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Are they still celebrating? lolzzz
Sorry just find it funny that people thought he was some kind of superman coming to save the day instead of the same ole same ole B.S. ... a puppet playing his role.... zzz... politics is a big SCAM
OBAMANATION weeeeeeeeeeee...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVGHggXx8HM&feature=related
Russia Dumps US Dollar as basic reserve currency -
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13691
Pentagon Preparing For War With The Enemy: Russia
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13614
http://www.obamacrimes.info/ ?
God Bless us
Obama wins! Maui and the world celebrates! : )
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."
LA Times Refuses to Release Tape of Obama Praising Controversial Activist
Video of farewell party for alleged PLO worker shows Obama toasting 'friend and dinner companion' with questionable past.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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Rashid Khalidi, a professor and activist tied to the PLO, was feted by Barack Obama at a farewell dinner for the Palestinian activist. (AP photo)
The Los Angeles Times is refusing to release a videotape that it says shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who was an alleged mouthpiece for the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was a designated terrorist group in the 1970s and '80s.
According an LA Times article written by Peter Wallsten in April, Obama was a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Rashid Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO.
Click here to read the original LA Times story: 'Palestinians See a Friend in Barack Obama.'
In the article -- based on the videotape obtained by the Times -- Wallsten said Obama addressed an audience during a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi, who was Obama's colleague at the University of Chicago, before his departure for Columbia University in New York. Obama said his many talks with Khalidi and his wife Mona stood as "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."
Khalidi is currently the Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia. A pro-Palestinian activist, he has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in the New York Times and Washington Times.
The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.
The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
In recent months Obama has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy."
But on the tape, according to the Times, Obama said in his toast that he hoped his relationship with Khalidi would continue even after the professor left Chicago. "It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table ... [but around] this entire world."
A number of Web sites have accused the Times of purposely suppressing the tape of the event -- which former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn reportedly attended.
Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.
"This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd -- we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said.
The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on October 19.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/28/la-times-refuses-release-tape-obama-praising-controversial-activist/
The Left's War on Truth
by A.W.R. Hawkins
10/21/2008
After Joe the Plumber voiced concern that Barack Obama’s tax policies would stifle the economy, he learned what Kathleen Willey learned during Bill Clinton’s reign in the 1990s: If you accuse a Democrat of wrongdoing or question their policies, you can count on your character being attacked in the mainstream media. You may even face legal charges.
The Left is sponsoring a war on truth, and casualties in this war continue to be those brave enough to stand up against corruption and exercise the increasingly “fringe” right of freedom of speech.
The right to free speech protected by the First Amendment is now under assault by the Department of Justice, specifically its Civil Rights Division, which is prosecuting certain members of the GOP in California for speaking their minds in writing -- and apparently saying nothing that is false, or even incorrect.
On October 1, former Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen was indicted over his involvement in a letter that the California Coalition for Immigration Reform mailed to Latinos, warning them that they should not vote if they were illegal immigrants because “‘voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time’ and for which they could be deported.”
The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ looked upon this letter as an example of voter “suppression.” Yet because the Civil Rights Division could not prosecute Nguyen over the exercise of free speech alone, they sent FBI agents to his door and intimidated him until he denied involvement with the letter. Then they were able to use his denial against him and indict him for obstruction of justice.
Former ACLU attorney Mark Kappelhoff taught his underlings in the Civil Rights Division how to carry out such jack-boot measures in speeches he gave in various conferences, like a recent one where he spoke in a panel titled: “Standing up Against Hate Speech.” In this conference Kappelhoff’s panel went beyond the tactics used against Nguyen and dealt instead with how the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ will have to defend legislation like the “fairness doctrine,” should Obama win the election. The panel focused on the way an “increasing number of radio and television stations and networks have allowed DJs, talk show hosts and their favorite organized hate groups to spew hatred of immigrants, gays, lesbians, and people of color over the public airwaves.”
If you didn’t read that slowly, you might want to read it again, because you need to be sure you see that Kappelhoff’s agenda implies that any of Rush Limbaugh’s 20 million listeners, who happen to be members of a group like the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, are members of one of talk radio’s “favorite organized hate groups.” Is it any wonder Kappelhoff’s minions viewed Nguyen’s letter as voter suppression?
In case someone thinks I’m reading too much into this, consider the following: After linking talk radio to spewing “hatred,” Kappelhoff’s panel stressed “there is now verifiable data that links hate speech to hate crimes, which are proliferating, especially against Latinos.”
The panel then posed three questions for the attorneys who attended the conference: “What actions can be taken to challenge broadcasters that produce and promote hate speech? Does media consolidation exacerbate the problem? What’s the correct balance between free speech and human rights in discussing these issues?”
Did you read that last question carefully? By now we should all know that when the Left talks about finding a balance between constitutional rights and human rights, constitutional rights are diminished or disappear altogether. What we cannot overlook here is the fact that free speech is the balance. Take away free speech and humans have no rights, much less “human rights.”
In a piece that aired just prior to one of Obama’s most recent visits to St. Louis, , that city’s News Channel 4 reported that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce was part of a “Barack Obama Truth Squad,” and wanted to remind people that “Obama is Christian and wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.” The tone in the reminder was clear -- people were not to question Obama’s religious convictions or his policies. For those who still intended to do so, Joyce added that city attorney’s would “respond immediately to any ads and statements that violate Missouri ethic laws.”
Let’s face it. The Left hates Nguyen, Limbaugh, Joe the Plumber, and others like them, because they speak truth in a climate which the Left is crafting to deny the truth. By doing this, such men enter into the arena of ideas and challenge the worldview and mental constructs of the Left. In response, the Left denounces them for spewing hatred, or even worse, working in the plumbing trade without joining a union. And when these tactics don’t work, they resort to the gavel.
Taken in total, these various assaults on the First Amendment remind us that we are up against people who want power at any price. And if the election of Obama allows individuals like Joyce and Kappelhoff to attain a level of power greater than they already possess, the exercise of rights such as those protected in the First Amendment will be integral to our defense of truth and of this nation.
The lesson for now is simple: If ever we plan to speak our minds, we’d better turn out and vote on November 4.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29107
Pentagon Taqiya: Hesham Islam's Big Lies | Main | Anti Israel Jew Hate Rally NYC
Nazis Declare, "NEVER AGAIN!" »
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Obama: The Anti Israel Candidate
The thing is, Israel really is the driving issue in the Presidential debate. Not because I am a Jew or am Jewcentric although you might think so considering what I blog about. But you'd be wrong.
It is the world's complicity with Islamic barbarism that catapults the Jewish issue to the fore. I am a secular Jew. If it were up to me I'd just as soon never have the world mention the Jews again. And the people of Israel feel very much the same way. All they want is a little peace and quiet so they can live, love, work, create, invent, live -- which is why they have made the terrible mistakes of land giveaways and backbreaking concessions to Islam.
But the world and big media paint Israel in the most impossible, demonic light while tenderly, gingerly making love to killers and savages.
The fact is, it is a values issue. Right and wrong. Good and evil. And what side you are on in the war between the civilized man and the savage speaks volumes about your character, your credibility and your morality. The well developed obfuscation used by the haters of good - words like nuanced, gray area, complicated - are tools to confuse and confound lazy thinkers. But in this, the opposing sides could not be more clear. Yes, there is a very definite good and a very definite evil. If national self interest converges all the better. But at the end of the day if your national self interest aligns itself with evil, your country is on a one way trip to nowhere. History is proof of that.
Americans know this. Time and time again they have demonstrated their support for Israel even if their political leaders have not. Even now with the world and mainstream media coming down mercilessly on Israel, the majority of Americans stand with Israel, support Israel. Polls show Americans have overwhelming support for Israel. And that is logical. America has always fought for the good. Which, BTW is why she (and Israel) are reviled in many circles, "hatred of the good for being good " (Rand).
So yes, Israel is the linchpin issue. Everyone agrees that Nazism and the Third Reich were bad, very bad. The fact is there was a conspiracy between Nazism and Islam (ongoing documentation and research by Dr Andrew Bostom here) So how can the Nazism be bad and Islamism be good?
Rudy gets it and this is why I support his candidacy. But the more we learn about Obama, the more troubling his candidacy becomes (although Hillary is just as bad, if not worse). Obama's support of Odinga in the Kenyan bloodbaths, by far, is the darkest indication that Obama sides with Islamists and their handmaidens. Caroline Glick agrees. In her last column;
Kibaki is close ally of the US in the war against Islamic terror. In stark contrast, Odinga is an ally of Islamic extremists. On August 29 Odinga wrote a letter to Kenya's pro-jihadist National Muslim Leaders Forum. There he pledged that if elected he would establish Sharia courts throughout the country; enact Islamic dress codes for women; ban alcohol and pork; indoctrinate schoolchildren in the tenets of Islam; ban Christian missionary activities, and dismiss the police commissioner, "Who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists."
Although Odinga is an Anglican, he referred to Islam as the "one true religion" and scorned Christians as "worshipers of the cross." Obama strongly supports Odinga who claims to be his cousin. As Daniel Johnson reported recently in the New York Sun, during his 2006 visit to KENYA, Obama was so outspoken in his support for Odinga that the Kenyan government complained to the State Department that Obama was interfering with the internal politics of the country. After the Dec. 27 elections Obama interrupted a campaign appearance in New Hampshire to take a call from Odinga.
And if you missed my column in Israel National News, read it: Obama, the Muslim Thing and why it Matters.
There's more on Obama's deal with the devil from Noah Pollak over at Commentary Magazine:
Obama and Israel, continued (hat tip Ed Lsky)
There has been an awakening in recent days to the presence of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel. Ed Lasky of the American Thinker has been doing serious work on the subject, and his two pieces — here and here — are must-reads. Caroline Glick adds to the discussion here.
But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser–a prominent one–who has so far escaped criticism. This is Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile liberal critic of American foreign policy.
For one, Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School’s website, Power was asked to explain “long-standing structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy.” She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is “the US historic predisposition to go it alone.” A standard reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give us pause:
Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.
So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests–especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace–seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.
Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.
Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME magazine, titled “Rethinking Iran,” the thrust of which rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush administration. She writes:
The war scare that wasn’t [the recent incident between Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin up international outrage by making a claim of imminent danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when the claim is disproved. Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny resemblance to the Administration’s allegations about the advanced state of Iran’s weapons program–allegations refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.
Does Power actually believe that the NIE put to rest concerns about the Iranian nuclear program? If she actually thinks that — and it appears she does — she deserves voluminous ridicule from thinking people everywhere.
Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has President Obama’s ear, she will advise him to do anything other than repudiate America’s greatest ally in the Middle East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy? And here’s an even better question: Does Barack Obama have a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else?
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/
Obama Citizenship Lawsuit To Be Amended To Add Defendants
October 09, 2008 - 04:02 PM
Category: MiscellaneousTags:
Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Berg, Obama, Berg v. Obama, Obama lawsuit, Indonesian citizen, Obama citizenship, presidential citizenship, Democratic National Committee, Barack Obama, Obama Kenya15 Comments Print Article Feed
DISCLAIMER: The author is a registered Independent and does not have an opinion as to the truth and/or veracity of the allegations of the lawsuit referenced in this blog or the information contained at the web sites cited.
Philadelphia attorney Philip J. Berg has sought court approval to amend his complaint in a lawsuit styled Berg v. Obama. The amended complaint would add the Pennsylvania Department of State, the Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortes (in his official capacity), the U. S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, and Senator Diane Feinstein (in her official capacity as chairman) for their failure to exercise due diligence with respect to Barack Hussein Obama's constitutional qualifications to be elected and serve as President of The United States, and for his inclusion on the ballot in Pennsylvania as a candidate for President of the United States.
In his original complaint, Mr. Berg alleged that Defendant Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible for the Office of the President because Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian citizen and naturalized in Indonesia. Plaintiff further alleged that Obama followed her naturalization and failed to take an oath of allegiance when he turned 18 years old to regain his U.S. citizenship status.
According to a web site maintained by the Plaintiff, the amended complaint is intended to clarify issues regarding the plaintiff's standing to bring the lawsuit and supplement the lawsuit with additional relevant facts. Those additional facts are summarized at that web site.
According to the Washington Times, the Obama campaign has firmly said the Illinois Democrat is a natural-born citizen. Last month, the campaign posted on Obama's Web site a copy of his certification of live birth. It says he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. The Obama web site, commenting on questions regarding whether Obama is a citizen of KENYA, cites FactCheck.org as follows:
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, KENYA was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to KENYA, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
The issue of Obama's citizenship have been the topic of internet sites for months. Documents and photographs, claiming that Obama was registered in schools in KENYA under the name of Barry Soetoro, have been circulated through a variety of blogs and web sites which has fueled the debate. The Berg lawsuit raises not only the Kenyan citizenship issue but also questions whether Obama was a citizen of Indonesia. According to the allegations of the Plaintiff, Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian citizen, Lolo Soetoro, who legally “acknowledged” Obama as his son in Indonesia and/or “adopted” Obama, which caused Obama to become a “natural” Indonesian citizen.
The parties are waiting on the court to rule on a motion to dismiss filed by Barack Hussein Obama. Lawyers for Obama and the Democratic National Commitee have also filed a motion for a protective order staying discovery in the case until the court rules on the motion to dismiss.
http://tallahassee.injuryboard.com/miscellaneous/obama-citizenship-lawsuit-amended-to-add-defendants...
Barack Obama & Raila Odinga see the video here
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/06/barack-obama-raila-odinga/
Posted on October 6, 2008
Isn’t it a shame the American media have not reported anything about Obama campaigning for a radical, socialist revolutionary in KENYA at the taxpayer’s expense?
OBAMA CAUGHT SAYING ACORN AND FRIENDS WILL SHAPE HIS PRESIDENTIAL AGENDA
Barack Obama Trained ACORN Staff In How To Intimidate Banks Into Giving Subprime Loans. Barack Obama—A Thug With A Law Degree
ACORN Convention - Maxine Waters Speaks About Obama
Maxine Waters Caught Lying About Fannie Mae Ties on 'Real Time'
By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
October 11, 2008 - 12:23 ET
Maxine Waters, a key Democrat congresswoman that has been implicated in blocking government oversight that could have prevented the current financial crisis, was caught lying Friday evening about her connection to failed lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
During the panel discussion of HBO's "Real Time," Waters was challenged by the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore about the campaign contributions she's received from these government sponsored enterprises.
Despite what public records clearly show, Waters denied she had ever taken any money from these two companies
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/10/11/maxine-waters-caught-lying-about-fannie-mae-ties-real-time
Obama Ran ACORN Power Training Classes http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-ran-acorns-training-sessions-on-power
obambo admits he lacks experience and doesn't know what he's doing...<g>
new french video on senator mccains pow experience...
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-video-released-of-pow-john-mccain.html
Cuffy Meigs' Brutal Video Takedown of Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama http://minx.cc/?post=275309
Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:01 PM
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size
What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?
All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.
The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “gift” cards, industry analysts and a confidential informant tell Newsmax.
An ongoing Newsmax investigation into the Obama campaign’s finance reports has exposed multiple instances of campaign finance violations and has been cited in a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission filed by the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6.
Though many of the known violations include donations in excess of the $2,300 per election limit on individual contributions and contributions from foreign nationals, the extent of the amount of fraud is hidden because of a loophole in federal election law.
Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.
The Obama campaign has turned a blind eye to the possibility of donor fraud. Reportedly, during the heated primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign “turned off” many of the security features on its online donor page, allowing any person with a valid credit card number to donate using any name or address.
Typically, card merchants require a cardholder’s name to match critical personal details, such as an address or, at the least, a ZIP code.
Though in recent months the Obama campaign has tightened up security and restored some of the security features used by merchants to weed out fraud, it still has left open easy ways for potential credit card fraud, including techniques similar to those employed by terrorists and drug traffickers to launder illicit funds.
For example, on Oct. 14, an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in Obama’s latest small-donor fundraising drive, making a $5 donation through the campaign’s Web site.
Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” credit card to make the donation.
The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution, and gave him the name of another donor who had agreed to “match” his contribution.
Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same credit card.
The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle.
Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This credit card donation raised no alarm bells in the Obama campaign.
A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”
But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same credit card.
Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign. They were:
Bart Simpson, of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Family Guy, of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, GA.
King Kong, of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.
Newsmax learned of these contributions, which were all made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.
Calling himself “Bart Simpson,” the tipster said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest,” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”
[Editor's Note: See "Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules."]
“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made in the names of Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Raela Odinga, and Family Guy.
“What this means is that the Obama campaign does no verification of the name of the contributor. With a normal credit card, this wouldn’t wor[k], but with these disposable debit cards, no problem!
“This needs to be exposed,” he said.
The tipster attached the confirmation pages from the Obama Web site showing the names of the donors, and in some cases, the names of other Obama donors who had agreed to “match” their contributions.
None of the matching donors’ names appears in the Obama campaign’s public disclosures to the FEC.
Other donors with clearly fictitious names revealed previously by Newsmax, The Los Angeles Times, and blogger Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) include “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”
Five major companies process the bulk of all credit card transactions made in the United States, industry insiders tell Newsmax. The Obama campaign paid one of them, Chase Paymentech, just over $2 million to process its online transactions.
“We never discuss our relationships with any of our merchants, or customers we work with,” James Wester, a spokesman for Chase Paymentech, told Newsmax.
Newsmax asked whether Chase Paymentech had any security feature that would allow it to identify individuals making contributions using gift cards, but Wester declined to comment.
But other industry analysts, who asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the issue, told Newsmax that processors could track gift cards and debit cards “only by the numbers on the cards.”
“There are no names associated with these cards, so as a processor, you have no way of knowing who made the transaction,” one industry analyst said.
Anyone can go into a supermarket or a Rite-Aid and buy a batch of these cards with cash, so there is no trace of the transaction, he added.
“It’s like walk-around money. They could be handing these things out as perks” to newly registered voters or others, “and there’s no way of tracing who is using them.”
Ken Boehm, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in campaign finance law, said that such contributions were clearly illegal.
“Making a contribution in the name of another person is the only part of federal election law that actually carries a criminal penalty,” he told Newsmax. Boehm is the CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
The Obama campaign has paid Synetech Group Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., close to $2 million to compile all of the campaign contribution data from online contributors, bundlers, telemarketers, campaign events, and direct-mail campaigns, and process it for submission to the FEC.
The sheer scope of the Obama fundraising juggernaut was “never contemplated by the FEC,” a company official told Newsmax, asking not to be quoted by name.
“It’s a lot of data. You’re talking 7 million contributions,” he said.
The campaign itself is responsible for screening out fraudulent donors, not Synetech, he said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this is as well-managed as any [campaign]. It’s just huge. When it’s this big, any little thing becomes something more than it is.”
One of the biggest problems the campaign faces is fraud, he said. “It’s a colossal problem. They’re paying the campaign with other people’s money.”
Individuals such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” who made hundreds of contributions to the campaign in excess of the legal limits were not working for the campaign, but for themselves, he insisted.
“It’s all fraud. They do it for kicks. Or they’re testing the cards. The campaign doesn’t want this. Why on earth do they want to have all these messy little transactions? It’s a colossal pain.”
However, the campaign itself has solicited these “messy little transactions” in numerous e-mails to supporters.
For instance, just days before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to supporters, asking them to “make a donation of $5 or more before midnight this Thursday, July 31st, and you could go backstage with Barack.”
Since them, the campaign has run several small donation drives, claiming to “match” donations of $5, $10, or $25 with an equal amount for a previous donor.
Newsmax put a series of questions to the Obama campaign more than a week ago in preparation for this article, such as whether its Internet contribution system automatically matches donors' names and addresses to their credit card numbers, as is common industry practice with online stores.
Newsmax also asked if the campaign uses a similar security screen to match a donor’s name and address to the card number when the donor uses a debit card or a gift card.
Despite multiple requests from Newsmax, the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_illegal_donations/2008/10/21/142761.html?s=al&promo_code=6DD6-1
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
your paid job almost done. Make sure you save. LOL you silly posters. Landslide coming
NEW INFORMATION ABOUT AYERS AND HIS ASSOCIATION WITH OBAMA
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443242,00.html
HYMAN: Obama's KENYA ghosts
Mark Hyman
Sunday, October 12, 2008
http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/oct/12/obamas-kenya-ghosts/
....Mr. Obama's judgment is seriously called into question when he backs an official with troubling ties to Muslim extremists and whose supporters practice ethnic cleansing and genocide. It was Islamic extremists in KENYA who bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 and injuring thousands. None of this has dissuaded Mr. Obama from maintaining disturbing loyalties. "....
Full article >>>
http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/oct/12/obamas-kenya-ghosts/
Stop the Obama Constitutional Crisis
Sign the Petition : 33,837 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution reads: ““No Person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.”
There are numerous allegations to Obama’s claim of natural birth in the U.S. On the web and in the media, all raising suspicion and doubt as to Obama’s actual place of birth and qualification to run for president. Some of the assertions to which Obama “admitted” on Berg’s suit are: he was born in Mombassa, Kenya in 1961 while his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was married to Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan; when his mother, divorced from Obama Sr, moved to Indonesia and married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, Obama was adopted by Soetoro and became an Indonesian citizen; while in Indonesia, Obama had his name changed to Barry Soetoro; Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 under an Indonesian passport when Pakistan was a no travel zone for Americans. Additionally, there is an allegation that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother claims that Obama was born in Kenya; Muammar Gadhafi, leader of Libya, has publicly claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and studied in Muslim schools in Indonesia. Obama has also admitted on his website to hold citizenship in another country (the U.S. Constitution forbids dual citizenship).
A lawsuit in Honolulu in the First District Court is seeking a court-order to open Obama’s secret birth records. Obama has thus far neglected a Freedom of Information request for the records at two hospitals in Hawaii.
Lawsuits in Washington, Georgia, California, Florida, New York and Connecticut are seeking state Superior Courts to force the states’ Secretary of State, as the chief state elections officer, to perform their state constitutional duties to require original certifying birth records from Mr. Obama that would verify his birth in Hawaii.
Philip Berg’s months-long lawsuit in Federal Court in Philadelphia reached a dramatic plateau as Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) failed to respond to the court that Mr. Obama is not a natural born U.S. Citizen and therefore not qualified to run for office of President of the U.S. They admitted to Obama’s non-qualification by their failure to respond to a 30-day court ordered discovery in which Obama and the DNC were ordered to answer a petition by Berg. Mr. Berg has stated that if the Federal court chooses to dismiss he will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.
These allegations will not go away until Mr. Obama produces proof to State and Federal authorities. If he will not do so voluntaraly he must be compelled by every means available. You, as an employee of The People, have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and domestic. We The People are demanding you to make every effort, both public and private, to resolve this fundamental Constitutional question.
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244/stop-obama-constitutional-crisis/
Man shot three times in street by racist gunman - for wearing Barack Obama T-shirt
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1070975/Man-shot-times-street-racist-gunman--wearing-Barack-Obama-T-shirt.html
Blowout shaping up. Keep up the heat folks!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html
and to the DNC. Ship my damn signs already . Been 2 weeks! LOL
FROM A FRIEND IN ILLINOIS
Perhaps the U.S. should pull out of Chicago?
Body count: In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago ; 221 killed in Iraq .
Sens. Barack Obama & STICK Durbin,
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.,
Gov. Rod Blogojevich,
House leader Mike Madigan,
Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike),
Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley)
.....our leadership in Illinois .....all Democrats.
Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago .
Of course, they're all blaming each other.
Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
State pension fund $44 Billion in debt, worst in country.
Cook County ( Chicago ) sales tax 10.25% highest in country. (Look 'em up if you want).
Chicago school system rated one of the worst in the country.
This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois . And he's gonna 'fix' Washington politics for us!
What Caused The Economic Crisis? Watch This! (VIDEO HAS BEEN UPDATED)
http://www.jimdemint.com/blog/2008/09/what-caused-the-economic-crisis-watch-this/
Measured, Thoughtful and Progressive................
Choose between regulation and markets? - it's a false dichotomy - OF COURSE, markets need regulation. Anything else is absurd. This isn't a banana republic - or is it operating like one? As for the SEC, fire his azz, shake 'em up and kill the naked shorts - thieves in ties, nothing more. all imo:)
Barack - it's your election to lose.......
"We are facing one of the most serious financial crises in this nation’s history. The events of the last week – from the failure of Lehman to the bailout of AIG to the continued volatility of the market – have not just threatened the trading floors and high-rises of Wall Street, but the stability and security of our entire global economy. Across this country, Americans are worried about whether they can make their mortgage payments, or keep their jobs, or ensure that their retirement is secure. Truly, we are all in this together.
Our government and the Federal Reserve have already taken unprecedented action to prevent a deepening of this crisis that could jeopardize the life savings and well-being of millions of Americans. But it is now clear that even bolder and more decisive action is necessary.
In recent years, I have outlined plans that would have helped prevent the problems we now face, and yesterday I proposed the outlines of a plan that would establish a more stable and permanent solution to strengthen our financial system. Today, I fully support the effort of Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke to work in a bipartisan spirit with Congress to find this kind of solution.
What we’re looking at right now is to provide the Treasury and the Federal Reserve with as broad authority as necessary to stabilize markets and maintain credit. We need a more institutional response to create a system that can manage some of the underlying problems with bad mortgages, help homeowners stay in their homes, protect the retirement and savings of working Americans.
In the coming days, I will more closely examine the details of the Treasury and Fed proposal, and as I do, I’ll work to ensure that it provides an effective emergency response by including four basic principles that my economic advisors and I just discussed this morning.
First, we cannot only have a plan for Wall Street. We must also help Main Street as well. I’m glad that our government is moving so quickly in addressing the crisis that threatens some of our biggest banks and corporations. But a similar crisis has threatened families, workers and homeowners for months and months and Washington has done far too little to help.
For too long, this Administration has been willing to hit the fast-forward button in helping distressed Wall Street firms while pressing pause when it comes to saving jobs or keeping people in their homes. We already know that the credit crisis that has emerged from our largest financial institutions is becoming a credit crunch for small business owners, homeowners, and students seeking loans in big cities and small towns. Now that American taxpayers are being called on to share in this new burden, we must take equally swift and serious action to help lift the burdens they face every day.
In the same bipartisan spirit that is being shown with regard to the crisis on Wall Street, I ask Senator McCain, President Bush, Republicans and Democrats to join me in supporting an emergency economic plan for working families – a plan that would help folks cope with rising gas and food prices, spark job creation through repair of our schools and roads, help states and cities avoid painful budget cuts and tax increases, help homeowners stay in their homes, and provide retooling assistance for America’s auto industry. John McCain and I can continue to argue about our different economic agendas for next year, but we should come together now to work on what this country urgently needs this year.
The second principle I would like to see in the emerging plan from the Treasury and the Fed is that our approach should be one of mutual responsibility and reciprocity. It must not be designed to reward particular companies or the irresponsible decisions of borrowers or lenders. It must not be designed to enhance the personal gain of CEOs and management. The recklessness of some of these executives has helped cause this mess, even as they walk away with multimillion dollar golden parachutes while taxpayers are left holding the bag. As taxpayers are asked to take extraordinary steps to protect our financial system, it is only appropriate that those who benefit be expected to contribute to the protection of American homeowners and the American economy. Just as support is not designed to payoff egregious executive compensation, it should not reward those who are ruthlessly foreclosing on American families.
Third, this plan must be temporary and coupled with tough new oversight and regulations of our financial institutions, and there must be a clear process to wind down this plan and restore private sector assets into private sector hands after restoring stability to the system. Taxpayers must share in any upside benefit that such stability brings.
Fourth, this plan should be part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20. This is a worldwide issue, and while the United States can and will lead in stabilizing the credit markets, we should ask other nations, who share in this crisis, to be part of the solution as well.
One last point. We did not arrive at this crisis by some accident of history. What led us to this point was years and years of a philosophy in Washington and on Wall Street that viewed even common-sense regulation and oversight as unwise and unnecessary; that shredded consumer protections and loosened the rules of the road. CEOs and executives got reckless. Lobbyists got what they wanted. Politicians in both parties looked the other way until it was too late. And it is the American people who have paid the price. The events of this week have rendered a final verdict on that failed philosophy, and it will end if I am President of the United States. We must build upon the ideas I have laid out over the last several years about how to modernize our financial regulation in this country, and establish commonsense rules of the road for our financial system to help restore confidence in our financial system.
Finally, given the gravity of this situation, and based on conversations I have had with both Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke, I will refrain from presenting a more detailed blue-print of how an immediate plan might be structured until I can fully review the details of the plan proposed by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. It is critical at this point that the markets and the public have confidence that their work will be unimpeded by partisan wrangling, and that leaders in both parties work in concert to solve the problem at hand.
I know these are difficult days. And I know there are a lot of families out there right now who are feeling anxiety – about their jobs, about their homes, about their retirement savings. But here’s what I also know. This isn’t a time for fear or panic. This is a time for resolve and for leadership. I know we can steer ourselves out of this crisis. That’s who we are. That’s what we’ve always done as Americans. Our nation has faced difficult times before. And at each of those moments, we’ve risen to meet the challenges as one people, and one nation. That is the America we need to be and can be today."
The Election - Massive Vote Fraud Uncovered and Exposed ~ ? ~
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32247268
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Wow! That just about sums up the entire nightmare we're living through.
You're speaking to the choir here.
I have no answers.
God Bless America
Wow! That just about sums up the entire nightmare we're living through. You're speaking to the choir here. I have no answers.
Subverting Democracy Through Electoral Fraud -
By Stephen Lendman
9-15-8
In America and elsewhere, electoral fraud isn't new nor should anyone be surprised it occurs. But as technology improves, so are better ways found to pre-arrange outcomes. It's easier than ever today so more time, effort, money and other resources are earmarked for it. The result:
-- elections and their run-up are mere kabuki theater; the major media and PR industry play the lead role; everything is pre-scripted;
-- secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process;
-- candidates are pre-selected;
-- big money owns them;
-- key outcomes are predetermined;
-- both major parties share fault;
-- partisan politics serve the privileged;
-- they get the best democracy money can buy;
-- elections give them cover;
-- independents are shut out;
-- the media ignore them;
-- issues are unaddressed; horse race journalism and trivia substitute;
-- voter disenfranchisement is rife; many are peremptorily stricken from the rolls; others are intimidated not to vote or are detered by various illegal practices;
-- a little known one is called "vote caging;" it's to suppress minority voters by delisting them if they fail to answer "do not forward" registered mail sent to homes they're not living at - because they're at school, in the military, or away for other reasons;
-- 4.5 million or more Americans can't vote because of past criminal records, or they're currently part of the largest prison population in the world at 2.3 million; mostly black and Latino; and increasing by around 1000 a week;
-- half of eligible voters opt out because their interests go unaddressed;
-- elections are privatized; touchscreen electronic machines do our voting; 80% of all 2004 votes were cast and counted on corporate- owned, programmed, and operated ones with no receipts for verification and no vetting of their "trade secret" software; computer professionals knows these machines are notoriously easy to manipulate - to erase votes, make ones for one candidate show up for another, go dead and be inoperable, or control an entire computer network through one machine and be able to change, add or erase votes easily;
-- Stephen Spoonamore is a self-described "life-long Republican" and one of the world's leading cyber crime experts; from a just released October 2006 interview, he explains how the "structures" of Diebold's machines are inherently flawed and what he considers "IT junk;" regarding the 2000 and 2004 elections, he says: "There is a very strong argument (that they were) electronically stolen, the hanging chads were just a distraction....I think (Diebold machines) are brilliantly designed....to steal elections;" so
-- losers are declared winners, and not just for president; as a result, the electoral process assures people lose out, or put another way - operatively, democracy in America is pure fantasy.
Calling it corrupted and needing repair barely explains things. We have a two-party duopoly. Democrats are interchangeable with Republicans. Differences between them are minor. Not a dime's worth to matter. Both sides support corporate interests, imperial designs, aggressive wars, and the divine right of capital to exploit workers, gain new markets, control the world's resources, and rule it without challenge. Unconsidered - beneficial social change and real electoral democracy with every US citizen 18 or older eligible to vote as the Twenty Sixth Amendment allows.
Constitutionally Flawed by Design
Ferdinand Lundberg separated myth from reality in his critically important book titled "Cracks in the Constitution." It masterfully deconstructs what he called "no masterpiece of political architecture," no "Rock of Ages," and "the great totempole of American society" that, in fact, is deeply flawed. Duplicitous "wheeler-dealer" politicians and their cronies (what today we call "a Wall Street crowd") created it for their own self-interest with no consideration whatever for the greater good. "We the people" were nowhere in sight even in the Bill of Rights that was enacted through compromise and solely to benefit wealthy property owners who wanted its protections.
From the beginning, privilege counted most in America, and it's codified in our most sacred document. It was designed (in Michael Parenti's words to) "resist the pressure of popular tides (and protect) a rising bourgeoisie's (freedom to) invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate wealth" the same way things work today. It was so the country could be run the way politician, jurist and first Chief Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said it should be - for and by "The people who own" it for their self-interest. And to appear nominally democratic "for the defense of the rich against the poor," according to Adam Smith.
Consider voting rights alone that are reviewed below in detail. The Constitution granted our most fundamental right - what Tom Paine called "the primary right by which all other rights are protected" - to privileged adult white male property owners only - around 15% of the population at the time. Native Americans were being exterminated. Blacks were commodities. Women were just childbearing and homemaking appendages of their husbands, and common ordinary folks were to have no say about how the country should be run.
Over time, constitutional and legislative changes as well as High Court rulings opened the process to everyone 18 or older and allowed states the right to enfranchise younger voters at their discretion. Yet today the system is deeply flawed. Large numbers of eligible voters opt out or are excluded, and a host of ways shut out poor minorities most likely to vote the "wrong" way if they're enfranchised - so they're not.
Even though the Constitution, Amendments, other laws and High Court rulings prohibit voting discrimination, violations, in fact, are common and abusive. In addition, no law ensures the universal right to vote under one uniform standard the way it is in most countries. States instead can set their own procedures and norms as long as they set don't conflict with federal laws, but this created a patchwork of 50 different systems no democracy should tolerate.
Proportional Representation v. Winner-Take-All
Most democracies have proportionally representative (PR) government unlike America's winner-take-all system. PR fairly represents all voters and all political parties or groups proportionally to their electoral strength. Thus if candidates from one party win 30% of the votes, they get 30% of legislative seats so that government represents all segments of society, not a privileged minority the way it works under winner-take-all. It awards 100% of power to a 50.1% majority. Effectively shuts out the other 49.9%, and ends up woefully undemocratic. Combined with a two party duopoly, the power of money, privatized electronic voting, purged unwanted voters, and various other schemes it becomes a process only despots would love and envy because they have no equivalently matching system.
The Electoral College
It's another systemic flaw, but the term isn't in the Constitution. And until the early 1800s, it wasn't in common usage to describe the way presidents and vice-presidents are elected. However, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 states:
"Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 then explained the original way electors chose presidents and vice-presidents: "The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President....after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President." Today, of course, there's no separation between the two.
The Framers considered several options in choosing the current one, but clearly their own self-interest came first. One idea was for Congress to choose the president. Another was for state legislatures to do it, and a third was to let the people decide by popular vote. The Founders chose a fourth way - an indirect election by each state's-appointed Number of Electors. Nearly always they support voter wishes, but they're free to vote independently if they choose. In the nation's history, 157 electors did so and went against the will of the majority.
Critics cite many concerns about the Electoral College:
-- it's fundamentally undemocratic in cases where popular vote totals exceed the Electoral College count; case in point - Bush v. Gore in 2000, but there were other examples earlier in 1888, 1876 and 1824 as explained below. In 1800 as well before the 12th Amendment required electors to cast two separate votes - one for president and the other for vice-president, but the idea today is to do it for members of the same party;
-- also at issue is whether large or small states gain advantage from the current system; small ones do in having a proportionally large number of electors for their populations; however, large states, by their size, have more electoral votes and thus more influence; it takes lots of small states to equal one California, New York or Texas;
-- if no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the House chooses the president, the Senate the vice-president, and the public is left out entirely;
-- the Electoral College system reinforces a two-party duopoly and shuts out independent opposition; they get unequal exposure, and most voters won't support candidates who can't win; and
-- 16 times since the Electoral College's founding (2000 being the most recent), winning presidential candidates won a minority of votes; under a winner-take-all no runoff system, there's no way to know if the public's favorite was elected, especially in close races; even worse, when half the electorate opts out, a majority win can be with as little as 25.1% of eligible voters.
Earlier Examples of Electoral Fraud
Much analysis went into showing how the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen. More on them below, but first some earlier examples.
One was the 1824 election known as the "Corrupt Bargain." Four major candidates were involved - all from the same Democratic- Republican party, today's Democrats:
-- Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford - President James Monroe's favorite;
-- Speaker of the House Henry Clay;
-- Andrew Jackson - a former general and Tennessee senator later elected the nation's seventh president in 1828; and
-- John Quincy Adams - son of John Adams, the nation's second president.
When votes of the 24 states were tallied, no winner emerged. Jackson led with 42%. Adams trailed with 32%, and Clay and Crawford had 13% each. In the electoral count, Jackson had 99, 32 short of a majority. Adams trailed with 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37. Under the 12th Amendment, it fell to the House to choose a winner from the top three, so in the run-up to the March inauguration day, lobbying and back room bargaining were furious. In the process, Clay won over western states for Adams even though they voted solidly for Jackson. He even got his own Kentucky home state's votes where Adams was entirely shut out.
On February 9, 1825, the House met to vote, and after a month of hard-bargaining, Adams took 13 states or the exact minimum he needed to win. Jackson got 7 and Crawford 4. The House galleries were outraged and with good reason. Deal-makers won out, not voters, and three days later Adams rewarded Clay by nominating him for Secretary of State. Jackson supporters were furious, and Clay was dogged for the rest of his life with charges of having struck a "corrupt bargain."
The 1876 election was even worse because of its fallout. Democrat Samuel Tilden got today's equivalent of two million more votes than Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But in all presidential elections, electoral college votes are decisive. With 20 disputed votes uncounted, Tilden led 184 to 165 so a House committee got to decide. It secretly struck a deal, called the "bargain of 1877," to abandon Reconstruction and sell out freed blacks:
-- Democrats controlled the House;
-- they agreed not to obstruct Hayes' election even though he lost;
-- Hayes, in turn, agreed to recognize Democrat control of the disputed southern states;
-- railroad interests got federal aid; and
-- former slaves were to be guaranteed their rights, but southern Democrats reneged; the era of Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings, and disenfranchisement began and didn't end until the 1960s civil rights legislation - but not entirely, and today Voting Rights Act provisions no longer protect.
Another example was Lyndon Johnson's 1948 senatorial primary win - the most blatant example of electoral theft in US history according to some observers. Historian Robert Caro is one of them. He documented it in the second of his planned four-volume study of our 36th President. He noted that ballot fraud was common in parts of Texas at the time, then went into great detail to show how Johnson miraculously overcame a 20,000 vote deficit to pull out an 87 vote victory. In Caro's words: it wasn't "the only election....ever stolen, but there was never such brazen thievery." The Texas Democrat Party's executive committee upheld the win by a 29 to 28 vote, and Johnson went on to defeat his Republican rival in the general election.
But there was more. The primary result was so disputed that a Federal District Court ordered Johnson's name off the ballot pending an investigation. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, however, voided the order on a petition from Johnson's chief lawyer, Abe Fortas. In 1965 as President, Johnson rewarded Fortas by appointing him to the High Court where he served for four years, then resigned under pressure for having accepted a secret $20,000 a year retainer from a Wall Street financier in return for unspecified advice. No mention was made of how he helped launch Johnson's senatorial career that made him Majority Leader, Vice- President and then President.
Another example involved partisan gerrymandering, not outright fraud, but in the end little different. The process is a form of redistricting that goes back to Elbridge Gerry (one of the Founding Fathers) who as Massachusetts governor in 1812 signed a bill into law that redistricted the state to benefit his Democratic- Republican party, today's Democrats.
States may redistrict legislative district boundaries to reflect decennial census population changes. But individual ones have latitude under their own standards provided they comply with federal requirements. In addition, municipal governments elected on a district basis, as opposed to at large, go through the same process. Criteria may allow for compact, contiguous districts, keeping political units and communities within a single one, and not drawing boundaries for partisan advantage or incumbent protection. All too often, however, one-party dominated legislatures abuse the process, and in 2003 it happened notoriously in Texas under Tom DeLay's leadership.
As Republican Majority Leader, he engineered a virtual coup d'etat against Democrats in his home state - one of the most outlandish examples of gerrymandering ever. It gave Republicans more control. They elected additional members to Congress, and thus got a greater majority in Washington.
The essential rules are to redistrict every decade, but DeLay took advantage of Texas law that contains no prohibition against doing it mid-decade. Democrats challenged his action. Took it to the Supreme Court, and on June 28, 2006 the High Court upheld most of what he designed. It rejected Democrat's contention that the Texas plan was unconstitutional because the legislature redistricted three years after the 2000 census solely to advantage Republicans when they had a voting majority to do it.
Ahead of the Court ruling, Columbia Law School Professor Samuel Issacharoff referred to "a sense of embarrassment about what happened in American politics. The rules of decorum have fallen apart. Voters no longer choose members of the House; the people who draw the lines do," and when they rig the process democracy becomes fantasy.
That characterized the South post-Reconstruction when Jim Crow laws stripped blacks of their voting rights and gave regional Democrats decades of one-party rule. Then recall the 1960 presidential election that Kennedy won over Nixon in spite of charges of fraud and vote buying. The race was close with Kennedy getting 113,000 more votes than Nixon, and his 303 - 219 electoral vote margin masked the fact that key states like Texas, Illinois and others could have gone either way.
As mayor, Richard J. Daley controlled Chicago politics, and it was widely believed that he turned an election eve Nixon lead into a Kennedy win by holding back a large number of precinct results that coincidentally reported later at the same time for Kennedy. After his inauguration, the DOJ conducted an "inconclusive" investigation. As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy was in charge at the time.
A Brief History of US Voting Rights
-- the 1787 Constitution and 1791 Bill of Rights gave only adult white male property owners (around 15% of the population) the franchise in most states; excluded were men with no property, women, slaves, some free black men, Native Americans, apprentices, laborers, felons and persons considered incompetent for whatever reasons;
-- in 1810, the last religious prerequisite was eliminated;
-- in 1850, property ownership and tax requirements no longer applied;
-- in 1855, Connecticut adopted the first literacy test for voting; Massachusetts followed in 1857; Mississippi and other southern states did as well;
-- in 1870, the 15th Amendment gave freed slaves and adult males of all races the right to vote;
-- in 1889, Florida adopted a poll tax; 10 other southern states followed;
-- in 1913, the 17th Amendment allowed voters to elect senators; previously, state legislatures did it;
-- in Guinn v. United (1915), the Supreme Court ruled that grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests violated the 15th Amendment and were unconstitutional;
-- in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the franchise;
-- in 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted all Native Americans citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections;
-- in Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court ruled that all white primaries were unconstitutional;
-- in 1957, the first voting rights bill since Reconstruction passed - the Civil Rights Act of 1957; because of Democrat opposition, it was largely ineffective;
-- in Gormillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Supreme Court ruled that a gerrymandered Alabama district unconstitutionally disenfranchised blacks;
-- in 1961, the 23rd Amendment let District of Columbia voters participate in presidential elections; it didn't grant statehood or allow representation in Congress;
-- in 1964, the 24th Amendment banned poll taxes in federal elections;
-- in 1965, the Voting Rights Act protected minority voter rights and banned literacy test requirements;
-- in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), the Supreme Court banned poll taxes in all elections; the same year, it upheld the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach;
-- in 1970, the Voting Rights Act renewal banned literacy requirements for five years; at the time, 18 states still had them; in Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upheld the ban, made permanent in 1975;
-- in 1971, the 26th Amendment standardized the minimum voting age at 18 but let states enfranchise younger voters;
-- in Dunn v. Blumstein (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that lengthy residence requirements of over 30 - 50 days prior to state and local elections were unconstitutional;
-- in 1995, federal "motor voter laws" let prospective voters register when they obtain or renew a driver's license; and
-- in 2003, the Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act required states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.
Bush v. Gore in Election 2000
On December 12, the Supreme Court hijacked Election 2000 by deciding for George Bush after three days earlier halting the Florida recount on the spurious grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. It was the first time ever in US history that the High Court reversed a popular vote (5 - 4) to install its own preferred candidate - and the public has paid dearly ever since.
The High Court settled an election that was deeply flawed and rigged to elect George Bush. The Supreme Court then affirmed it by cutting off debate - most visibly in Florida. For its part, the media cheerled the process and wholeheartedly approved. They, too, got their man in Washington and rallied around him ever since. More on that below.
Election 2000 was rife with fraud, but its outcome hinged on how Florida went. Investigative journalist Greg Palast (and others) uncovered gross irregularities. He documented them in running reports, and published a full account in his 2002 book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." He got hold of two CD-ROM disks "right out of the computer offices of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris" with an evidentiary database of electoral fraud.
In the run-up to November 2000, Harris, "in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush," ordered 57,700 mostly poor African Americans and Latinos (likely to vote Democratic) removed from voter registries for having been "identified" as ex-felons and thus ineligible to vote under state law. Palast called it as "The Great Florida Ex-Con Game" and cited the use of "scrub lists." Two of them comprised nearly 1% of Florida's electorate and almost 3% of its black voters. They were compiled by the DBT Online subsidiary of Atlanta-based Choicepoint, a company with close Republican ties - much the way Diebold is with electronic voting machines.
On close examination, extensive inaccuracies were found in its work:
-- Floridians were purged (without verification) because their names, gender, birthplace and race matched countless ex-felons who show up multiple times in state phone directories - like "David Butler" with 77 listings;
-- alleged crimes were listed as committed in future years; and
-- ex-felons of other states were removed whose voting rights were restored.
Choicepoint vice-president Martin Fagan later admitted that at least 8000 names were incorrectly listed and removed from voter rolls prior to the election. He also said accuracy checks weren't conducted. That's for users, like the state of Florida, to do.
On April 17, 2000, at a special Atlanta congressional hearing, Choicepoint vice-president James Lee testified that Florida officials told DBT to purge names matching 80% of ones believed to be ineligible. Acceptable procedure allowed dropping middle initials and suffixes and adding nicknames and aliases. In addition, names could be reversed so Thomas Lee could be removed instead of Lee Thomas.
On February 16, 2001, before the US Civil Rights Commission, Choicepoint senior vice-president George Bruder testified that the company misinformed Florida Supervisors of Elections officials on the issue of race in compiling purge lists. It got Palast to conclude that "An African-American felon named John Doe might wipe out the registration of an innocent African-American Will Whiting, but not the rights of an innocent Caucasian Will Whiting."
Under orders from Jeb Bush, various other obstructive practices took place before and on election day:
-- ballot boxes in African-American districts were missing and uncounted;
-- in black precincts, state troopers (near polling sites) intimidated and delayed voters for hours by searching cars and setting up roadblocks;
-- some precincts asked for two photo IDs; Florida law requires only one;
-- African-American students at schools like Florida A&M signed up in force as first-time voters but faced obstructions at polling stations; they were turned away because they couldn't show a registration card or drivers license; but Florida law lets eligible residents sign an affidavit (not provided) and swear they hadn't voted;
-- other practices were also revealed - solely in minority districts: voters were turned away and directed to vote elsewhere; they were never mailed registration cards; and they were told they showed up too late and polls were closed;
-- in minority districts, requested absentee ballots were never received; and
-- alleged forged absentee ballots voted for George Bush.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act bans discriminatory practices that for decades disenfranchised blacks and other minorities. It prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure (that may) deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." It established various federal oversight procedures for enforcement, but for Election 2000 it hardly mattered. In Florida, abuses were brazen, but Democrats ducked the issue. They ceded the state and election to George Bush even though their candidate Gore won, and by a comfortable margin.
On January 6, 2001, a joint session of Congress convened to count the Electoral College votes. In a final humiliation and despite 20 Democrat congressmen objecting, no party senator joined their colleagues to adjourn the session and have it reconvene for separate House and Senate votes as required by an 1887 law. With the Senate divided 50 - 50, Democrats controlled the body since Vice-President Gore had the deciding vote. Even he refused to intervene, but it wasn't surprising. On December 13, 2000, he conceded the election, the day after the Supreme Court awarded it to George Bush.
Bush v. Kerry in Election 2004
As bad as 2000 was, Election 2004 was worse because technology smoothed the way with electronic ease. Following the 2000 election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed in 2002 as the first ever comprehensive electoral law designed to facilitate fraud. Hailed as a major advance, it, in fact, corrupts the process because of how it's abused. It ushered in the age of privatized voting - on touchtone electronic machines owned, programmed, operated and controlled by giant corporations with close Republican ties. Today, over 80% of all votes are cast and counted this way. Most states require no verifiable paper receipts, so it's easy to manipulate pre-arranged outcomes, and not just for president.
A record 16.8 million new voters registered for Election 2004 - most according to surveys for Kerry making him a heavy favorite when George Bush's approval rating hovered around 40%, and most voters believed the country was headed in the wrong direction. At the time, Zogby International reported that no president since Harry Truman won a second term with a below-50% rating. Yet (officially) Bush got 11.6 million more votes than in 2000 and beat Kerry by a comfortable three million margin. It was much closer in the Electoral College (286 - 251), and again Florida (and Ohio) made the difference.
As in 2000, extensive fraud explained things with Greg Palast again doing first-rate investigative work. So did activist, media critic and Professor of Media Ecology Mark Crispin Miller in his superb book "Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform." In 2007, it came out in paperback with 100 new pages for added insight into our electoral problems:
-- it exposed denial in the progressive media - publications like The Nation, Mother Jones, TomPaine.com and Salon that saw "no evidence" of electoral fraud when the work of Miller, Palast and others exposed loads of it;
-- it showed the 2006 elections were just as fraudulent at a time independent surveys indicated a huge Democrat sweep; yet they only gained 31 House seats for a majority and five in the Senate for a 49 - 49 tie along with two independents - Bernie Sanders allied with Democrats and Joe Lieberman with Republicans plus Vice- President Cheney as tie-breaker if needed;
-- it documented how Ohio was stolen much like Florida in 2000 and again in 2004 with electronic voting machine ease plus an array of other practices that betray a rigged process - and that's Miller's purpose for his book: a plea for reform with practical ideas like banning electronic voting, returning to verifiable paper ballots, and placing civil servants in charge of elections, not partisan politicians or self-serving corporations. Short of that, future elections will be predictable. "The election of 2008 will be (like) 2004 - and a preview of 2012, 2016, 2020 and every 'presidential race' thereafter," according to Miller. Who can disagree based on clear evidence since 2000 alone.
Post-election, Kerry told Miller he knew that Republicans stole the election and denied him the presidency. He then claimed he never said it, putting him strongly in the business as usual camp with electoral and other progressive reforms off the table. Miller called his response "an irrational refusal to confront, or even to perceive, a clear and present danger to American democracy." Like Gore in 2000, he quit without a fight but didn't wait as long to do it. He conceded on November 3, less than 24 hours after the previous day's election.
Sourcewatch.org documented a sampling of some "deeply troubling" 2004 practices:
-- the major media blackout (and too much of it from progressive sources);
-- nearly half the six million American voters living or expected to be abroad never received requested absentee ballots, or got them too late; military personnel, likely to vote Republican, had no such problems;
-- the Republican National Committee hired consulting firm Sproul &
Associates to register voters in six battleground states; they reportedly refused to register Democrats;
-- malfunctioning New Mexico voting machines wiped out 20,000 votes to let Bush carry the state by a 5988 margin;
-- faulty voting equipment spoiled one million or more ballots; Greg Palast reported "over three million votes cast but never counted" broken down as follows:
(1) rejected provisional ballots (for registered voters unlisted on rolls) - 1,090,729;
(2) rejected spoiled ballots (ones malfunctioning machines didn't count) - 1,389,231;
(3) uncounted absentee ballots (for minor technical reasons) - 526,420; and
(4) registered voters barred from voting (alleged ex-felons, blacks, Latinos, and others in Democrat counties) - no precise number known nationwide but it was easily in the hundreds of thousands.
Palast also reported that a US Census voter turnout announcement (seven months after the election) confirmed (in a footnote) that 3.4 million fewer votes were cast than the "official" Clerk of the House of Representatives tally - telling evidence of voter disenfranchisement.
Sourcewatch.org further reported:
-- exit polls in 30 states deviated from final results by amounts far beyond margins of error; in all but four states, discrepancies favored Bush; it's widely acknowledged that exit polling is the most reliable predictor of final results; not in 2004 with Ohio Exhibit A:
-- tens of thousands of eligible voters were illegally purged from the rolls;
-- Democrat registration cards weren't processed;
-- 357,000 voters, overwhelmingly Democrat, were prevented form voting or their votes weren't counted; Bush's Ohio "victory" margin was 118,599 - clear proof he lost and Kerry carried the state and the election;
-- there were too few Democrat precincts, and they got fewer voting machines than Republican ones;
-- as a result, people waited up to 12 hours to vote; some gave up and went home; others were denied and told they were at the wrong precinct;
-- evidence that over 80,000 Kerry votes went for Bush, and most disturbing of all that
-- one in every four Ohio registrants showing up to vote discovered they weren't listed on the rolls because of Republican Secretary of State and co-chair of Bush's re-election committee Kenneth Blackwell's purging.
These and other practices were rampant in Ohio, Florida and around the country in key battleground and other states:
-- the Republican National Committee's Voter Outreach of America collected thousands of Nevada voter registration forms; Republican ones were turned in to public officials; those for Democrats were destroyed;
-- too few voting machines were in Democrat precincts, and many of them malfunctioned or broke down; in Republican precincts, voting went smoothly;
-- some Democrat precinct polling stations never opened; others opened late and closed early;
-- Republican-funded agitators were deployed in key Democrat precincts; they intimidated voters with unfounded threats of imminent arrest for failure to pay child support, unpaid parking tickets, and other false accusations;
-- key Republican counties recorded impossibly high turnouts - up to 98% and in some cases higher than the number of registered voters; in Democrat ones, the reverse was true - as low as 7%;
It showed democracy in America is pure fantasy, but you'd never know it from major media reports and too many others from sources that should know better.
How the Media Cover Presidential Politics
On all vital topics, major media sources produce a daily flow of disinformation masquerading as real news. It's their role as "Guardians of Power" the way Davids Cromwell and Edwards explained in their powerful critique of professional journalism. They and others show that the media are in crisis, and a free and open society is at risk. Trivia substitutes for substance and fiction for fact. News is carefully filtered, dissent suppressed, and supporting the powerful undermines the public interest.
As a result, wars of aggression are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are denied for our own good. Patriotism means supporting lawless governments, and electoral politics are just kabuki theater and horse race journalism. It shows up noticeably in presidential years as spectacle when saturation coverage goes round the clock. Horse race trivia substitutes for real information, and undisguised partisanship favors Republicans over Democrats mostly getting short shrift or attacked. No wonder the public is uninformed and half of eligible voters opt out. Why bother when their issues go addressed. Cases in point: Elections 2000 and 2004.
In the run-up to Election 2000, it was painful following the one- sided coverage for George Bush - especially on television and right- wing talk radio. But that paled compared to the unprecedented post- election partisanship to halt the Florida recount, ignore the popular will, support an electoral power grab, and back the illegitimacy of an unelected president. Working journalists became tools of power, apologists for their actions, and co- conspiratorially responsible for the outcome.
They cheerled the dismantling of democracy. Supported George Bush's illegitimacy, and editorialized like The New Times about his "unusual gracious(ness)" post-election, his "hopeful (offer) of conciliation (and) Despite the bitterness of the last five weeks, and indeed the last year, Americans are ready to turn the page. George Walker Bush....must lead the way." The Washington Post noted that "Mr. Bush achieved his narrow victory in part by putting a softer face on his party - by his promise to be a uniter....We congratulate him on his 'victory.' "
Post-election, a consortium of large US news organizations (including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and others) enlisted the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to conduct a Florida Ballot Project comprehensive review of all machine-uncounted ballots in Florida, including "undervotes" and "overvotes (175,000 in total)." The former were ballots initially registering no vote while the latter were marked ballots for Bush or Gore with the candidate's name also written in or circled.
On November 12, 2001 (10 months after Bush took office), they released NORC's results in an attempt to suppress the truth and boost the administration's legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, they showed that Bush would have won (Florida) by 493 votes even without the High Court's intervention. They also claimed he'd have had a 225 vote margin if recounts in four disputed counties had been completed. The New York Times hailed the result as proof that the "Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote," and the other consortium members went along. But it was false, and they knew it.
Their own study showed that if all Florida "undervotes" and "overvotes" had been counted and added to the final tally, Gore would have won. This was so explosive that a New York Times journalist on the project reportedly told a colleague they'll be "major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out." But it didn't because consortium member managements quashed it under heavy Bush administration pressure.
Yet not entirely. The NYT went both ways on November 12, but buried the bad news on a back page most readers never saw. Reporters Ford Fessenden and John Broder wrote: "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount....to go forward." Then further down they said: examination of all rejected ballots "found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount." The Times also reported that Bush netted about 290 votes from illegally cast absentee ballots, and the consortium estimated that various disparities cost Gore tens of thousands of Florida votes compared to Bush's narrow 537 victory margin. Nonetheless, they acquiesced to his power grab and share major responsibility for its fallout.
And it continued during the 2004 campaign, most notably in collaboration with the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Despite their unfounded accusations about John Kerry, the media jumped on them. They left military records and eyewitness accounts unexamined that would have exposed them, and took the lead in spreading spurious disinformation a little checking would have
debunked.
Back in 2000 as well as 2004, they also downplayed Bush's Air National Guard record. His admission of abusing alcohol until age 40. Allegations of drug abuse. His explosive temper, and his unimpressive Yale and Harvard Business School records.
Also his dismal business performance, yet he made a fortune nonetheless. Oil exploration company Arbusto lost money but got millions from family-connected investors to keep it afloat. Then Spectrum 7 Energy bought Arbusto in 1984. In 1986, it was failing when oil prices collapsed. Harken Energy bought out Bush's equity in exchange for company stock. A 1991 SEC document suggested he violated federal securities law at least four times by selling Harken stock while serving as a director. But GHW Bush was president. The case was quietly dropped, and the media never bothered to expose the kind of shenanigans they'd have jumped on against Democrats.
Nor in 2004 to highlight Bush's early administration years that coincided with the biggest corporate scandals and bankruptcies since Teapot Dome in the 1920s. It's no wonder that author Kevin Phillips expressed fears in his new book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism." He's worried that we may be on the edge of the abyss because of "three profligate decades," an orgy of excess under GW Bush, and though he's not prone to predicting, he leans heavily on an unpleasant outcome. But you'd never know it from the way media touts protect Republicans, including the worst of the current incumbent's record.
Well into Election 2008, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting notes that the same 2000/2004 script is in play in its May/June and July/ August issues. They feature stories about "The Press Corps' Unshakeable Crush on McCain" and "Obama's Elitism." Here's a sampling of what Professor Henry Higgins called "(quotes) that would make (an honest observer) blush."
On McCain:
-- MSNBC host Chris Mathews - "The press loves (him). We're his base."
-- Newsweek's Howard Fineman - "McCain('s) as joyously combative as Popeye and as earnestly confessional as Oprah."
-- Charles Lane in the New Republic - "I'm falling for John McCain."
-- CBS 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace - so enamored with McCain that "I'm thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination."
-- CBS host Bob Schieffer - (McCain's the) most famous maverick of the last half of the 20th century,"
-- the Washington Post's Dana Milbank - "He's the bravest candidate in the presidential race. While his rivals pander to primary constituencies, the former prisoner of war gives audiences a piece of his mind."
-- Time magazine Michael Scherer - McCain's nomination will transform the GOP and "shift its priorities on key domestic issues ranging from global warming to the cheap importation of prescription drugs. Does this sound too good to be true?" Not according to Scherer.
-- The New York Times David Brooks - McCain is allergic to blind party discipline and builds radically different coalitions depending on his views on each issue."
-- The New York Times "liberal" columnist Frank Rich - "Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain," in reference to their comments on McCain saying it's "fine with me" if US troops stay in Iraq for 100 years.
-- The Washington Post's David Broder (on Meet the Press) after the Caucasus crisis erupted: this was "particularly a moment where John McCain can claim to have been prescient, because....he draws a very sharp line when it comes to Russia." In contrast, "Obama's basic message on foreign policy is it's better to talk to our enemies than to get ready to fight them. And here's a case where, clearly, talking did not dissuade Russia from this act of violence," and
-- the major media response to McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate; pundits and reporters hailed it as proof of his "maverick" nature; reclaiming it; asserting it; recapturing it; a reference to a "maverick" choosing a "maverick;" and McCain returning "to the original John McCain.;" not a hint that it was done to placate the most extremists Republican elements.
On Obama:
At the start of his campaign, "whispers about his religious beliefs," questions about his patriotism, and "Is he one of us" came up. Then there were days of controversy over Rev. Wright and whether Obama still belonged to his church. Back in 2000, it was Gore the exaggerator v. Bush the uniter and compassionate conservative. In 2004, it was Kerry's "flip-flops," his "distorted" war record, stiffness, unlikability and inability to "connect" with voters.
Now it's Obama the elitist or snob with AP reporter Ron Fournier warning that he had "better watch his step (since he's) bordering on arrogance (and) can be a little too cocky for his own good." He and his wife "ooze entitlement."
-- MSNBC's Chris Mathews (again) in an obvious racial slur - "the fact that's he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's terrible at bowling does make you wonder." He also questioned Obama's choice of beverage at an Indiana campaign stop; orange juice over coffee he called "weird."
-- the New York Times Maureen Dowd contrasted her just-plain folks upbringing with Obama's "detached egghead quality." She also characterizes him the way she went at Gore and Kerry by calling them "girlie men" and equating Democrats with "desperate housewives perceived as the party in skirts."
-- the New York Times David Brooks (again) - does Obama "really get the way we live? Voters want a president who shares their values and life experiences," implying Obama doesn't so why vote for him.
-- numerous media outlets attacked Michelle Obama on not being patriotic, and CNN and others characterized her husband the same way and accused him of having a "cultish following."
Slate's John Dickerson has had enough of Obama's euphoria - "Isn't there a natural limit to our enthusiasm for this kind of sweeping phenomenon."
-- the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan called the Obamas self- centered "snobs" who can't relate to "normal Americans."
-- The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol echoed the theme.
-- Time.com's Ana Marie Cox played up the liberal media bias by reporting that McCain's camp is complaining that the media are being too easy on Obama.
-- The National Review's Lisa Schiffren argued that Obama's mixed- race parents had communist leanings because back then that's the only reason blacks and whites married.
-- Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid - "Obama admitted (a) relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA."
-- CNN's Carol Costello suggesting that an audience at an Obama rally was "a scene some increasingly find not inspirational, but creepy," while the on-screen graphics read: "OBAMA-MANIA BACKLASH (and) PASSION CULT-LIKE TO SOME," and
-- commentators, reporters and pundits ranging from ABC's Charles Gibson, MSNBC's Chris Mathews, PBS News Hour's Mark Shields, NPR's Scott Simon, the Washington Post's David Broder and others misrepresenting Obama's pledge to take public financing when, in fact, they knew he made no such unconditional promise.
Sum it up and there's no surprise about the media's one-sided loyalty. Their bias for Republicans over Democrats, and their willingness to shape stories for their own self-interest. Regardless of the campaign's outcome, reporting is deplorable because of today's professional journalism. Media giants are dominant. Bottom-line considerations are primary, and what passes for news, information and campaign coverage is shaped by commercial considerations. Republicans are seen as more accommodative so full- court press coverage backs them. But if elections aren't legitimate and working journalists aren't for truth, what good are they? As "Guardians of Power" not much.
Electoral Reform - Reviving Democracy Depends on It
Democracy in America is pure fantasy. Electoral fraud is Exhibit A. Reviving the republic starts off with reforming how we elect public officials. Short of that, darker days are ahead. Lots of ideas are around, and here's a few:
-- enfranchise all US citizens automatically at birth (like in Venezuela) under one uniform national law for all elections - federal, state and local; do it by constitutional amendment if necessary;
-- affirm one national minimum voting age; under the 26th Amendment it's 18, but states have latitude to lower it;
-- remove all prohibitions against voting, including for ex-felons and current inmates, most of whom are imprisoned for non-violent offenses such as illicit drug possession; the US is the only democracy that denies ex-felons the right to vote; overall it's in the bottom rankings of world electoral democracy and with good reason;
-- de-privatize elections; let only (federal, state and local) unelected civil servants run them under a nonpartisan election commission; keep politicians and business interests out of them;
-- repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and expose its scheme to let private corporations run elections using easily rigged touchscreen electronic voting machines;
-- prohibit electronic voting; mandate hand-counted (and easily verifiable) paper ballots for all elections - federal, state and local; by constitutional amendment if necessary to encompass other reform provisions;
-- end the Electoral College for presidential elections - again by constitutional amendment; democracy means rule by the people; elections should be solely by popular vote;
-- adopt proportionally representative governance in place of winner-take-all;
--move to instant runoff voting (IRV) under which voters rank candidates by order of preference; as many or as few as they wish with lower ranking ones not counting against higher ones; then count first choices; candidates with a majority of them win; otherwise, candidates with the fewest first choices are eliminated; votes for them then go for voters' second choices; the process continues until one candidate gets a majority and wins, and there's no need for expensive and time-consuming second rounds when they're held;
-- publicly fund elections and prohibit all private contributions; democracy can't work based on one dollar equals one vote;
-- prohibit paid political advertising; require all broadcasters to allocate enough free time to all candidates ahead of elections as a requirement for using the public airwaves; begin weeks, not months, ahead of election day;
-- prohibit computerized voter registries to eliminate the possibility of mysterious purging;
-- prohibit gerrymandering practices; allow only decennial redistricting to account for population changes, not to work for partisan advantage or to favor incumbents;
-- publicly fund independent exit polling and keep commercial interests out of it; allow no results to be released until all polling stations are closed nationwide;
-- let international and independent observers monitor polling sites;
-- make election day a federal holiday and require employers to allow enough time to vote with no docking of pay to do it.
These and other reforms will go a long way toward fixing a broken system. Rigged for the powerful, and returning the most fundamental of all democratic rights to the people - where it belongs. Short of that, darker times are ahead, as if they're not bad enough already.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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God Bless America
Obama's women reveal his secret
By Spengler
"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America.
We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama. No man - least of all one abandoned in infancy by his father - can conceal the imprint of an impassioned mother, or the influence of a brilliant wife.
America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.
Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised.
Ann Dunham died in 1995, and her character emerges piecemeal from the historical record, to which I will return below. But Michelle Obama is a living witness. Her February 18 comment that she felt proud of her country for the first time caused a minor scandal, and was hastily qualified. But she meant it, and more. The video footage of her remarks shows eyes hooded with rage as she declares:
For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.
The desperation, frustration and disappointment visible on Michelle Obama's face are not new to the candidate's wife; as Steve Sailer, Rod Dreher and other commentators have noted, they were the theme of her undergraduate thesis, on the subject of "blackness" at Princeton University. No matter what the good intentions of Princeton, which founded her fortunes as a well-paid corporate lawyer, she wrote, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong."
Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007.
"For some reason this guy still can't manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn't get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, "She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she'd like to meet him sometime." Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.
"Frustration" and "disappointment" have dogged Michelle Obama these past 20 years, despite her US$300,000 a year salary and corporate board memberships. It is hard for the descendants of slaves not to resent America. They were not voluntary immigrants but kidnap victims, subjected to a century of second-class citizenship even after the Civil War ended slavery. Blackness is not the issue; General Colin Powell, whose parents chose to immigrate to America from the West Indies, saw America just as other immigrants do, as a land of opportunity. Obama's choice of wife is a failsafe indicator of his own sentiments. Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common. Obama imbibed this hatred with his mother's milk.
Michelle Obama speaks with greater warmth of her mother-in-law than of her husband. "She was kind of a dreamer, his mother," Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. "She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don't pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don't in this country." How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.
"Naivete" is a euphemism for Ann Dunham's motivation. Friends describe her as a "fellow traveler", that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero's student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation.
Soetero had been sponsored as a graduate student by one of the most radical of all Third World governments. Sukarno had founded the so-called Non-Aligned Movement as an anti-colonialist turn at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Before deposing him in 1967, Indonesia's military slaughtered 500,000 communists (or unfortunates who were mistaken for communists). When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediate following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history.
Dunham's experience in Indonesia provided the material for a doctoral dissertation celebrating the hardiness of local cultures against the encroaching metropolis. It was entitled, "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds". In this respect Dunham remained within the mainstream of her discipline. Anthropology broke into popular awareness with Margaret Mead's long-discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which offered a falsified ideal of sexual liberation in the South Pacific as an alternative to the supposedly repressive West. Mead's work was one of the founding documents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and anthropology faculties stood at the left-wing fringe of American universities.
In the Global South, anthropologists went into the field and took matters a step further. Peru's brutal Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla movement was the brainchild of the anthropologist
Efrain Morote Best, who headed the University of San Cristobal of Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, between 1962 and 1968. Dunham's radicalism was more vicarious; she ended her career as an employee of international organizations.
Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. In the Muslim world of the 1960s, nationalism rather than radical Islam was the ideology of choice among the enraged. Radical Islam did not emerge as a major political force until the nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser or a Sukarno failed.
Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.
There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.
America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.
Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently [1].
Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion's Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.
This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer are poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.
Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.
The George W Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America's standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America's standing. It might take the country another generation to recover.
"Evil will oft evil mars", J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama. As he recalled in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama idealized the Kenyan economist who had married and dumped his mother, and was saddened to learn that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a sullen, drunken polygamist. The elder Obama became a senior official of the government of Kenya after earning a PhD at Harvard. He was an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career.
The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.
Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals - and nothing can be more terrible for the system. Even those who despise America for its blunders of the past few years should ask themselves whether the world will be a safer place if America retreats into a self-pitying shell.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa02.html
BUSH EXPECTED TO INTRODUCE MARTIAL LAW ON OR BEFORE 9/30/08 -
attention should be payed..
Date: Thursday, 14 August 2008, 8:39 p.m. On 7/22/08,
An interview with George Green..
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=128430
This one of several that are available, and are very important to listen to. Below are the highlights of the interview done on 7/16/08..
An earlier interview, and other info is at
http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/members/ggreen.htm
Chris North wrote..
I don't know whether you have heard of George Green, but he is a former investment banker (Registered Financial Principal with the N.A.S.D.) and a Broker/Dealer, Securities Underwriter, Real Estate Developer, Insurance Broker and Publisher, who was invited to become a member of the 'Power Elite'. However, faced with a moral and ethical dilemma, he turned his back on his former associates and chose to walk an entirely different path in which he has tried to warn the world of the Power Elite's plans for the future.
Anyway, my attention was drawn to a recorded telephone conversation, on July 16th 2008, between George Green and an as yet unidentified web interviewer from the 'Conscious News Network', at: http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/news.htm If you cannot access it there, it can also be found at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7618947388652774139&q=George+Green+on+the+Economy&ei=jimJSIKTCIamrwLRqYW-Aw
Although it is described as a 'video', as the content is audio only, the streaming is smooth and seam-free. However, knowing how busy you are (and just how little time there is left for the world), I have extracted the main points emphasized by George Green, which I have listed, without comment, as an Appendix to this email. In the event that you require clarification, having listened to this recording a half dozen times, I am familiar with all the 'nuances' and would be happy to oblige.
The bottom line is that Bush is now expected to introduce Martial Law on or before 30th September 2008
- - since this date marks the end of the Fiscal Year, when revelations about the true state of the economy - and the questionable practices of the Federal Reserve - are likely to result in riots in the streets and stockbrokers, bankers and financiers throwing themselves off the roofs of their buildings! It is not certain what pretext Bush proposes to use to 'justify' the imposition of Martial Law, but keep an eye on any War Games scheduled to take place in September 2008. My own money is on a Fort Detrick created Flu Pandemic spread primarily by compulsory vaccination but, judging from the deliberate complexity and diversity of 9/11, we must be prepared for multiple false flag events to throw state government and the citizenry off balance.
1. At the beginning of July, the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland , which is owned by the thirteen [Illuminati] Banking Families under Rothschild, stated that it wanted to audit the US Federal Reserve. Bush reluctantly had to agree to this, but with the proviso that the audit would not
be conducted until he has left office. However, when the truth inevitably leaks out on 30th September 2008, clearly the Bank of International Settlements will no longer be prepared to accept the US Dollar.
2. With the realization that the Federal Reserve has been pumping two billion US Dollars a day into the economy in a forlorn effort to try to keep the US afloat, the US is now construed as 'the poor kid on the block', the 'bankrupt of the world' and nobody is prepared to lend them anything. Foreign
governments have said 'We will no longer take your bonds'.
3. This situation has a worldwide repercussion: for example China, which is the biggest US creditor, has told US importers that they may not pay more then 20% of the total cost of their goods in US Dollars.
4. Also since the beginning of July, Germany has announced that it will no longer accept Euros from eight of their fellow EU members, the two countries with which they are most concerned being Italy and Spain.
5. The Real Estate market is expected to go down by an additional 50% from its value on 16th August. Because of the collapse of the Real Estate market, which is expected to lead to at least a further two million foreclosures within the next 12 months, US Banks are no longer prepared to trust each other, so inter-bank lending has virtually ceased.
6. This has had a knock-on effect on would-be house purchasers.like the old days, anyone who now wants to get a mortgage has to put 20% down and to satisfy the lender that their job is secure.
7. You may have seen Bush go on television to tell everyone not to worry as the US Government-sponsored Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will guarantee the safety of their bank deposits. However, the truth is that the FDIC can barely raise 30 cents on the dollar to cover its potential liabilities; and Bank of America and Wells Fargo are in a similar situation.
8. Banks have already started telling their depositors that they cannot withdraw their own cash.
9. It is universally accepted internationally that the US Dollar is going to collapse by the end of September 2008. Some foreign banks have already started to refuse to take US deposits and, since the Patriot Act, if you do manage to send money to a foreign bank, they are required to report the fact to the USG, who will make you prove how you obtained it and if you cannot do so, they will automatically label you a 'terrorist' or a 'drug dealer' and confiscate it.
10. The Bank of South America is trying to organize its own currency for use within the South American continent when the US Dollar finally crashes, based on an initial provision of eight billion dollars.
11. As at July 1st, the Japanese stock market was down 12%, the Australian stock market was down 18%, the German stock market was down 22%, the Indian stock market was down 36%; and China's Shanghai Exchange was down 50%.
12. Within the next year, the DOW is expected to fall to between 7500 and 8000.
13. Everyone is now desperately trying to get liquid; and Oil, Gold and Drugs have become the universally accepted world currencies.
14. The only sensible advice is either to change dollars into other currencies, or buy gold and silver (while you still can, because the US is likely to make it illegal to own gold); and stock up on canned food, the price of which is going to go through the roof. Already the major canners have reduced the size of cans by 20% to preserve stock whilst also maximizing their profits.
15. Already 80% of the cost of an apple in the rmarkets is energy costs; and this proportion is likely to rise. We have already started to see the situation where growers, producers and importers have stopped supplying many basic foodstuffs because the price of oil has meant that the cost of getting it to market is more than they can hope to sell it for. The food shortages that have resulted are likely to become even more acute because the USG is talking of introducing price controls. Who will be prepared to continue to supply the market when they are sustaining increasing losses?
16. The falling value of the dollar has created artificial shortages because other countries can now buy US goods cheaper than they can produce them themselves.
17. Inflation is expected to rise by 35 - 40% by the end of this year in real terms. Gasoline 5 Dollars a Gallon everywhere.
18. Following the collapse of the US Dollar, the Euro is also expected to collapse. In fact, Russia is already negotiating with Germany about a new currency.
19. The Iranian Oil Bourse was set up to trade oil internationally in Euros (see: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/12125 ) but, just when the bourse was ready to go live, the submarine cables were conveniently cut.
20. You can forget about the NAU's Amero. The Amero is off the table - the Canadian Prime Minister said 'We're not going to support a bankrupt country and Mexico is so corrupt that nobody knows where they're coming from.
21. In the future, South America will be one of the safest areas on the planet. They have ample commodities and very little debt. Not everywhere is ideal (in some countries you would need to live in a defended compound). Ecuador is close to becoming self sufficient in food terms.
22. Kissinger and the population reduction crew are trying to get WW3 started before September 30th (end of the US Fiscal Year), then Bush can suspend everything. Israel and the US are working out the details to attack Iran to start WW3. The main reason for the use of Depleted Uranium munitions in Iraq is 'to cull the herd'.
23. Of the US population of 300 million, half are over 50 and most of the kids can't read or write. Sport and entertainment are what has been used to keep everyone going. When (rather than if) Bush calls a National Emergency, if you are over the age of 44 only if you have a use which 'they' want will 'they' be prepared to keep you alive. Moreover, what law will we have which says that we even own our own homes?
24. Everybody must downsize into small self-contained and (as far as possible) self-sufficient communities, People will have to forget their 'wants' and to concentrate solely on what they actually need to survive.
24. In short, we are marching towards our self-imprisonment. I'm ready to get out of harm's way. I know high ups who will tell me when it's time to leave.
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=129647
worst fear..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBZo93HRpA
by: Vexari
--
1/3 YOUR WORLD RIGHT NOW 2008 - 9/11 New World Order by 2012 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bsjw5HkAvY&feature=related
--
http://www.888c.com/
God Bless America
OT. PROPHETS UNMASK BANKERS DECEPTIONS!!! What's your opinion?
MOST ADVANCED LIGHT FOR PLANET EARTH -
Be one step ahead of Banking Illuminati plans to destroy paper wealth and U.S Dollar.
Obama: Israel likely to start Iran war -
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:31:40 GMT
Barack Obama -
Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama says Israel is
likely to attack Iran if sanctions fail to stop
Tehran's nuclear program.
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=65205§ionid=351020104
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=65445§ionid=3510203
God Bless America
2008 Elections May Get Canceled - ? -
If you do not believe what your about to see please google the subject.
Most of the bills are on the WhiteHouse.gov website. For more info you
can go to http://www.truthzonetv.com
or
http://www.myspace.com/pageofknowledge
Please watch
The Warning
AMERICA'S VOTING MACHINES NOT READY FOR 2008 ELECTION -
Ya, he's really qwazy. Let's keep taxes low, keep spending, bailing out the fat cats, and just pass along all this me$$ to our grandchildren and their children.
My Plan for Iraq, By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008
CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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