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I stand only in the camp of freedom IxCimi. The Left/Right pardigm is a trap for sheep.
Regarding Fukushima....
America, Americans and the northern hemisphere have NO idea the danger they are in.
I believe we are talking about a possible extinction level event within the year's end...
Not looking good.
Freemen don't go looking for trouble in word or in deed.
NeoCons and NeoLibs do...
Those two types endanger EVERYONE with their ill-conceived notions.
"The world will know...that FREEMEN stood against the tyrants"...Keep fighting for what you believe in. Even if they tell you: "they will never know you existed"....
don't forget cash for clunkers, the disaster that was
moxa....the only real purpose of the federal government is providing a military....
beyond that....with a few exceptiions, there is absolutely no reason to have a federal government.....
the states and lower governments could handle everything....and do it much, much, much more efficiently.....
if anything, the military spending must go up....
Obama and his progressives (progressive is the American English buzzword for communist) have done and are doing all that is possible to kill/destroy us militarily....
they work from all sides....economic, social, military.....
Obama has given the Russians a treaty which antiquates our missle system.....
we have few new aircraft....
we're not building/replacing our naval vessels.....
and our nation of 300+million people has a paltry military of 1.4 million people.....that's less than half of what we should have....
our men/women in uniform serve 3, 4, and 5 rotations in Afghanistan/Iraq....that'slanned to demoralize the troops and minimize the number of trained soldiers available.....
THEY SHOULD SERVE 1 tour overseas....AND WE SHOULD BE DRAFTING MEN to keep a huge, well trained military.....
we need a constitutional amendment to keep the congress out ogf military affairs....
war is to be waged by the military....not agenda driven politicians.....
the banks are big employeers not only within thereselves but the money they lend provides employment in any hometown.
restrictions an taxes have moved the money an jobs we use to have offshore along with the help of the unions.
The banks want your money, all of it. They don't want to bail us out or make it back for us. They will keep what they make. I agree we should award companies who keep or bring back manufacturing to the USA. I believe Obama has suggested the same.
lol...obama printed more than 2.3 trillion...i say let the banks make it back for us ....give them breaks if they keep in in the U.S...manufactoring to.if they keep it in the U.S. give them breaks....put the U.S. back to work...
You want the Pentagon to help bail us out? HA! Do you know that Donald Rumsfilled announced on Sept.10, 2001 that $2.3 TRILLION was missing from Pentagon coffers? To this day we have not had an accounting of that money. I do know two facts surrounding the mystery. Dov Zakheim, a dual Israeli/US citizen, was comptroller at the time and the missle that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 took out the auditing/bookeeping dept. at the Pentagon. Go figure.
i would think they have enough stuff to last them a year to help bail us out....
1 year is all we need
all of them...we just sent 129 billion to the palestines....my gosh,they have been over there for 3000 years an cant take care of thereselves yet....geez
yep...the only way to be equal in there eyes is to take your right as an american,study hard,save your money,BECOME successfull...thats whats missing for alot of folks.they dont know how
its the old addage that...some can do it some caint do it and those that cant do it should be tied down and made to do it...
marriage used to accompolish that
Yes... stop spending a trillion $$ a year on the military. Do you know anyone who will put the kabosh on defense spending? If you want to save America it's got to happen. There isn't anyone running that has the cajones to do it. Ron Paul would try, but he has no chance of being elected.
particularly israel.
redfisher - Yes we need change the problem is the republicans don't offer any. They work for the same gloalist bankster criminals that the dems do.
so quit giving money away...nothing for the foreign countrys for a year...
i actually agree with that. the problem is the debt from unfunded wars, etc. have saddled us with payments that we can't make unless the economy comes back faster.
yep....i wish they would pass a law where they couldnt spend more than they bring in.....i cant,you cant or if we do we risk losing it all
stopping spending (or at least significantly reducing it to levels we actually need to defend our country) on our offense department would balance the budget in no time.
the alternative was obama and look where we are....
its the present....stop spending , thats the cure
you missed the whole point. You may have obama derangement syndrome, but try to consider what the alternative would have been.
mccain isnt our pres.What are we going to do about the screwball thats in there now...
we have to look for the future with a different pres. unless you want your freedoms taken away and be forced to live under government rule
the travel could be done more cheaply, perhaps. but consider the alternative that the wife or a child of the president gets kidnapped, and how much THAT would cost in blood and treasure? Of course, when it was republican wives taking their entourage to africa, etc. that was just peachy keen. hypocricy is a wonderful thing, or perhaps it is just alzheimers.
i would estimate that fewer died than if mccain had been elected. we would already have troops on the ground in iran had we elected that doddering old war hero.
the ron "internet king" paul thing that somehow he could turn the whole military industrial complex around instantly is a cool fantasy, but would never happen, and more importantly, is not even a worthy hypothetical since ron paul has no chance, and is a null hypothesis for any credible debate.
while ya try to collect the money it cost to move that carrier.....collect some for what it cost oboy to watch N.C AN DUKE PLAY BASKETBALL on the deck of a carrier....and michelles vacations.
how many died after obama was elected and he didnt withdraw our troops....or korea,viet nam...iraq
why not worry about today and the future....the past brings grief for all,the present is bringing grief for all...
we need change and it hasnt happened...
Where did you come up with that? What a bunch of Garbage. The Navy seals Admiral that was the Liaison to the white house under Bush and Obama (yes the same guy) was a neighbor and friend of mine. Everything to catch Osama started under Bush and carried forward to Obama. According to him nothing changed but the attitude of the administration. He retired right after he got his man.
how many people died for the american cause after his "Mission Accomplished" circle jerk?
and how much did that moment of moving the press out to sea, etc. cost for his political sound bite? i am sure aircraft carriers come cheap per hour. Where was the outrage of the cost of having the president be able to move about the globe then?
hypocritical stuff, for sure.
who?...theres no bush in the white house ....where have you been for 3 years.....thats old news....
the BIGGER problem is the guy in there now....has he helped you with anything....my taxes are going up while lazy bums are getting more freebies...you happy with that...corps. are taking there money overseas...theres riots in the streets...theres organized racisim welcomed by the president...
i can go on but the question is ....are you happy with the way things are in america right now....
the short answer is that Bush is such a pussy that he didn't want to risk retaliation for taking out the head of al Qaeda. Bush knew he would be at personal risk from suicide-type attacks if he took out OBL and was too afraid for himself. Deserter pussy. Plus they were close family friends, and saudi oil problems would have made his boss, Darth Cheney, have to actually do something other than send our military might to do his bidding.
Why didn't George Bush take out OBL ??
sure he made a good call and for the political type, hes a hero but he actually had nothing to do with it...he wasnt even there and wants to GLOAT over it...
come on man
thats what makes him a failure.time and time again.
It was a republican state senator ragging on him, what a surprise! The decision to take OBL out had political risk, ergo the Jimmy Carter raid that went bad, but obama made the right call and that is all most people need from a commander in chief who doesn't have a military background.
Mittens has zero military background in his family and and has five sons, not one who has served, thus has no blood in the game. (A tradition that goes way back to when the mormons were attacking wagon trains of settlers going west and massacring them)
Yep, when all else fails, bring up the birther fiasco again.
it will get better when they get to talkin about current stuff...
Mitt Romney outraged over reminder that he was wrong about bin Laden strategy
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/27/1086904/-Mitt-Romney-outraged-over-reminders-of-his-opposition-to-bin-Laden-strategy
yep,an its going to get worse....i hope someone ask obie for his birth cert on live tv
Barbara Bush: “I think it’s been the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life,”
Barbara Bush bashes 2012 presidential contest in first ladies conference at SMU
http://www.dallasnews.com/incoming/20120305-firstladies_smaller.jpg.ece/BINARY/w620x413/FirstLadies_Smaller.jpg
SEALs slam Obama for giving himself credit for Bin Laden raid
We've heard from John McCain and Mitt Romney about Obama's "gutsy call" in ordering the Bin Laden raid. But what about the guys whose brethren actually went into harms way to carry it out?
Daily Mail:
Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as 'ammunition' for his re-election campaign.
The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled 'One Chance'.
Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: 'The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.
'I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice - it was a broader team effort.'
Mr Zinke, who is now a Republican state senator in Montana, added that MR Obama was exploiting bin Laden's death for his re-election bid. 'The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition. It was predictable.'
Senior military figures have said that Admiral William McRaven, a former SEAL who was then head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made the decision to take bin Laden out. Tactical decisions were delegated even further down the chain of command.
Mr Kyle added: 'He's trying to say that Romney wouldn't have made the same call? Anyone who is patriotic to this country would have made that exact call, Democrat or Republican. Obama is taking more credit than he is due but it's going to get him some pretty good mileage.'
I sense the tide is turning on this story and unless Obama drops it quickly, it will redound in Romney's favor. No one likes a braggart - especially one who fails to give proper credit to the true heroes in this story while making it appear that one's opponent has less courage.
It is a shabby, ugly political ploy and blowing up in Obama's face would be a deserving outcome.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/seals_slam_obama_for_giving_himself_credit_for_bin_laden_raid.html#ixzz1tfCSJG29
romney is better than having no positions at all....obama has been and still is a failure...
he should be impeached.
America's Useful Idiots
Many years ago, a phrase was coined by the leaders of the Soviet Union to describe those in the West who naively promoted the cause of Russian Communism when in reality they were held in contempt and were being cynically used by the Soviet hierarchy. The term "useful idiot" more than ever applies to a vast swath of citizens in the United States who have been cynically used by the hardcore left for a cause they are unwilling to understand.
Among the mysteries confronting those of us who have immigrated to the United States from countries that have experienced the devastating outcome of socialist/Marxist ideology is why seemingly successful and educated people could be so easily swayed to support those whose end-game is to transform the country into a socialist "utopia" and to control the day-to-day lives of all Americans. Among these "useful idiots" are a seeming majority of the Jewish population as well as many in business, and nearly all in entertainment and the media.
The answer appears to be that despite the hardcore left accounting for less than 20% of the population, their influence extends far beyond thanks to the apparent inability of their peripheral supporters to use any modicum of reasoning -- as the left in the United States has been able to identify and manipulate those susceptible to emotional arguments.
Traditionally, the age-old Marxist strategy of fomenting class warfare and demonizing capitalism has been an effective tactic with those in the lower-income and education strata, who can be easily swayed to blame others for their perceived misfortune. However, in a nation, such as the United States, which has experienced great peace and prosperity for nearly seven decades and whose population is overwhelmingly middle-class, this argument alone cannot sway a sufficient number to support the ascension of those dedicated to socialist/Marxist ideology.
Therefore, while still using the class-warfare dialog to keep the lower classes stirred up, the left has, beginning in the 1930s but accelerating in the 1960s, combined class warfare with the promotion of guilt for one's success and falsely portraying their ideological enemies as being intolerant extremists whose single-minded determination is to limit and control everyone's lifestyle, and who are at their core virulent racists. Yet leftists are just what they accuse their opponents of being.
The tactic of fomenting guilt for one's success is a codicil to overt class warfare. The argument begins with the benign assertion that in a nation this wealthy, surely everyone can be guaranteed a minimal level of support at the taxpayers' expense. Particularly wealthy taxpayers should be willing to part with a "fair share" of their income (as defined by the left) in order to assuage their guilt for living in a country that "facilitated" their becoming rich. Not desiring to be branded as insensitive or evil, many simply acquiesced to this not-so-subtle extortion. Further, in an attempt to buy peace, many contributed vast sums of money to the Democratic Party -- now dominated by the far left.
The management of many large corporations as well as numerous successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and inheritors of wealth refused to understand that as in all protection rackets, there is never an end to the demand for payment. Additionally, these dupes were funding a political party whose end-game was to destroy the system that made them successful in the first place. All the while the money being siphoned out of the economy by the government in order to establish a so-called "safety net" was being used to create an ever-expanding dependent class who would vote to keep the left in power.
The Obama administration represents the culmination of this process, as leftists have, through an avalanche of mandates, regulations, and laws, begun weaving a suffocating web around the American free market, as they assume complete control of the economy. Firmly in their clutches will be those who fall into the ever-changing definition of rich and successful.
In the 1960s, America experienced a social revolution against historical and societal norms. An era of peace and prosperity unprecedented in the history of mankind was underway, allowing a new generation to focus on hedonistic pursuits, self-aggrandizement, and a search for so-called "meaning" in their lives. Traditions, based on the religious foundation of the country and the societal mores that sprang from them, came to be viewed as standing in the way of allowing the population to experience absolute freedom.
Coupled with the Johnson administration's mishandling of the Vietnam War, a broad movement began. The true believers of the left promptly injected themselves into this landscape, proclaiming to the gullible that not only was the United States waging an unjust war, but the U.S. was by its nature a repressive country. The siren song of a society wherein all are treated fairly and there are no absolutes found eager ears.
In short order, the left began to portray their political adversaries as intolerant religious zealots whose primary objective was to deny personal freedom and cast a beady eye toward whatever was happening in the bedroom. An unfettered lifestyle as well as being part of the in-crowd is of paramount importance to not only the vast majority of those in the entertainment and media arena, but also many in the general population. They were willing cast aside any disbelief and wholeheartedly swallow the premise that only the political left or the "progressives" could protect them from this narrow-minded right-wing horde.
This attitude was further entrenched when many conservatives and the religious community began to organize and rightly object to abortion on demand and the concomitant coarsening of the culture. The left now had a virtual stranglehold on the self-centered, whose personal pleasure and egocentrism were the primary driving forces in their lives. They were now completely in the thrall of the left, but what has this blind loyalty wrought?
A cursory examination of those nations that fell under the control of socialist/Marxist ideology reveals that among the first actions the new regimes institute is to put in place laws to greatly limit personal freedom as a prerequisite in subjugating the populace.
The passage of ObamaCare is not a health care plan; rather, it is a blueprint to allow the government to control the day-to-day lives of all Americans, and under the guise of budgetary expediency, the bureaucrats in Washington can and eventually will declare any behavior they choose unacceptable. Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his administration have been busily issuing edicts and regulations aimed at telling the American people what food they can eat, what medicines they can take, what cars they can drive, what houses they can live in, and in due course what they can do in their bedrooms.
One of the most consistent supporters of the Democratic Party is the Jewish population, as the Party has been portrayed over many decades as the defender of the downtrodden and in recent years a bulwark against the supposed racist fanatics on the right. However, this is a party now dominated and controlled by hardcore leftists, many of whom are virulently anti-Semitic and opposed to the state of Israel. A hallmark of all socialist/Marxist regimes is discrimination against and persecution of minorities, in particular the Jews.
That history coupled with the policies of the Obama administration in the Middle East, the Democrats' class-warfare tactics, the past and present associates of the president, and the anti-Semitic rhetoric of many on the left should alarm the American Jewish citizenry and cause them to cast a wary eye toward the party they have blindly supported over many decades. Unfortunately, the desire to believe that the worst could never happen seems to have permeated the psyche of a people whose history should serve as a cautionary tale as they continue to vote for and financially support a party that views them with disdain.
Barack Obama would not be occupying the Oval Office if it were not for the people over the past sixty years who have blindly supported those who have lied to them. The overriding stratagem of socialism/Marxism is "the ends justify the means" -- thus, no lie is too big to tell, no promise too outrageous to promote, and no tactic out of bounds. The overall strategy of the Obama re-election team confirms this mindset as it conducts a demagogic campaign based solely on emotional appeals to that part of the population its operatives consider "useful idiots."
Those who thoughtlessly supported the left in America over the years are beginning to reap what they have sown. Unfortunately so is the rest of the population.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/americas_useful_idiots.html#ixzz1tfAk5MiE
The Realization of Osama bin Laden's Dream
Don't let this week's anniversary of Osama bin Laden's assassination fool you. President Barack Obama may have killed bin Laden, but no one on Earth has done more to help al-Qaeda and the world's radical Islamists achieve their goals in the last year than our president.
Bin Laden's ultimate goal was for radical Islamists to rise up and retake control of the Middle East from largely secular, American-backed leaders. Bin Laden's strategy was to use terror attacks on the West to inspire this.
Just a few years ago, bin Laden probably couldn't have fathomed that it would be an American president who would ultimately accomplish his goal of bringing radical Islamist leaders to power in Middle Eastern countries, or that the same American president would get closer to accomplishing those goals in just three years than bin Laden himself did in his entire multi-decade terror career.
Bin Laden also didn't know he wouldn't be alive to see it because that president, Barack Obama, would preside over his assassination just as radical Islamists were on the brink of bringing the caliphate to life with the American government's help.
Today, a year after bin Laden's death, a sizable chunk of Middle Eastern real estate is either in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and other like-minded groups or on the brink of falling into their hands. The newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood, which as recently as two years ago was banned from political life in most of the countries it now runs, comes to and goes from the White House with impunity.
This happened thanks to a consistent, persistent strategy by the Obama administration of using American pressure, diplomacy, and firepower, or the lack of it, to ensure that country after country slips from secular rule into Islamist control.
In the beginning, when the people in Washington were pressuring secular leader and long time U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt, the Obama administration would still distance itself from groups like the Brotherhood, assuring the American public that they wouldn't be strong enough to take over Egypt, or that if they did, they wouldn't really be that radical. Today the Brotherhood controls the Egyptian parliament, and an ex-Muslim Brotherhood leader whom the media is selling as moderate stands poised to take the presidency of that country.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is finally beginning to come out of the closet on its real plans for radical Islamists like the Brotherhood -- to put them in power in country after country. Obama administration officials call this strategy "legitimate Islamism."
The theory is that with secular leaders who were former U.S. allies out of the way in Middle Eastern countries, radical Islamists will now have an outlet for their Islamism and won't join al-Qaeda.
Obama administration officials were pretty blunt about this in a recent National Journal interview, explaining that the president came to a "realiz[ation that] he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively 'moderate' Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere."
"It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists," administration officials told the Journal. "Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism."
Today, the Obama administration no longer hides its goal of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood and other like-minded Islamists to power.
And that's exactly what Obama has been doing. After American and international firepower drove former leader Moammar Gaddafi from power in Libya, the country came to be run by the Transitional National Council, which the Obama administration recognizes as the official government of Libya. It is packed with activists, lawyers, Islamic scholars, and others who have ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
In 2007, the LIFG formally joined al-Qaeda, an event so well-documented that even Reuters covered it. Its goals at the time included killing Gaddafi, setting up an Islamic caliphate in Libya, and waging international jihad. With Obama's help, they are well on their way to accomplishing these goals.
The National Transitional Council, which is backed by the Obama administration, has already decreed that the country will be run in accordance with sharia law. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are expected to make a strong showing in the next election. And they'll have plenty of dough with which to carry out their plans, since the Obama administration and NATO turned the country's oil fields, which are capable of generating billions of dollars of oil revenue a year, over to them.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration is conducting "peace talks" with the Taliban aimed at bringing them into the government, even as Taliban operatives kill U.S. troops daily on the battlefield. Given the Taliban's obvious inability to win control of the Afghan government for themselves on the battlefield, the Obama administration's determination to hand it to them at the negotiating table is baffling. This would create yet another radical Islamist-dominated Middle Eastern nation -- the exact opposite of what American troops have been fighting and bleeding for in that country for a decade.
In Syria, where the Obama administration is calling for dictator Bashar Assad to step down, the U.S. has left secular forces to fend for themselves and backed an Islamist-dominated group called the Syrian National Council, which has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The list goes on and on, but in country after county, the results are the same. Osama bin Laden's dream, which he thought would take decades to achieve, is coming to life in a single term of Obama's presidency. Bin Laden's Middle Eastern caliphate is rising. Once united in Islam, the caliphate was supposed to turn outward, conquering the rest of the Earth for Allah. No word yet on where Obama stands on that part of the plan. Perhaps we'll have to wait for a second term to find out.
While Americans focus this week on the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden and feel smug about our destruction of al-Qaeda's main cell, they need to understand that with bin Laden's dream already in motion, al-Qaeda is in many ways is an outdated relic whose purpose has already been served.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_realization_of_osama_bin_ladens_dream.html#ixzz1tf9hxD1O
Obama's Chicago-Style Campaign
Barack Obama has a take-no-prisoners approach when it comes to waging political campaigns. But perhaps he has taken a step too far this time around. Not content to attack his opponent, his campaign is going after his opponent's supporters. Kimberly Strassel, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, gives us one more reason not to vote for Barack Obama: he is a thug who has disgraced the office of the president of the United States by engaging in behavior more befitting of the dictator of a banana republic.
Strassel writes of the Obama's campaign's latest efforts to smear and attack donors to Mitt Romney. She projects what happens when one exercises one's right in a democracy to support a candidate:
[...] Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money. [...]
Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.
Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled "Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors." In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having "less-than-reputable records," the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that "quite a few" have also been "on the wrong side of the law" and profiting at "the expense of so many Americans." [...]
"We don't tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things," says Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general. "When you have the power of the presidency -- the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC -- what you have effectively done is put these guys' names up on 'Wanted' posters in government offices." [...]
He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street -- letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts.
This is the sinister reason why the Obama campaign has repeatedly called on the Romney campaign to release the names of the latter's big donors. The Obama team needs to win not just by creating and attacking straw men and scapegoats; it needs flesh-and-blood villains as well. The richer the villain, the more tempting the target. The Obama campaign needs to conjure up plutocrats to further stoke the politics of rage that Barack Obama hopes will power him to re-election.
Hence, we have the focus on the Koch brothers, who have funded various conservative and libertarian causes (as well as medical research, art and cultural projects, and many other worthy causes) and candidates over the years. Recall that almost two years ago, President Obama singled out one of the groups the Kochs help fund, Americans for Prosperity, for special opprobrium. This was a signal to what some may characterize as the vast left-wing conspiracy to attack the Kochs. The New Yorker, supplied with material by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, went to work on the brothers. What was even more scandalous was that White House officials apparently had access to tax returns of the Kochs and their companies and used it as opposition research when meeting with journalists. Has any other president used the IRS for political purposes -- and what type of media backlash ensued then?
An Obama effort to shine the light on political donations is rich with hypocrisy. Barack Obama's own campaign disabled security measures on its donation page in ways that allow people to mask donors' identities and evade limits on how much individuals can donate to candidates. They did the same in 2008 (and one of the revelations was that Palestinians from Gaza were donating to his campaign; those donations were returned when exposed). George Soros and other billionaire sugar-daddies of the left have been funneling money to 527 groups, think-tanks, media outlets, and the like to bend politics in their direction in ways that meet no one's definition of transparency.
These efforts to intimidate donors to Republicans have borne fruit in the past. When it was revealed that Target donated $150,000 to a group that ran ads backing a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota who opposed same-sex marriage but who otherwise had a pro-growth agenda, a boycott effort began that led to Target halting its donations. Similar boycott threats (including ones led by Obama acolyte Van Jones) have dissuaded other companies from donating to such pro-growth groups as the American Legislative Exchange Council. In the latter case, charges of racism have been ginned up to discourage support for the group. The same potent weapon -- the charge of racism -- has also been used to compel financial institutions to make loans to unqualified borrowers; those loans came back to help devastate the American economy.
There was a reason why Barack Obama was so riled up by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which supported the right under the First Amendment of corporations to support political candidates. He and his supporters leveled spurious (and false) claims that foreign money would be used to fund political campaigns in America. Similar charges have been made against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce once that group began running ads questioning Barack Obama's agenda.
Clearly, Barack Obama wants to gut the Citizens United decision by other means. He views politics as a blood sport and believes in clearing the field of candidates so as to leave voters with no other choice but to support him.
Why should we be surprised by this type of thuggish behavior on the part of the president? He all but announced his modus operandi back in 2008 when he warned that his style of campaigning could be summed up by the maxim "if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
He had previously shown an inclination to use all methods, foul and fair, to win elections. The man who touts the need to register all potential voters (a policy taken to its extreme by his attorney general) felt free to disqualify a political opponent when he ran for the state senate in 1996 from being on the ballot by challenging signatures on his opponents' nominating petition. Obama's team, at Obama's direction, flooded the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners with complaints about the validity of the signatures on such petitions for every single one of his four challengers. Every single one, including a former political ally, Alice Palmer, was forced off the ballot. As David Jackson and Ray Long of the Chicago Tribune wrote:
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.
But he was only warming up for more creative steps to win elections.
The history of Obama's later run to become a U.S. senator has been obscured, but those familiar with his career see signs that all was not on the up-and-up when it came to his 2004 primary and general campaigns. In the primary, he faced a formidable and well-funded opponent, Blair Hull, who was leading quite strongly in the polls until stories started appearing in the Chicago Tribune that Hull had physically abused his ex-wife. Although the provenance of these allegations was never made public by the Tribune, Obama's campaign strategist at the time (and who has kept his role over the years) was David Axelrod, who not only had spent years working at the paper, but had already known that Hull was vulnerable to such accusations. The exposure occurred right before the primary vote, leaving Hull no time to rebut the allegations and leaving no time for other candidates to emerge on the Democratic side to challenge Obama for the nomination.
In the general election, he faced Jack Ryan, a promising Republican candidate who had made a fortune in investment banking but gave up that career to teach in inner-city schools. Suddenly, the Chicago Tribune started a public campaign that he be forced to unseal and reveal his divorce records. They were sealed to protect his and his ex-wife's young children. Eventually, Jack Ryan was compelled to open them to public inspection. There were embarrassing tales of his sexual fantasies. Ryan was forced to leave the race. The hapless Republicans resorted to bringing in a carpetbagger, television personality Alan Keyes, to run against Obama. The next thing you know, Obama is a United States senator, having never faced a serious foe with a chance of winning.
Even when he was a freshly minted president, Obama could not resist taunting people he perceived to have slighted him. When the University of Arizona decided not to give him an honorary degree (considering it a premature honor), he warned that "[university] President Crow and the board of regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS." Inappropriate humor, perhaps, but it was revealing nonetheless of an unpleasant aspect of the president's character, especially given the fact that he was vastly expanding the audit staff at the agency. Was he ignorant of Richard Nixon's history of using the IRS as a weapon against his political adversaries or, for that matter, people who just offended him?
There have been other signs that Obama has brought Cook County politics into the already fetid swamp of D.C. politics.
He has routinely insulted and demeaned various groups and people during the last few years -- especially as the campaign seasons (in 2010 and now) have heated up.
He has practiced the politics of personal destruction in a way no other president has done in modern history. As political commentators have noted, he personalizes political differences. This leads him to unload heaps of scorn on those he perceives to be not just political adversaries, but blood enemies. He puts down those who rub him the wrong way (something very easy to do with thin-skinned people) in a very personal and public way (some examples listed in "President Put-Down" and "The Abuser In Chief"). Such behavior not only disgraces the office, but is certainly not conducive to compromise and to working across the aisle on issues important to Americans. Instead, as America has seen with ObamaCare and other actions, President Obama and his allies have resorted to all sorts of trickery to promote their agenda (czars, signing statements, executive orders, regulatory interpretations, and a raft of other items that have raised concerns over their constitutionality). These shady methods are also a betrayal of his promise to end "politics as usual" and to work in a bipartisan way -- promises made on the campaign trail that led many people to vote for him. But all of Obama's promises have an expiration date.
He has compiled and continues to compile an enemies list in a way that is reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Sometimes he likes to personally denounce and insult his "enemies" (Paul Ryan, John McCain). More often he outsources the wet work to others -- and not just his campaign staff.
Is it a coincidence that one of the few magazines Obama praises and says he reads is the New Yorker -- mentioned above? Under the leadership of David Remnick (who wrote a hagiographic biography of Barack Obama), the magazine has turned into an organ of Obama's re-election campaign. The periodical has published many unflattering articles on those considered to be Obama's "enemies." For example, Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee was subject to a hit-job article by then-New Yorker political columnist Ryan Lizza because, apparently, he "makes life difficult for Obama." How? Issa has been very busy investigating an administration he considers the most corrupt in history. Hence, he has certainly moved up in the rankings of Obama's enemies. Sheldon Adelson, billionaire political donor to Republicans and a man who has made it quite clear that he wants to see Barack Obama defeated, was also the subject of a scathing article in the New Yorker, and to top it off, that reliable adjunct to the Democratic National Committee joined the "fun" at Adelson's expense, revealing painful personal details of his life that had no possible bearing on his political activities and portrayed him in a very unflattering light.
George Soros-funded groups Media Matters and the Center for American Progress have been useful attack dogs fielded against those who oppose Barack Obama's agenda. Media Matters was recently enriched with additional money from Soros to take on Fox News. The Center for American Progress released a report that cherry-picked the people who were purportedly promoting "Islamophobia" in America. Not only did the "blacklist" include the names of these people, but it also made sure to identify many of them as also supporting Jewish or pro-Israel causes. In other words, this was a target list of "enemies of Islam." It is shameful that officials of this group routinely meet with Obama and other White House officials and that its former head once headed up Barack Obama's transitional team before he became president. The Center's current leader used to work in the Obama White House. This group -- that can fairly be accused of spreading anti-Semitism and inviting attacks on prominent Jews -- should be shunned and not embraced.
The coming months will see a campaign waged by Barack Obama that is a disgrace to the image of the presidency. There will be carpet-bombing attacks against not only Mitt Romney, but also his supporters. They will be considered not "collateral damage," but instead legitimate targets by Obama and company -- because everyone who does not support him is an "enemy." Who defines them as such? Barack Obama, when he told Hispanics that politics is about "rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies" (italics mine).
The hoi polloi that Barack Obama might characterize as "bitter clingers" are not slighted. The Obama campaign has plans for them, too. The campaign has asked its supporters to send them contact information on people they may know who do not support the president. The campaign would then have a list of people who oppose Barack Obama. What is next? Cameras in the voting booth?
Americans will witness a contest marked by smears, lies, and distortions. There will be more threats issued to those who have the temerity to oppose Barack Obama and support Mitt Romney. The right of Americans to free speech and the other rights given them under our Constitution will be under pressure.
The next two hundred days (like the last thousand) will be a blot on our history.
And one man is to blame.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/obamas_chicago-style_campaign.html#ixzz1tf9312jZ
It all began when Obama beat McCain and is dingbat VP.
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