodward and Bernstein exposed the truth: Nixon's friends and associates were a barrel full of bad apples.

There were far too many shady characters around him for Nixon to claim it was all happenstance. Either he was incredibly naive and stupid when it came to his executive responsibility to select and lead his subordinates, or he craved the power of the presidency so much that he would do anything to maintain it. Either way, Nixon was unfit to remain in office.

A president's character is reflected by the character of his friends and associates. Keep that in mind as you watch the video above. What does the character of Barack Obama's friends and associates say about his character?

Let's apply the same standards to everyone seeking the presidency.

President Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This will not end well. Socialism never works for long.

"If there is to be a recession, it will be blue-state thinking that brought it on."

Here's your answer.

Guess who took $105,849 from Fannie Mae? Look who's at #3 on the list of pigs at Fannie's trough: Barack Obama.

Obama took hush money from the people who crippled the home mortgage market through fraud, and he did nothing to regulate them. His friends enriched themselves while running Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into the ground, and as a result we're now stuck with that obscene $800+ billion dollar taxpayer-funded bailout bill. Worse still, three of Fannie Mae's wealthy scammers advise Obama on everything from running mate selection to the details of housing policy.

That's right; Obama seeks critical economic and political advice from the very people who ruined the mortgage market and caused the current financial crisis.

   

Why in the world would anyone trust Barack Obama to fix this financial mess, when he and his friends are the ones who caused this economic crisis in the first place?

If you want a ten-minute primer on how this mess happened, here you go:

Jim Treacher has somehow gotten a copy of some of the questions on Gwen Ifill's list for moderating tomorrow's VP debate.

Here's the brief interview from yesterday's broadcast.

Just like clockwork, and just like the Ohio Republican Party warned would happen, the corrupt community organizers of ACORN have begun their effort to elect Barack Obama by committing massive voter registration fraud.

The full story should wake you up, if you're still asleep.

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Update: More on ACORN fraud in Ohio here and here.

9/17 Update: When you think "ACORN", think "Obamacare."

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9/11/2009 Update: Child prostitution!

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Barack Obama prides himself on his career as a community organizer. Back then, he worked for an organization called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), to which he still has extensive ties. Before digging into Obama's links to ACORN, it's important to understand exactly how corrupt and anti-American this organization truly is.

I've dug around through tons of resources online to come up with this collection of information that reveals the vast corruption perpetrated by ACORN. Take a few moments to read through the reports and learn about the organization that created Barack Obama.

ACORN's Hypocritical House Of Cards: How One "Community" Group Helped the Housing Crisis Harm Taxpayers (Consumers Rights League):

This report focuses on the troubling record of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and its tax-exempt offshoot, the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC). The ACORN/AHC version of consumer advocacy has consisted of a three-decade assault on free enterprise and a history of extracting resources from financial lenders seeking abatement of ACORN's public relations assaults. Specifically, this report examines ACORN's impact on the housing problem. Documents provided by internal whistleblowers, cross-checked with public records and recorded events, expose hypocritical lending recommendations tied to ACORN Housing Corporation's agreements with major banks--agreements that end up harming consumers.

Media reports, combined with information provided by former ACORN employees, show that:

• ACORN leveraged the Community Reinvestment Act in order to attack lenders' reputations and secure financial resources for itself; it has also endorsed loans offered by companies that fund ACORN operations
• ACORN's decades of lobbying and publicity seeking have contributed to the current housing crisis by lowering lending standards
• Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation's actions range from controversial to borderline illegal:
• AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for undocumented workers
• AHC relies on undocumented income, "under the table" money that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
• ACORN's "financial justice" operations attack lenders for "exotic" loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages (which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
• AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and the aggressive political activities of ACORN

Voter Turnout or Voter Fraud?: Interest Groups Push for Election Reform (Johnathan Bechtle, Capital Research Center):

In 2004 liberal advocacy groups focused their activism on "getting-out-the-vote." The groups typically urged all Americans to vote, but their real goal was more explicit. They wanted to count as many anti-Bush votes as possible. At what point did voter turnout become voter fraud?

...

ACORN makes a point of asserting that lawsuits brought against it have been rejected or withdrawn. But in 2004 its employees were the subject of numerous reports of registration fraud in Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Project Vote [a group created by ACORN and led by Barack Obama] denies that it deliberately orchestrated any registration fraud. But a stream of television and newspaper stories reported on the shady practices its workers used to register people to vote.

...

To make matters worse, taxpayers indirectly pay for these shady efforts. ACORN has a number of affiliates providing mortgage financing and counseling for low-income persons. The principal affiliate, the ACORN Housing Corporation, received over $2.6 million in government grants in 2003-2004. Some state-based ACORN housing affiliates receive smaller amounts of government funding. With this base of taxpayer support, ACORN is free to channel its member dues funds and donor gifts to political activities. Despite its claim to nonpartisanship, ACORN ran a minimum wage ballot initiative drive in the 2004 Florida election that, according to an internal memo revealed in a 2005 report by the American Center for Voting Rights, was run "to help defeat George W. Bush and other Republicans by increasing Democratic turnout ..."

Rotten ACORN: America's Bad Seed (July, 2006, Employment Policies Institute):

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is registered as a non-profit corporation in Arkansas, which does not require public financial disclosure. According to labor activist and scholar Peter Dreier, ACORN's annual operating budget is around $30 million. The New York Times subsequently reported that the figure is closer to $37.5 million, excluding the non-profit research and housing organizations the group runs. Even this estimate likely does not include the vast resources of the ACORN-run unions or reflect election-year resources given to its ostensibly non-partisan get-out-the-vote efforts.

Because it operates a virtual self-contained economy, ACORN entities exchange millions of dollars every year for goods and services. The scant financial documents available for public inspection paint a picture of a spider web of ACORN-run organizations that trade loans, leases, payments, and grants.

...

ACORN's no-holds-barred take on politics originates from its philosophy, which is centered on power. An internal ACORN manual instructed organizers to sign up as many residents as possible because "this is a mass organization directed at political power where might makes right."

...

The frequency with which ACORN employees are caught turning in fraudulent or erroneous documents indicates the group cares less about obeying laws than pushing its political agenda. When it is periodically forced to answer allegations of fraud, ACORN downplays the harm of its crimes or shifts blame to supposedly rogue employees, whom the organization then fires.

$1 Million Scandal Latest To Hit ACORN (release from the Consumers Rights League):

ACORN and its affiliates have a multi-decade history of fraud and abuse of taxpayer funds. Recently, the Consumers Rights League released a whistleblower report that uses internal ACORN documents to highlight alleged misuses of taxpayer money by ACORN Housing Corp, which took in 40% of its funds from the government and sent more than a million dollars to ACORN's affiliate, Citizens Consulting.

Now, The New York Times reports ("Funds Misappropriated at 2 Nonprofit Groups," June 9)that ACORN has hid since 2001 the embezzlement of nearly $1 million by the brother of ACORN's founder from that same organization--Citizens Consulting.

Additionally, ACORN is currently under investigation for potential voter fraud all across the nation. With millions of dollars transferred from AHC to these affiliates, it is entirely plausible that taxpayer funds are funding much of this fraud.

...

ACORN and ACORN fraternal organizations' multi-decade record of partisanship and misusing public funds is a prime example of a broken system. They continuously turn in faulty, if not false, voter registration forms that threaten to disenfranchise voters on Election Day. They have repeatedly used taxpayer funds to bolster their own political ends. Eventually, taxpayer money ended up in the pockets of the brother of ACORN's founder and ACORN attempted to hide the truth for years.

Written Testimony Of James Terry, Chief Public Advocate, Consumers Rights League (Wednesday, September 24, 2008):

My name is James Terry and I am the chief public advocate at the Consumers Rights League, a non-profit education and advocacy organization dedicated to preserving consumer choice in a broad array of issue areas.

...

The Consumers Rights League provides an alternative voice from those organizations that argue for reduced consumer choice or increased government intervention as a policy of first choice. CRL supports all aggressive efforts to educate, motivate, register, and assist all citizens in voting so long as those efforts are legal. Unfortunately, there are some groups that do not seem to share this concern.

As part of CRL's mandate, we monitor policy debates, news trends and the activities of organizations that style themselves as consumer advocates. Unfortunately, due to their long track record of questionable or corrupt practices with respect to housing and electoral activities, we are constantly forced to act as a watchdog for abuses by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. To be sure, there are some well-meaning individuals who are a part of ACORN.

Unfortunately, they do not appear to be the ones in control. Firsthand accounts from current and former ACORN employees, major news stories, and court cases across the country, expose corruption at every level of ACORN including embezzlement, cover-ups, misuse of taxpayer funds and voter fraud. While all of the reported allegations noted in my statement are found in the public domain, such reports often go unnoticed by the national media.

Whistleblower Documents Reveal ACORN's Apparent Misuse Of Taxpayer Dollars to Pursue Profitable Political Agenda (June 18, 2008 release from the Consumers Rights League):

Today, the Consumers Rights League (CRL) published a collection of whistleblower documents that suggest the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has reaped substantial financial gains by misusing taxpayer dollars for political ends and by attacking lending corporations for the same "predatory" lending practices it regularly engages in.

The ACORN Housing Association (AHC), an ACORN affiliate that receives over 40% of its funding from government sources, claims to be a consumer advocate. In a newly-released report from CRL, however, a series of documents obtained from a whistleblower source reveals hypocritical and potentially illegal use of taxpayer dollars by ACORN and its related organizations. These documents - which include staff emails and internal organization policies - suggest that ACORN has failed to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive political activities.