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Bozell: Media Coverage Most Biased Ever
Thursday, October 30, 2008 3:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
Conservative media maven Brent Bozell tells Newsmax that news coverage of the current presidential race is the most biased he’s ever seen, with the media “in the tank” for Barack Obama.
Bozell is the founder and president of the Media Research Center and the Cybercast News Service, which are dedicated to exposing liberal bias in the media.
Asked by Newsmax’s Ashley Martella if he has ever seen coverage of a campaign so blatantly one-sided as the Obama-John McCain race, Bozell declared:
“Not only is this something I’ve never seen in a 30-year career, but people who are older than I, more experienced than I, people like Bob Novak, will point out that in his professional career, which spans 50 years, which goes back to the days of John F. Kennedy, he has never seen anything like this.
“This is a news media that has thrown off any pretext of objectivity, of fairness, of even-handedness. They are in the tank for Barack Obama unlike any candidate in history.”
Bozell Interview: Unprecedented Media Bias
Bozell said the “real question” is whether the biased media are having an impact on the race.
“What you’re seeing is a curious phenomenon this year,” he told Newsmax.
“On the one hand, every single national poll that is tracking this issue is showing overwhelmingly the public is on to the media, to the so-called news media…
“So does that mean they’re not having an impact? No, that’s not what it means.
“There are two kinds of biases.” One is “the bias by commission, which is the media deliberately advancing the agenda of Barack Obama, and that’s what the public is seeing. The flip side, however, is the dangerous one. It’s the bias by omission, where the media simply refuses to report anything that is detrimental to Barack Obama.
“Now if you don’t know what that story is, you don’t know that they’re not reporting it. And that’s the danger.”
Bozell also warned about the impact on democracy in America if a Democratic Congress and White House succeed in reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine.
The Doctrine would require radio stations to balance a conservative talk show host with a liberal one — or cancel the conservative.
That would constitute “the single greatest threat to the conservative movement, and to the whole concept of free speech, and therefore to a democratic system in America today … That’s how bad this is.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/media_coverage_biased/2008/10/30/145965.html
Here's the NKJV for Philippians 3:13-14
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Just sickening. How can anyone support killing a baby in the womb. Tells me all I need to know about a person.
Pro-choice Obama repels evangelicals
Julia Duin (Contact)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Abortion is the key issue keeping many social conservatives and religious voters - especially young ones - from supporting pro-choice Democrat Barack Obama for president, leaving most of them to throw their support to his pro-life Republican opponent, John McCain.
A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of voter attitudes, released last week, showed that two-thirds of Catholics and white evangelical Protestants of all ages oppose funding for abortions for poor women overseas. Seventy percent of all evangelicals - with slightly larger majorities among those younger than 30 - say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.
These same groups - which make up half of the American electorate - also supported the "Mexico City policy," which forbids U.S. funding for organizations that perform abortions overseas. The largest bloc of supporters were young evangelical Christians at 69 percent.
Pollster Anna Greenberg acknowledged the intractability of the issue on Oct. 23, at a National Press Club forum sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.
"While young evangelicals - and the public - have become more liberal on other social issues like gay marriage," she said, "we do not see the same movement towards a liberal position on abortion."
Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, has pledged to repeal of the Mexico City policy and cut domestic restrictions on abortion, a stance that the Republican Party has tried to highlight in various ads.
Foremost among them is a video clip of Mr. Obama's July 17, 2007, vow to make abortion rights a centerpiece of his presidency.
"The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act [FOCA]," he said, a statement that got him a rousing ovation at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund gathering.
Referring to two fellow legislators, he said, "We fought in the Illinois State Senate against restrictive choice legislation - laws just like the federal abortion laws, federal abortion bans that are cropping up."
In 2001, 2002 and 2003, Mr. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, opposed three legislative efforts to give legal protection to any child who survived an abortion. Mr. Obama has denied this, but on Aug. 25, the independent group FactCheck.org dissected the senator's voting record to show that he indeed voted against legislation to protect such children.
FOCA, which has been simmering in Congress since 1989, would overturn dozens of state laws mandating parental consent. It would remove limits on Medicaid funding of abortions, eliminate informed consent for women who are considering the procedure, allow partial-birth and other late-term abortions, and end state requirements for counseling, waiting periods or ultrasounds before an abortion.
Mr. Obama has a 100 percent approval rating from Planned Parenthood, the nation's foremost abortion provider.
"Barack Obama supports women's health, has reasonable policies on comprehensive sex education, supports what works with kids and helps them make healthy choices," said Laura Meyers, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Metropolitan Washington.
Mr. McCain has a 0 rating from the group. Even so, he does not line up with all pro-life positions because he would allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or to protect the mother's life.
When asked - during an Aug. 16 forum at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. - when life begins, the senator from Arizona responded, "At the moment of conception." To audience applause, he added, "I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate.
"And as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president. And this presidency will have pro-life policies."
Mr. Obama hedged on the question, saying the answer is "above my pay grade."
He said the rate of abortions did not decline during the eight years of the Bush administration. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, however, reported that 108,600 fewer abortions were performed during President Bush's fifth year in office (2005) than during President Clinton's last year (2000). The data used allowed each president significant time in the office for any effects to take shape.
In September, the Guttmacher Institute said the rate of U.S. abortions - 2.1 million a year or 5,753 a day - is at its lowest level since 1974.
All this keeps it a front-and-center issue in U.S. politics.
"I have stated time after time after time that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision, that I support a woman - the rights of the unborn - that I have fought for human rights and human dignity throughout my entire political career," Mr. McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 2007. "To me, it's an issue of human rights and human dignity."
The two men parried on the topic during the third presidential debate at Hofstra University on Oct. 15, when Mr. Obama said he supports legal restrictions to late-term abortions, as long as there is a "health of the mother" exception.
"He's 'health for the mother,'" Mr. McCain responded sarcastically. "You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything."
Neither of the candidates differ significantly on stem-cell research, the other hot bioethics issue of the day. Mr. Obama supports federal financing of embryonic-stem-cell research and co-sponsored the 2005 Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which Mr. Bush vetoed.
Mr. McCain's position is more nuanced. Although he too supports federal financing for experiments on cells that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics, he also opposes the creation of embryos for research. He told Catholic News Service in January that he hopes the issue will become theoretical, given advances in obtaining stem cells from skin cells.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/30/obamas-abortion-stance-repels-young-evangelicals/
Oil was around $100 when I wrote this in April. Now it's down about 33% actually. It spiked briefly as high as $147 but now it's down to where I thought it would be by this winter. OPEC is working hard to get it back to at least $100 but for now, it's not working. A lot will also hinge on the future direction of this country.
Oil is extremely overbought right now. I'm going against the grain here and saying oil will come crashing down in the next 3-6 months by at least 25%. Traders have created too much froth here imo!
What’s Your Worldview?
Abridged from Think Biblically!
by John MacArthur, Ph.D.
May 2, 2006
Weltanschauung. What is it? Everyone has one. It colors the way all people interpret life. It triggers the decisions one makes, not to mention driving one's responses. It comes in many varieties. Philosophy, science, culture and/or religion generally make the dominant contributions to it. What is it? It is the personal worldview of each living individual.
What is a worldview? A worldview comprises one's collection of presuppositions, convictions and values from which a person tries to understand and make sense out of the world and life. “A worldview is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.”2 “A worldview is, first of all, an explanation and interpretation of the world and second, an application of this view to life.”3
A Worldview comprises one's collection of presuppositions, convictions and values...
How does one form a worldview? Where does one begin? Every worldview starts with presuppositions-i.e., beliefs that one presumes to be true without supporting independent evidence from other sources or systems. Interpreting reality, in part or in whole, requires that one adopt an interpretative stance since there is no “neutral” thought in the universe. This becomes the foundation upon which one builds.
What are the presuppositions of a Christian worldview that is solidly rooted and grounded in Scripture? Carl F. H. Henry, an important Christian thinker in the last half of the twentieth century, answers the question very simply: “…evangelical theology dares harbor one and only one presupposition: the living and personal God intelligibly known in his revelation.” 4 Without equivocation, Dr. Henry forthrightly and clearly believes [believed] that “Our theological systems are not infallible, but God's propositional revelation is.”5 Ronald Nash approaches the question in a similar manner: “Human beings and the universe in which they reside are the creation of God who has revealed himself in Scripture.”6
What is the Christian worldview?7 The following definition is offered as a working model:
The Christian worldview sees and understands God the Creator and His creation-i.e., man and the world-primarily through the lens of God's special revelation, the Holy Scriptures, and secondarily through God's natural revelation in creation as interpreted by human reason and reconciled by and with Scripture, for the purpose of believing and behaving in accord with God's will and, thereby, glorifying God with one's mind and life, both now and in eternity.
What essentially distinguishes the Christian worldview from other worldviews? At the heart of the matter, a Christian worldview contrasts with competing worldviews in that it: 1) recognizes that God is the unique source of all truth, and 2) relates all truth back to an understanding of God and His purposes for this life and the next. Arthur Holmes superbly summarizes the unique implications of a Christian worldview when relating absolute truth to God.
1. To say that truth is absolute rather than relative means that it is unchanging and universally the same.
2. Truth is absolute not in or of itself but because it derives ultimately from the one, eternal God. It is grounded in his “metaphysical objectivity,” and that of his creation.
3. Absolute propositional truth, therefore, depends on the absolute personal truth (or fidelity) of God, who can be trusted in all he does and says.8
Are there any common misperceptions about the Christian worldview, especially by Christians? There are at least two mistaken notions. The first is that a Christian view of the world and life will differ on all points from other worldviews. While this is not always true (e.g., all worldviews accept the law of gravity), the Christian worldview will differ and will be unique on the most important points, especially as they relate to the character of God, the nature and value of Scripture, and the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The second is that the Bible contains all that we need to know. Common sense should put this misdirected thought out of business. However, it is true that the Bible alone contains all that Christians need to know about their spiritual life and godliness through a knowledge of the one true God, which is the highest and most important level of knowledge (2 Peter 1:2-4). Also, while it does not exhaustively address every field, when Scripture speaks in any subject area, it speaks authoritatively.
A Christian worldview provides a framework by which 1) to understand the world and all of its reality from God's perspective and 2) to order one's life accordingly to God's will.
What should be the ultimate goal of embracing the Christian worldview? Why is the Christian worldview worth recovering? Listen to Jeremiah,who passes along God's direct answer.
Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” - Jeremiah 9:23-24
Abridged from Think Biblically! edited by Dr. John MacArthur, copyright 2003, pages 13-17. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, www.crossway.com.
What Will Be Some Benefits of Embracing the Christian Worldview?
Let the following serve as a small sample representing the kinds of crucial life-questions that can be answered with ultimate truth and can be embraced with confident faith.9
1. How did the world and all that is in it come into being?
2. What is reality in terms of knowledge and truth?
3. How does/should the world function?
4. What is the nature of a human being?
5. What is one's personal purpose of existence?
6. How should one live?
7. Is there any personal hope for the future?
8. What happens to a person at and after death?
9. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
10. How does one know what is right and what is wrong?
11. What is the meaning of human history?
12. What does the future hold?
Dr. John MacArthur, well known author and speaker, is pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. He is also president of The Master's College and Seminary. Dr. MacArthur has written more than one hundred books, covering a great expanse of Christian topics and is heard worldwide on his radio program Grace to You. Dr. MacArthur is known for his insightful and concise teaching of God's Word.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n1/whats-your-worldview
It must really hurt the mainstream media to admit that the polls continue to tighten. We need all the Christian Conservative voters out en masse Tuesday. Vote for the pro-life, less government, pro-Constitution (not the flawed one that Obama sees)ticket of McCain/Palin. I think more and more Americans are starting to understand Obama's "spread the wealth" statement and they don't like it. His extremist ties to so many others are also starting to get more traction.
National polls tighten a bit; Obama hangs on to lead in battlegrounds
With less than a week till Election Day, any movement in the polls is big news. In the Real Clear Politics national poll average, Barack Obama's 8-point lead from Saturday has decreased to 5.9, due mostly to a gain in John McCain's average.
Three major polls have seen a significant squeeze in the past five days, causing this trend. Today, a Rasmussen poll put Obama at a 3-point lead. McCain has gained 3 points in their survey since Saturday and Obama has lost two, putting the race at the narrowest margin this poll has seen since late September.
This followed the drastic squeeze seen in the Reuters/Zogby/C-SPAN this weekend. After enjoying a 12-point lead in their poll last week, Obama's lead shrunk to around 5 points and held steady there for a few days.
The latest poll to close was Gallup. Their traditional likely voter turnout model has Obama up by three, after having a 7-point lead at one point last week. (Take note: Gallup has multiple voter models. Which one is right depends on who shows up to vote. The other models have Obama up by 7-points today.)
As we've cautioned in this blog space before, it's best to keep up with the state polls too. Remember, the Electoral College doesn't make decisions based on national mood.
With that in mind, here is graphical snapshot of where the polling lies as shown on the Yahoo! News Political Dashboard. Below, we break out specifics about the 11 battleground states' most recent polling averages and trends. The data for both is supplied by our friends at Real Clear Politics.
Colorado: Obama + 7.2
The last time McCain was ahead in the polling average here was late August. He lost the lead when Democrats held their nominating convention in Denver.
Florida: Obama +3.5
McCain had a commanding lead here for most of the election season. The lead flipped in the beginning of October. Both candidates campaign in Florida today, a sign of just how tight the race is there.
Indiana: Obama +1.4
The polls don't agree in this state, possibly a reflection of disparate polling days. A Big 10 poll released a week ago has Obama up by 10. A more recent Zogby poll has McCain up by six. Note: this state has voted Republican in at least the last five election cycles.
Missouri: Obama + 0.2
A tie! McCain was leading decisively here until around September 20th when his poll numbers started to slide. Watch what happens here on election night - historically, Missouri votes with the winner. Note: CNN/Time just released a poll that has McCain up by two.
Nevada: Obama +7.5
Obama started to solidify a lead at the beginning of the month, but McCain's polling average has taken a precipitous drop in the past couple of days.
New Hampshire: Obama +12.6
McCain owes this state for making him a household name in the 2000 presidential election. Polling suggests the Granite State won't help him this time around.
New Mexico: Obama + 7.3
Take this lead with a grain of salt. Most of these numbers are at least two weeks old if not a month tired. This state voted with Bush in 2004, but Gore won a squeaker here in 2000, by less than 1,000 votes.
North Carolina: Obama +1.3
Essentially a tie. For 20 or so years, Republicans won this state by double-digits when a third-party candidate was not involved.
Ohio: Obama +5.8
This one is tight. Neither candidate has been ahead by more than an average of 6 points since April. Conventional wisdom says turnout matters here. If city voters come out, Obama wins the state. If the rural areas show up, McCain wins.
Pennsylvania: Obama +11
Most outlets are listing this as a strong Obama state, but just like Ohio, turnout could turn this state into a tight race. Kerry won here by less than 3 percentage points. Gore won here by four.
Virginia: Obama +7.6
Virginia has not voted for a Democrat in more than 40 years. If Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida vote Republican, a Democratic win here could be key in a tight Obama win.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl114
Welcome aboard 02opida!
How does anyone think that increasing taxes will create jobs and spur entrepreneurship? Like Obama told Joe the Plumber, I want to spread the wealth around. In other words, if you make more money than he thinks you should, he'll take it away and give it to someone more deserving. Does that sound like what this great country was founded on? Absolutely, positively, not!
Get the idea? First it's 250K, then 200K, now 150K. That doesn't include allowing President Bush's tax cuts (that lowered all the marginal rates) to expire, increasing the capital gains tax, no more home sales tax break, payroll tax increases and on and on and on. You think 150K is the bottom? We will all be taxed to death. Remember, Carter? Think much worse! We can stop this from happening in less than a week.
Obama, Biden Shift ‘Tax Break’ Threshold
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:25 PM
By: Rick Pedraza
Barack Obama and Joe Biden have apparently decided to spread the wealth a bit further. On Tuesday, Obama released a new campaign commercial lowering his tax threshold to $200,000. Biden then one-upped him and brought it down to $150,000.
Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” tax plan took another hit today when a new campaign ad debuted over the weekend shifting the presidential candidate’s definition of rich from those making more than $250,000 to those making $200,000.
Obama, who repeatedly has said the new tax structure is intended only for those making over $250,000, says in the new video, “To deal with our current emergency, I’ll launch a rescue plan for the middle class that begins with a tax cut for 95% of working Americans. If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than $200,000 a year, you’ll get a tax cut.”
VIDEO: Obama Shifts Lowers Tax Break Threshold to $250,000
But not to be outdone, Obama’s vice presidential running mate Joe Biden dropped the threshold of those who should be taxed more even lower to $150,000.
Biden claims in a satellite interview with WNEP-TV in Scranton, PA, Tuesday that Obama doesn’t intend to “spread the wealth” from rich to poor, he merely wants to wants to change the structure of the Bush tax cuts to benefit lower income workers.
“Spreading the wealth is not something [Obama] is talking about, Biden says. “All the tax breaks have gone to the very, very wealthy. For example . . . under the old tax policy that was put in by George Bush, people making an average of $1.4 million a year — good people, decent people, patriotic — they’re going to get an $87 billion tax break,” Biden explains.
“What we’re saying is that $87 billion tax break doesn’t need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million. It should go . . . to middle-class people — people making under $150,000 a year.”
Biden Drops Tax Threshold from $250K to $150K
With the definition of “rich” already shifting downward, and without even having won office, the John McCain camp responded by asking, “What’s next?” when it comes to Obamanomics. How much further will the goalposts move?
“Senator Obama has made a lot of promises,” McCain said Tuesday at a rally in Pennsylvania. “First he said people making less than $250,000 would benefit from his plan, then this weekend he announced in an ad that if you’re a family making less than $200,000 dollars you’ll benefit. But yesterday, right here in Pennsylvania, Senator Biden said tax relief should only go to ‘middle class people — people making under $150,000 dollars a year.’ You getting an idea of what’s on their mind huh? A little sneak peak.”
McCain continued: It’s interesting how their definition of rich has a way of creeping down. At this rate, it won’t be long before Senator Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just $42,000 a year should get a tax increase. We can’t let that happen.”
Biden spokesman David Wade tells Politico the Obama-Biden contradictions were more an example of the proposed tax plan, not a slip, and reiterated the promise that no family making less than $250,000 will see a tax hike. Wade also responded by saying the McCain campaign’s attacks are getting more desperate by the hour.
“As Obama and Biden have always said, under their plan no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase one cent,” Wade said in a statement. “If your family makes less than $200,000 — as 95 percent of workers and their families do — you’ll get a tax cut.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_biden_tax_plan/2008/10/28/145070.html
Gallup: Race Tightens, McCain Behind by 2 Pts
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 8:41 PM
A new Gallup Poll of likely voters puts Republican presidential candidate John McCain within two percentage points of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, 49 percent to 47 percent, which is well within the poll’s margin of error.!
The narrowed gap occurs in Gallup's "traditional" likely voter model. The poll, which Gallup has employed for past elections, factors in prior voting behavior as well as current voting intention. This has generally shown a closer contest, reflecting the fact that Republicans have typically been more likely to vote than Democrats in previous elections.
It also puts McCain closer in the presidential race than other polls, which have Obama with leads of between 4 and 15 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics.
According to a Reuters/C-SPAN/ZOGBY poll also released Tuesday, Obama holds a 4-point lead over McCain in the U.S. presidential race, 49 percent to 45 percent among likely U.S. voters. That survey had a margin of error of 2.9 points and was reflected a slight gain for McCain when compared to the previous four-day tracking poll.
McCain, a veteran Arizona senator, has sliced Obama's 12-point advantage by more than half in the last five days but he has not been able to break through the 45 percent support mark.
When the national tracking poll debuted on October 6, Obama led by 3 points, 48 percent to 45 percent. In the ensuing three weeks, McCain's support has not been higher than 45 percent and Obama's support has not been lower than 48 percent.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/gallup_poll/2008/10/28/145124.html
Rev. Wright Could Be Key to McCain Winning
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 12:51 PM
By: Ronald Kessler
For months, Republicans have been searching for a smoking gun that would firmly tie Barack Obama to a radical to illustrate how out of step he is with most of America.
Guess what? That radical is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Unlike Obama’s association with admitted terrorist William Ayers, no one can say Obama’s relationship with Wright was tangential. By his own account, over a period of 20 years, Obama considered Wright not only his minister but his mentor, sounding board, friend, and adviser. When the mainstream media last March finally began running stories on Wright after Newsmax had done so for two and a half months, Obama said Wright was like an uncle.
“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Obama said.
On the Sunday following 9/11, Wright characterized the terrorist attacks as a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism.
Wright has said America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. He gave an award for lifetime achievement to Louis Farrakhan. He has equated Zionism with racism and has compared Israel with South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid.
“We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty,” Wright has said. “God d— America!” Wright has shouted.
To those who say Obama did not really believe in Wright’s views, I say: Would you listen to such hatred without walking out? Even among the most liberal Democrats who are my friends or family members, the answer is always the same: No.
Both Dick Morris and Kellyanne Conway, the highly respected Republican pollster, have said John McCain needs to run ads reminding voters of Wright’s connection to Obama. Sarah Palin told Bill Kristol that the fact Obama didn’t get up and walk out says something about his character.
“I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country...” she said.
But last summer, McCain ruled out bringing up Wright in his campaign, which he said would be “respectful.” McCain at other times has said he considers Wright a religious issue. But there is nothing religious about Wright’s racist hate speech.
More recently, McCain held a conference call with Jewish leaders. During the call, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founder of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York and now the city rabbi of Efrat in Israel, said Obama is “obviously comfortable” with the views of Wright, whom Riskin described as anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish. He noted that until Obama finally severed his relationship with him, he and his wife Michelle had been contributing over $20,000 a year to Wright’s church.
The rabbi asked McCain why he was not raising Wright as an issue and running ads featuring him. According to one participant, McCain said it would be a waste of time, since “everyone knows about Wright.”
I beg to differ. The National Republican Trust PAC has started running ads tying Obama to Wright. The clips of Wright denouncing America are devastating.
Wright holds the key to what Obama is all about, demonstrating his attraction to a left wing, anti-American agenda. At this point, given the economic downturn, Wright could also be the key to McCain winning the election.
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/rev_wright_mccain_obama/2008/10/28/144942.html
Today: 7B plus
NYSE Group Volume Records - Top 10 Days
Rank Trade Date NYSE Group Volume in all Issues Traded
1 10/10/2008 8,954,520,053
2 9/18/2008 8,310,786,937
3 9/19/2008 7,416,357,043
4 9/16/2008 7,211,705,124
5 10/8/2008 7,090,452,337
6 9/17/2008 7,071,638,219
7 10/16/2008 6,676,199,722
8 9/15/2008 6,365,014,273
9 10/6/2008 6,331,636,676
10 9/29/2008 6,248,005,246
This latest PR and especially this paragraph was enough for me to sell the last of my free shares. We only have a 14M O/S but the A/S has already been increased from 100M to 900M! And it says right here in the paragraph that the common stock will be used for general working capital. There is no way this stock can hold up to any selling of shares to generate working capital imo.
From the latest PR today:
In preparation for the future, LD Holdings increased the number of authorized common shares from 100 million to 900 million shares. Currently there are 14,738,128 shares of common stock outstanding and the Company believes that between 2 million and 3 million shares represent the effective float at the present time. The Company plans to prudently use its common stock for both financings, acquisitions and general working capital.
Leisure Direct, Inc. Changes Name, Has New Symbol, Starts New Subsidiaries, Increases Authorized Shares
Tuesday October 28, 9:24 am ET
PERRYSBURG, OH--(MARKET WIRE)--Oct 28, 2008 -- LD Holdings, Inc., formerly Leisure Direct, Inc., (OTC BB:LDHL.OB - News) announced today that it has gone through a corporate name change to reflect its new strategic direction towards providing financial services and focusing on acquisitions without regard to any specific industry.
Through its wholly owned subsidiary, LD Financial, Inc., the company has started providing consulting services to corporate clients through its Business Services Division. This Division of LD Financial will initially target a tri-state area consisting of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan and has started generating revenue. Plans are to establish additional regional offices in the first half of 2009.
LD Financials' Business Services Division's initial marketing efforts will focus on businesses that are in need of additional sales in this period of economic stress. Many of these programs are designed with a small monthly retainer and results-based compensation that is based on the incremental increase in sales achieved for the client. Additional consulting services include: business partnering or company sale, corporate financing and executive search, as well as general consulting services in terms of strategic corporate planning.
Another wholly owned unit, has been launched with experienced management personnel and will source acquire and manage companies that operate in an underserved segment of the small business market. This segment is companies with sales between $2-20 million. It is LD Holdings goal to acquire 40-50 of these companies (with an average $10 million in sales) over the next 5-7 years. These companies should be rampable and scaleable to drive organic growth after acquisition.
As outlined more specifically on its website at www.ldholdings.com, the acquisition and operational strategy that is explained there is currently being implemented under the five-step process outlined. The affiliated site of www.nanocapnation.com has been launched and is currently functioning to attract individual and small institutional investors.
In preparation for the future, LD Holdings increased the number of authorized common shares from 100 million to 900 million shares. Currently there are 14,738,128 shares of common stock outstanding and the Company believes that between 2 million and 3 million shares represent the effective float at the present time. The Company plans to prudently use its common stock for both financings, acquisitions and general working capital.
This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 27E of the Securities Act of 1934. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from that projected or suggested herein due to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, ability to obtain financing and regulatory and shareholder approvals for anticipated actions.
Contact:
Contact:
John R. Ayling
Chairman
LD Holdings, Inc.
(419) 873-1111
1070 Commerce Drive, Building II - Suite 303
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Obama: Constitution is 'Deeply Flawed'
Monday, October 27, 2008 8:20 PM
By: David A. Patten
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as having “deep flaws” during a September 2001 Chicago public radio program, adding that the country’s Founding Fathers had “an enormous blind spot” when they wrote it.
Obama also remarked that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Obama’s statements came during a panel discussion that aired on Chicago’s WBEZ-FM on Sept. 6, 2001, titled “Slavery and the Constitution.”
The discussion that led to the statements took place on the now-defunct Odyssey program, which also aired statements by Obama bemoaning the fact that the Civil Rights movement had failed to bring about an economic redistribution of wealth in America.
Obama’s remarks came toward the end of a somewhat professorial, academic discussion on the Constitution and the evolution of Civil Rights.
The panelists were discussing the compromise struck by the Founding Fathers to avoid a direct confrontation over slavery, as well as the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments after the Civil War. Those amendments outlawed slavery, required “equal protection” under the law, and stated that African-Americans must be provided the right to vote.
Prior to Obama’s statement, Richard R. John, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that slavery had been a significant issue for the Founding Fathers. But it was not, John stated, a matter of central importance to them.
John said it was easy to second-guess America’s Founding Fathers for establishing a government that allowed slavery to continue.
“I think it’s easy to be very hard on the Founders, and to be very hard on our governing institutions,” John said. “But I just wish we’d think about what the alternatives were, what the practical alternatives [were], and not some possible, counterfactual dreams we might have.”
At that point, the moderator of the program, Gretchen Helfrich, turned to Obama.
“Barack Obama, what are your thoughts on the Declaration and Constitution?”
“I-I-I think it’s a remarkable document –“ he began haltingly.
“Which one?” Helfrich interjected.
“The original Constitution as well as the Civil War Amendments,” he replied. “But I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.
“African-Americans were not -- first of all they weren’t African-Americans -- the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think that as Richard said it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.
“And in that sense,” Obama continued, “I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Obama did not elaborate on the “fundamental flaw” that persists.
Conservative talk host Rush Limbaugh pounced on Obama’s remarks during his Monday radio program.
“Good Lord, ladies and gentlemen! I don’t see how he can take the oath of office, which is this: ‘I do solemly swear, or affirm, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Said Limbaugh, “He has rejected the Constitution.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_constitution/2008/10/27/144675.html
Again I say, how can this man be elected President if he thinks the Constitution is a flawed document? He can't!
Obama: Constitution is 'Deeply Flawed'
Monday, October 27, 2008 8:20 PM
By: David A. Patten
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as having “deep flaws” during a September 2001 Chicago public radio program, adding that the country’s Founding Fathers had “an enormous blind spot” when they wrote it.
Obama also remarked that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Obama’s statements came during a panel discussion that aired on Chicago’s WBEZ-FM on Sept. 6, 2001, titled “Slavery and the Constitution.”
The discussion that led to the statements took place on the now-defunct Odyssey program, which also aired statements by Obama bemoaning the fact that the Civil Rights movement had failed to bring about an economic redistribution of wealth in America.
Obama’s remarks came toward the end of a somewhat professorial, academic discussion on the Constitution and the evolution of Civil Rights.
The panelists were discussing the compromise struck by the Founding Fathers to avoid a direct confrontation over slavery, as well as the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments after the Civil War. Those amendments outlawed slavery, required “equal protection” under the law, and stated that African-Americans must be provided the right to vote.
Prior to Obama’s statement, Richard R. John, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that slavery had been a significant issue for the Founding Fathers. But it was not, John stated, a matter of central importance to them.
John said it was easy to second-guess America’s Founding Fathers for establishing a government that allowed slavery to continue.
“I think it’s easy to be very hard on the Founders, and to be very hard on our governing institutions,” John said. “But I just wish we’d think about what the alternatives were, what the practical alternatives [were], and not some possible, counterfactual dreams we might have.”
At that point, the moderator of the program, Gretchen Helfrich, turned to Obama.
“Barack Obama, what are your thoughts on the Declaration and Constitution?”
“I-I-I think it’s a remarkable document –“ he began haltingly.
“Which one?” Helfrich interjected.
“The original Constitution as well as the Civil War Amendments,” he replied. “But I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.
“African-Americans were not -- first of all they weren’t African-Americans -- the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think that as Richard said it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.
“And in that sense,” Obama continued, “I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Obama did not elaborate on the “fundamental flaw” that persists.
Conservative talk host Rush Limbaugh pounced on Obama’s remarks during his Monday radio program.
“Good Lord, ladies and gentlemen! I don’t see how he can take the oath of office, which is this: ‘I do solemly swear, or affirm, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Said Limbaugh, “He has rejected the Constitution.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_constitution/2008/10/27/144675.html
Biden's CBS 3 Interview:
http://election.newsmax.com/biden_bans.html
What a duo! Let's make sure this tandem doesn't get anywhere near the Whitehouse!
Obama and the Arrogance of Presumed Power
Monday, October 27, 2008 8:47 AM
By: Geoff Metcalf
"Arrogance rides triumphantly through the gates, barely glancing at the old woman about to cut the rope and spring shut the trap."
— Mason Cooley
Notwithstanding the sage admonition of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over . . .” Democratic presidential wannabe Sen. Barack Obama has increasingly been adopting the assumptive close and acting like his ordination is a foregone conclusion.
I remain the consistent contrarian and maintain it is possible (even probable) that Obama will still lose for a variety of reasons already addressed here.
However, a recent snit over a tough interview of Joe Biden resulted in the Obama/Biden camp canceling a scheduled interview with Mrs. Biden and canceling a media buy on WFTV-Channel 9 in Orlando. Apparently WFTV had to be punished for asking difficult questions of gaffe-master Biden.
During a satellite interview with Sen. Biden, WFTV’s Barbara West had the temerity (and tenacity) to ask hard uncomfortable questions. Hey, that’s her job . . . and she did it well despite the patronizing efforts of Biden to marginalize her and her questions.
Biden was asked specifically about Obama's comment, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the "spreading the wealth" comment.
"Are you joking?" said Biden. "No," West said.
Biden was so ticked off by West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with the VP candidate’s wife, Jill Biden.
"This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election," wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.
WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, "Mr. Biden didn't like the questions . . . We choose not to ask softball questions."
Jordan added, "I'm crying foul on this one." And he should. He probably hasn’t been burned like this since leaving L.A.
One upon a time, in a previous incarnation, I ran an ad agency. I too often reminded my subordinates our job was to reach and influence the most number of likely prospects for the least amount of money.
Television, radio, newspapers, and magazine are all in the same business. They do not sell what you see, hear, or read. They sell audience. Advertisers pay media for access to audience, not for editorial or entertainment content. The content is a tool to generate the product, and the product is audience.
When an advertiser tries to “punish” a station or publication for content they don’t like, they sacrifice the audience that patronizes that media. From a partisan standpoint, ignoring the audience of a major media outlet is counter productive and petty at best . . . at worst, it is flat-out stupid.
Perhaps the Obama camp has become so jaded by the softball coddling they have enjoyed thoughout the campaign, they assume it is the job of media to enable their poorly vetted gaffe inclined campaign. They certainly have reason to assume the main stream media should conduct themselves along the lines of a "Saturday Night Live" skit . . . just ask Sen. Hillary Clinton.
However, at the same time team Obama may be measuring the drapes in the Oval office, Americans increasingly seem to be getting hip to the consequences of their early enthusiasms. Yes, there are consequences to the things we do and don’t do. When Obama warned, “Don’t underestimate our ability to screw this up” it may have been half way prophetic.
Even a hardcore liberal California Democrat recently told me, “The noise about Obama’s eligibility [see birth status http://www.rightsidenews.com/200810262351/editorial/obama-s-birth-certificate-still-missing.html] is nuts. I wish he would just release the documents and shut up those knuckle dragging Republicans and p.o.-ed Hillary supporters. Sandbagging documents keeps this garbage alive. His foot dragging almost gives credibility to the wackos.” Ya think?
If, or (as I maintain) when, Obama loses, it will not be a direct function of the campaigns arrogance and assumptiveness. Rather, it will probably be the result of epiphany and fear.
Epiphany that (gosh oh gee golly) there are a lot of holes in this guys act . . . and fear that the real tangible cost of flipping off the GOP establishment will have severe negative consequences on those inclined to change for the sake of change and sizzle. That pain may not be worth the visceral rush of slapping the GOP.
Better to elect the lesser of available evils and then complain about him rather than suffer the significant inevitable consequences of embracing the anointed arrogant one, who although generous with his charisma and charm, hoards unanswered questions like maggots cling to rotten meat.
http://www.newsmax.com/metcalf/obama_presumption/2008/10/27/144406.html
Older news but not everyone understands how close Obama and the radical Rev. Jerimiah Wright really are.
Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division
Jim Davis
Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers to "white arrogance" and "the United States of White America."
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these statements were made on July 22.
Obama has spoken and written of his special relationship with that pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
The connection between the two goes back to Obama's days as a young community organizer in Chicago's South Side when he first met the charismatic Wright. Obama credited Wright with converting him, then a religious skeptic, to Christianity.
"It was ... at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had," Obama described his spiritual pilgrimage to a group of church ministers this past June.
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular attendee at Wright's services in his inner city mega church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its other 8,500 members, he's been a close disciple and personal friend of Wright.
Wright conducted Obama's marriage to his wife Michelle, baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama's Chicago home. Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope," takes its title from one of Wright's sermons.
Because of this close relationship, questions have been raised as to the influence the divisive pastor will have on the consensus-building potential president.
Obama and Wright appear, at first blush, an unlikely pair. Wright is Chicago's version of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
It was no surprise that Sharpton recently announced that with Wright's backing, he was setting up a chapter of his New York-based National Action Network in Chicagoland. The chapter will be headed by Wright's daughter, Jeri Wright.
Minister of Controversy
Obama was not the only national African-American figure to cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described herself as a congregant, but in recent years has disassociated herself from the controversial minister.
A visit to Wright's Trinity United is anything but Oprah-style friendly.
As I approached the entrance of the church before a recent Sunday service, a large young man in an expensive suit stepped out to block the doorway.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I came to hear Dr. Wright," I replied.
After an uncomfortable pause, the gentleman stepped aside.
On this particular July Sabbath morning, only a handful of white men — aside from a few members of Obama's Secret Service detail — were present among a congregation of approximately 2,500 people.
The floral arrangements were extravagant. Wright, his associate pastors, choir members, and many of the gentlemen in the congregation were attired in traditional African dashiki robes. African drums accompanied the organist.
Trinity United bears the motto "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian."
Wright says its doctrine reflects black liberation theology, which views the Bible in part as a record of the struggles of "people of color" against oppression.
A skilled and fiery orator, Wright's interpretation of the Scriptures has been described as "Afrocentric."
When referring to the Romans, for example, he refers to "European oppression" — not addressing the fact that the Egyptians, who were also a slave society, were people of Africa.
The Trinity United Web site tells of a "commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, adherence to the black work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of developing acquired skills available to the black community."
"Some white people hear it as racism in reverse," Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ, tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different message, Hopkins says: "Yes, we are somebody; we're also made in God's image."
Controversy Abounds
Several prior remarks by Obama's pastor have caught the media's attention:
# Wright on 9/11: "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
# Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: "Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months."
# Wright on Israel: "The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."
# Wright on America: He has used the term "middleclassness" in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions "white arrogance" and the "oppression" of African-Americans today; and has referred to "this racist United States of America."
Bush's Bulls--t
Wright's strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday morning service attended by NewsMax.
Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the "white arrogance" of America's Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country as the "United States of White America." Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made.
The sermon also addressed the Iraq war, a frequent area of Wright's fulminations.
"Young African-American men," Wright thundered, were "dying for nothing." The "illegal war," he shouted, was "based on Bush's lies" and is being "fought for oil money."
In a sermon filled with profanity, Wright also blamed the war on "Bush administration bulls--t."
Those are the types of statements that have led to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson describing Wright as "a full-blown hater."
Wright first came to national attention in 1984, when he visited Castro's Cuba and Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.
Wright's Libyan visit came three years after a pair of Libyan fighter jets fired on American aircraft over international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, and four years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland — which resulted in the deaths of 259 passengers and crew. The U.S. implicated Gaddafi and his intelligence services in the bombing.
In recent years, Wright has focused his diatribe on America's war on terror and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
For a February 2003 service, Wright placed a "War on Iraq IQ Test" on the Pastor's Page of the church Web site. The test consisted of a series of questions and answers that clearly portrayed America as the aggressor, and the war as unjustified and illegal. Marginally relevant issues regarding Israel received attention.
The test also portrayed the Iraqi people as victims of trade sanctions, but Saddam Hussein's propensity for using "oil for food" proceeds to build palaces rather than buy medicine was never mentioned.
At the end of the test, the pastor wrote, "Members of Trinity are asked to think about these things and be prayerful as we sift through the ‘hype' being poured on by the George Bush-controlled media." Obama's campaign staff did not respond to a NewsMax request for the senator's response to Wright's statements.
In April, however, Obama spoke to The New York Times about Wright, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from his spiritual mentor. He said, "We don't agree on everything. I've never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics."
More specifically, Obama told the Times, "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," adding "It sounds like [Wright] was trying to be provocative."
Obama attributed Wright's controversial views to Wright being "a child of the '60s" who Obama said "expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism, and the struggles the African-American community has gone through."
"It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright," writes Jodi Kantor of The New York Times. On the day Sen. Obama announced his presidential quest in February of this year, Wright was set to give the invocation at the Springfield, Ill. rally. At the last moment, Obama's campaign yanked the invite to Wright.
Wright's camp was apparently upset by the slight, and Obama's campaign quickly issued a statement "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church."
Since that spat, there is little evidence, indeed, that Sen. Obama has sought to distance himself from the angry Church leader. In June, when Obama appeared before a conference of ministers from his religious denomination, Wright appeared in a videotaped introduction.
One of Obama's campaign themes has been his claim that conservative evangelicals have "hijacked" Christianity, ignoring issues like poverty, AIDS, and racism.
This past June, in an effort to build a new consensus between his new politics and faith, Obama's campaign launched a new Web page, www.faith.barackobama.com.
On the day the page appeared on his campaign site, it offered testimonials from Wright and two other ministers supporting Obama. The inclusion of Wright drew a sharp rebuke from the Catholic League. Noting that Obama had rescinded Wright's invitation to speak at his announcement ceremony, Catholic League President Bill Donohue declared that Obama "knew that his spiritual adviser was so divisive that he would cloud the ceremonies."
He noted that Wright "has a record of giving racially inflammatory sermons and has even said that Zionism has an element of ‘white racism.' He also blamed the attacks of 9/11 on American foreign policy."
Donohue acknowledged that Obama may have different views than Wright and the other ministers on his Web site, but "he is responsible for giving them the opportunity to prominently display their testimonials on his religious outreach Web site."
Political pundits have suggested that Obama's problems with Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic nomination. Obama's ties to Wright and the activist African American church helps in that effort.
But the same experts same those same ties may come to haunt him if he were to win the nomination and face a Republican in the general election.
The worry is not lost on Wright.
"If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me," Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. "I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that might have to happen.'"
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/8/8/194812.shtml
If this doesn't concern you, nothing will!
Zogby Poll: Undecided Voters Reject ‘Fairness Doctrine’
Monday, October 27, 2008 11:50 AM
Washington, D.C. — Obama supporters and Democrats are at odds with Independents and undecided voters when it comes to clamping down on free speech over the air waves, according to a just-released ATI-News/Zogby poll.
“Barack Obama has shown a stunning lack of tolerance for free speech throughout the course of this campaign,” said ATI-News president Brad O’Leary. “His presidency, combined with supermajorities for Democrats in Congress would almost certainly bring back the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ and allow the Democrats to snuff out any broadcasters with whom they disagree.”
The poll surveyed 1,203 likely voters nationwide and was conducted October 23-26. It has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.
ATI-News/Zogby asked likely voters: “Some say the Fairness Doctrine could result in popular radio shows, such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, to be taken off the air in some markets. Knowing this, do you support or oppose reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine?”
Those who say they will vote for Barack Obama support reinstating the Fairness Doctrine 53 to 37 percent (10 percent are not sure). Meanwhile, Independent voters oppose reviving the Doctrine 49 to 40 percent, and undecided voters reject it 50 to 17 percent (33 percent are not sure).
Originally instituted in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Fairness Doctrine was soon recognized as a tool for silencing any opposing views – particularly conservative views.
The FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 admitting the doctrine “had the net effect of reducing rather than enhancing the discussion of controversial issues of public importance.”
According to O’Leary, Obama and the Democrats would rather silence their detractors through oppressive regulation than compete on an even playing field. To make his case, he cites several examples:
# When Chicago radio station WGN scheduled journalist Stanley Kurtz to talk about Obama’s ties to Ayers, the Obama campaign recruited 100,000 supporters to act in a cult-like manner and besiege the station with protests.
# When “Joe the Plumber” questioned Obama about his plan to raise taxes on small businesses, Obama supporters sought to destroy Joe and publicly embarrass him by digging through his tax files, work history and personal life.
# Obama forces also tried to hush a national organization that ran TV and radio ads attacking the candidate’s position on an issue. In that instance, Obama’s general counsel fired off a letter threatening the licenses of stations that didn’t pull the ad “for the sake of FCC licensing and the public interest.”
# After seeing a dip in the polls in September, the Obama campaign dispatched prosecutors and law enforcement officials in Missouri to act as so-called “truth squads” to target anyone who runs ads on TV or radio critical of Obama.
“There is nothing ‘fair’ about the Fairness Doctrine, and re-establishing the Doctrine would have the chilling effect of silencing America’s 2,000 talk radio show hosts that discuss politics,” warned O’Leary.
“There is very little doubt that if Obama ascends to the presidency and Democrats achieve super majorities in both houses of Congress, the Fairness Doctrine will become law and freedom-of-speech will be purged from our nation’s airwaves.”
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/zogby_fairness_doctrine/2008/10/27/144486.html
Biden Angered by Tough Questions from News Anchor
Sunday, October 26, 2008 7:24 PM
Angry over a hard-nosed interview during which Barbara West of Orlando's WFTV peppered Sen. Joe Biden with the kind of probing questions the pro-Obama mainstream media refuses to ask, the Obama campaign has completely banned the television station from future access and interviews. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Biden was so disturbed by West's searching questions that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/biden_intervew_angered/2008/10/26/144294.html
Clink on the link to access the video link. It's worth it! If only all the media would ask these questions, Obama would have less than 10 percent of the popular vote!
Very interesting that they kept 2009 revenues (127M) the same. It's just a matter of time imo before all these parts come together to impact the bottom line. Until then, buy the panic. Not just DPDW but other great companies that have been beaten down.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6
“I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt … I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth.”
Martin Luther
Children of the state
Don’t be surprised at socialized education’s product | Joel Belz
If you want a classic example of how fast a whole culture can be turned on a dime, redirected by 180 degrees, try this: Just when it seemed, through the 1980s, 1990s, and even well into the past decade, that a socialist mindset had been successfully put down in the United States, back it comes—with a vengeance.
"Free markets are better for everybody," Ronald Reagan had taught us. So we deregulated. We reformed welfare. We defeated Hillary's nationalized health care. We popularized tax cuts. We watched the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapse, and we applauded the market economy in Europe. Talk radio exploded.
And, as fallen humans are wont to do, we also abused our freedom.
Which always provides an excuse to those with socialist inclinations to argue that we need to be regulated again, that we need stacks of new rules to curb our excesses, and that government needs to be called in to make everyone behave. And that's why you find a newly muscled Uncle Sam these days shutting down big investment brokers, buying huge equity clout in traditional banks, and rumored to be ready to buy similar shares of Ford, Chrysler, and GM.
All that under a supposed pro-free market Republican administration! So nobody's going to be very surprised if under an Obama presidency there will be a redoubling of Sarbanes-Oxley, re-regulation of the airlines (and just about everyone else), universal health care, a new budget line for carbon and energy, restrictions on talk radio, and increased taxes to pay the staggeringly higher bills.
Much of that has happened, may I suggest, because we also long ago conceded the most critical territory of all. While strenuously wrestling over business and banking and health care and energy and a dozen other issues, we cavalierly handed over to the state a perpetual 90 percent share of the nation's educational interests. America regularly has about 50 million children enrolled in K-12 schools, and about 20 million more in colleges and universities—and while the pattern fluctuates a little, 90 percent of those 70 million young people regularly get a state-flavored view of reality.
Socialized medicine? Most of us recoil at the idea. Socialized airlines? Reminds us of Aeroflot. Socialized banks? When it happened last month, it terrified us.
But socialized schools? Nine out of ten of us patronize them regularly.
And we do so with na'ry a thought or concern about how such an arrangement affects next week's election, or the election after that, or the lifetime of elections to come.
I am blessed to have had parents who did look ahead. Half a century ago, my father said often: "If I fail to feed my children, the government will step in. If I don't house them, the government has programs to help. Of course, I don't intend to turn those duties over to the government. But I would much rather have the government feed and house my children than to have the government shape their minds."
That's why, if I were ever forced to become a one-issue person on the political front, my single issue would be freedom of choice in education. With a nine-to-one edge in value-shaping influence, why shouldn't the government be producing products who think government-sponsored-everything is best?
When I enthusiastically endorse the Christian school and home school alternatives, I don't do so primarily because of their effect on the electoral process. Christian education isn't about filling the registration rolls of the Republican party.
But it is about producing thoughtful and earnest citizens. The bells of freedom on every front traditionally ring more clearly where a biblical value system has been inculcated. No one should expect anything resembling such a result from secularist state-sponsored schools, which will naturally glorify the state. No one should be surprised when that's what happens.
So I say: Go get educated about what Christians are doing these days in education. Go online to discoverchristianschools.com, a notable effort to help parents discover the good things happening on the school front. Go to hslda.org to learn about the growing impact of home schooling families throughout the nation.
It's too late, to be sure, to have much impact on next week's election. But so long as there are more kids and future generations, and so long as they have minds and hearts to shape with God's great truth, it's not too late at all to make a difference for elections yet to come.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14571
Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber
Investigators trying to determine whether access was illegal
Friday, October 24, 2008 8:57 PM
By Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch
"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.
The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.
Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.
Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.
It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver's license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.
Paul Lindsay, Ohio spokesman for the McCain campaign, attempted to portray the inquiries as politically motivated. "It's outrageous to see how quickly Barack Obama's allies would abuse government power in an attempt to smear a private citizen who dared to ask a legitimate question," he said.
Isaac Baker, Obama's Ohio spokesman, denounced Lindsay's statement as charges of desperation from a campaign running out of time. "Invasions of privacy should not be tolerated. If these records were accessed inappropriately, it had nothing to do with our campaign and should be investigated fully," he said.
The attorney general's office is investigating if the access of Wuzelbacher's BMV information through the office's Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway computer system was unauthorized, said spokeswoman Jennifer Brindisi.
"We're trying to pinpoint where it came from," she said. The investigation could become "criminal in nature," she said. Brindisi would not identify the account that pulled the information on Oct. 16.
Records show it was a "test account" assigned to the information technology section of the attorney general's office, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Thomas Hunter.
Brindisi later said investigators have confirmed that Wurzelbacher's information was not accessed within the attorney general's office. She declined to provide details. The office's test accounts are shared with and used by other law enforcement-related agencies, she said.
On Oct. 17, BMV information on Wurzelbacher was obtained through an account used by the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency in Cleveland, records show.
Mary Denihan, spokeswoman for the county agency, said the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services contacted the agency today and requested an investigation of the access to Wurzelbacher's information. Cuyahoga County court records do not show any child-support cases involving Wurzelbacher.
The State Highway Patrol, which administers the Law Enforcement Automated Data System in Ohio, asked Toledo police to explain why it pulled BMV information on Wurzelbacher within 48 hours of the debate, Hunter said.
The LEADS system also can be used to check for warrants and criminal histories, but such checks would not be reflected on the records obtained by The Dispatch.
Sgt. Tim Campbell, a Toledo police spokesman, said he could not provide any information because the department only had learned of the State Highway Patrol inquiry today.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/24/joe.html?sid=101
Worst ticket ever: Obama/Biden!
Media Ignore Biden Gaffes
Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:44 PM
By: Phil Brennan
If Sarah Palin was half the serial gaffer Joe Biden is, the media would be all over her, insisting that her boo-boos showed her to be incompetent. Yet Biden gets a free pass from the pro-Obama mainstream media (MSM) as he continues to mangle his remarks with multiple faux pas.
His latest was a beauty, and a serious blow to the reputation of his running mate Barack Obama, who's already fending off attacks on his own inexperience: “Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
And if that wasn't enough, he went on to say that Barack Obama would not be up to meeting the crisis and would need help.
The media's reaction: to swallow whole the Obama camp's spin. He wasn't talking about Obama alone, the spinners said, but McCain as well – a flat out lie. He specifically named Obama.
That gaffe has also provided fodder for Sarah Palin, who has been repeating it on the stump since Biden uttered it last weekend.
“Did you hear what Sen. Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday?" Palin asked at a rally in Troy, Ohio. "He guaranteed—he said mark my words, he guarantees that if Barack Obama is elected, we’ll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration.”
She then touted Biden's vast foreign policy experience, using it to point out how the top of the Democratic ticket pales in comparison.
“Senator Obama’s own running mate, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has informed us that a serious international crisis is certain if Obama is elected," Palin said, "and that he is not ready to deal with it and America doesn’t need smooth talk that glosses over that question, we need straight talk that answers it.”
If anything, Biden is full of "straight talk" — but it always raises more questions than answers. Biden shocked many when, during a rally, he asked the wheelchair-bound Missouri politician Chuck Graham to “stand up” at a rally. Realizing his gaffe, he then said, “Oh, God love you, what I am talking about? You're making everybody else stand up though, aren't you pal.” He then asked everyone in the room to stand up for Graham.
If McCain or Palin had said such a thing the MSM would have been screeching that they had disparaged all disabled Americans.
On ABC's “Good Morning America,” Biden wasn't content merely to proclaim that the wealthy would pay higher taxes if Obama wins the election. He felt obliged to claim that letting the government pick your pocket with higher taxes would be a higher form of patriotism.
Said Joe Biden: “It's time to be patriotic, time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
That gem evoked barely a tut-tut from the MSM.
In Ohio, Joe told an environmentalist on the rope line that both he and Obama “are not supporting clean coal” in America despite the fact that Obama does support exploiting clean coal.
One of his most outrageous gaffes came during an interview with Katie Couric when, condemning George Bush's weak response to the current financial crisis, he said that, when the stock market crashed in 1929, “FDR got on television and explained to the American people what happened.”
Few members of the media bothered to point out that FDR was not president in 1929, or that there were no TVs in people's homes at the time, and for many years thereafter.
Some of Biden's gaffes turn out to be patent untruths. In Baltimore he told his audience, “If you want to know where al-Qaida lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
Forced down by hostile gunfire? No, according to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who told the Associated Press that the helicopter was “forced down” by a snowstorm.
“It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty dangerous ridges,” Kerry said. “So the pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there, and we all agreed.”
When CBS asked Biden how he felt about an Obama campaign ad that joked about John McCain's inability to use a computer, Biden took issue with the attack, saying that in light of the fact that McCain could not type on a computer keyboard because of war injuries, it was “terrible.”
“I didn't know we did it," he said, insisting that he wouldn't have approved the ad. But then he went on to contradict himself by defending Obama's inexcusable decision to approve it. “The answer is I don't think anything was intentional about that. They were trying to make another point,” he said lamely.
Talking to mine workers in Virginia, Biden said, “Hope you won't hold it against me, but I am a hard coal miner — anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania, that's where I was born and raised.”
Few in the MSM bothered to report that Biden's father ran a car dealership in Delaware and had worked in the oil business for Biden's grandfather.
In Nashua, New Hampshire, Biden even questioned Obama's decision to choose him as his running mate, saying he should have picked Hillary Clinton.
“Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let's get that straight,” he said. “She's a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be president of the United States of America. She's easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me, but she is first-rate.”
In Fort Meyers, Florida, Biden called Barack Obama “Barack America” and referred to the future “Biden administration," before correcting that beaut by saying an “Obama-Biden administration.”
“Believe me, that wasn't a Freudian slip,” an embarrassed Biden said. “Oh Lordy day, I tell ya.”
During a CNN/YouTube debate in July, Biden recalled that he was shot at seven times inside Iraq's Green Zone.
Two weeks later, he changed his story, telling The Hill newspaper, “I was near where a shot landed.” He said a shot landed outside the building in the Green Zone where he and another senator spent the night in December 2005. While they were shaving in the morning he said, the building shook.
“No one got up and ran from the room – it wasn't that kind of thing,” Biden told the Hill. “It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.”
Nor anywhere near it.
Then there was this doozy. Speaking about Obama in January, long before he was picked as his running mate, Biden told The New York Observer, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that's a storybook, man.”
He forgot to add, “Man, he sure has rhythm.”
Realizing what he had said, Biden explained, “Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that the Democratic or Republican Party has produced at least since I've been around. And he's fresh. He's new. He's smart. He's insightful. And I really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the world 'clean.’”
In June 2006, Biden noted, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking.”
His staff explained, “The point Senator Biden was making is that there has been a vibrant Indian-American community in Delaware for decades.”
Working in 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts, where they belong, of course.
All in all, some record for a man who had the nerve to question Sarah Palin's qualifications to be a nominee for the vice presidency. Had she racked up such a chronicle of confused rhetoric the MSM would never let us forget it. But with Biden, it's all just clean good fun.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/joe_biden_gaffes/2008/10/23/143588.html
The mainstream media continues to give this guy a pass on every possible issue. How can Obama's 20 year membership at his radical anti-American church not be an issue? How can his relationship with terrorist Ayers not be an issue? Obama's first fundraising get together was with Ayers. Or Obamas ties with Odigna of Kenya (remember the 800 church burnings in January). Add that to all his socialist ideas and now whether he is even a U.S. citizen. Unbelievable this guy is even on a presidential ballot. Thankfully many polls are showing this as a dead heat now. I think many are finally starting to see who this guy really is. And now we have all this voter fraud becoming uncovered in Ohio from his Acorn group. It just goes on and on.
Obama Refuses to Answer Birth Certificate Lawsuit
Friday, October 24, 2008 4:16 PM
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
A Pennsylvania lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States took an unusual twist this week, after a federally mandated deadline requiring Obama’s lawyers to produce a “vault” copy of his birth certificate expired with no response from Obama or his lawyers.
The lawsuit, filed by former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg — a self-avowed supporter of Hillary Clinton — alleges that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus “ineligible” to run for president of the United States. It demands that Obama’s lawyers produce a copy of his original birth certificate to prove that he is a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Berg's suit and allegations have set off a wave of Internet buzz and rumors, though Obama could easily have put the matter to rest by providing the federal court with the basic documentation proving he is eligible to take the oath of a president. But Obama has apparently decided to deny the court and the public that documentation.
The Constitution provides that any U.S. citizen is eligible to become president if the person is 35 years of age or older and is a natural-born citizen; that is, born in the territorial United States.
By failing to respond to the Request for Admissions and Request for the Production of Documents within 30 days, Obama has “admitted” that he was born in Kenya, Berg stated this week in new court filings.
Berg released a long list of “admissions” he submitted to Obama’s lawyers on Sept. 15, and asked that they produce documents relating to Obama’s place of birth and citizenship.
Instead of responding, lawyers for Obama and the DNC asked the court to dismiss the case. But Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has issued no ruling in the case that would have given Obama’s lawyers more time.
“There are lots of legal ways to stonewall,” a well-placed Republican attorney told Newsmax, who was not authorized to comment officially on the case. “But failing to respond is not one of them.”
“The first thing they teach you in law school,” he added, “is don’t put a complaint like this in a drawer. That’s how a nuisance case can become a problem.”
The 30-day deadline for defendants to comply with a discovery request is set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures.
“It all comes down to the fact that there's nothing from the other side,” Berg said after he filed a motion on Thursday for summary judgment.
“The admissions are there. By not filing the answers or objections, the defense has admitted everything. [Obama] admits he was born in Kenya. He admits he was adopted in Indonesia. He admits that the documentation posted online is a phony. And he admits that he is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president of the United States.”
In a contentious case, lawyers on both sides will haggle over the production of documents, and will frequently go beyond the deadlines, several lawyers told Newsmax.
“The rules are more often complied with in the breech rather than the observance,” a senior trial attorney who has close ties to the Democrat Party, but is not involved in the current case, told Newsmax.
“Lawyers frequently do not return telephone calls or meet discovery deadlines because of sheer inadvertence. Therefore, we do not consider a failure to respond as a ‘violation,’” he said.
Allegations surrounding Obama’s place of birth have been swirling for months. Earlier this year, the Obama campaign sought to put down the rumors by making available a computer-generated Certification of Live Birth, issued in 2007 by the State of Hawaii. [See the Certification of Live Birth — Click Here.]
Respected conservative blogger Ed Morrissey called the Berg lawsuit a “conspiracy theory” that had been put to rest by the Obama campaign over the summer but ”has arisen like a zombie yet again to suck the credibility out of the conservative blogosphere.”
However, the 2007 document produced by the Obama campaign omits key information that normally appears on birth certificates in the United States, including the name of the hospital where he was born, the size and weight of the baby, and sometimes the name of the doctor who delivered him.
In addition, the critics of the 2007 document note that Obama's father is described as “African,” a term used today. The formal language in official documents at the time — 1961 — would have identified his race as “Negro” or “Colored.”
The Web site snarkybytes.com has produced a vault copy of a Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth from 1963, issued by the Hawaii Department of Health. [See the vault copy — Click Here.]
In addition to naming the hospital and more details about the baby, the 1963 vault copy also includes the “usual residence of the mother,” and the “usual occupation” of the father. None of this information appears on the 2007 Live Birth certificate produced by the Obama campaign.
Berg has been a perennial political candidate in Pennsylvania, having run in Democrat primaries for attorney general, lieutenant governor, governor, and other offices without success. He served as deputy attorney general of the State of Pennsylvania from 1972-1980.
His credibility was tarnished by work he did for the far-left “9/11 for the Truth” campaign, which alleged in a federal lawsuit that the collapse of the twin towers in New York was caused by “controlled demolition” ordered by the president of the United States.
Nevertheless, in recent weeks, lawsuits have been filed in seven additional states demanding that Barack Obama produce an original vault copy of his birth certificate, to dispel the rumors that he is not a natural-born United States citizen.
The latest suits have been filed in state and federal courts in Hawaii, Washington, California, Florida, Georgia, New York, and Connecticut to compel Obama to release his birth records.
Lawsuits in Washington and Georgia are seeking state superior courts to force the states’ secretary of state, as the chief state elections officer, to require Obama to produce original birth records from Hawaii, or else decertify him as a candidate for the presidency.
Ironically, Obama mentions his birth certificate in passing on Page 26 of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams of My Father.” “I discovered this article, folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms, when I was in high school,” he wrote.
Lawyers for Obama and the DNC did not return calls for comment on the current status of the case, or explain why the Obama campaign did not simply put to rest the whole controversy by releasing the birth certificate that Obama apparently cherished as a teenager.
In the past, questions about Sen. John McCain's legal status have arisen. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone at a U.S. Army hospital. McCain had legal experts vet his constitutional qualifications, and he also disclosed a copy of his birth certificate.
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_birth_certificate/2008/10/24/143882.html
The durable Dürer
In the Reformation era, Albrecht Dürer used new technology to advance excellent art the way Luther used it to advance biblical theology. Five centuries later, Dürer’s art is in a traveling exhibition, and it still soars | Marvin Olasky
Kean Collection/Getty Images
As the Internet is changing communication now, so the printing press did half a millennium ago, and not only for writers. Artists until then could paint or sculpt and hope their creation would last in one public place. But soon after Gutenberg's mid-15th-century innovation, artists who devoted themselves to print media could produce multiple copies for private homes.
One artist in particular specialized and excelled in intricate woodcuts, engravings, and etchings: Abrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Art historians view him as the greatest master of the printed image besides Rembrandt, the leading melder of northern European and Renaissance styles, and a true graphic entrepreneur during the first century of the printing press. But he's also interesting theologically, as he became a fan of Martin Luther during the last decade of his life.
Dürer's work is available in books, but I first realized his genius when viewing 100 of his greatest works recently on display at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City. That exhibit is now at The Mobile (Ala.) Museum of Art; in January it will be at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Fla. It's worth visiting, and it's worth learning something about this artist whose father "was very careful of his children to bring them up to honor God."
That's what the exhibit catalogue shows about Dürer's relationship with his dad, who helped him gain a good apprenticeship and the opportunity to study in Italy. Dürer then opened a shop in his hometown of Nuremberg in 1495 and began producing and selling engravings and woodcuts. Instead of depending upon patrons or church commissions, Dürer hired an agent who sold his prints at fairs throughout Europe.
The cover illustration of this issue, which we playfully tied to politics, is from Dürer's The Apocalypse, the first publication ever (1498) by an artist designing and printing his own book. The book was what today would be called a graphic novel, a sequence of 15 woodcuts with text from Revelation in both a Latin edition and a German one.
The 27-year-old Dürer took artistic license with chapter 6 of Revelation: In the biblical text the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride separately, but here they form a thundering posse. Three of the four ride on galloping steeds; the fourth, death, rides a rib-showing, hungry nag over the jaws of hell. The book apparently sold so well that a Strasbourg printer latched onto the action with a pirated edition in 1502. Dürer himself released a new edition in 1511.
Three years later he produced a work famous in art history for its technical brilliance, "St. Jerome in His Study." The church father sits at his writing desk at the vanishing point of a central perspective view, with light coming through the bull's-eye glass panes of the tall windows. He is seizing the time, presumably translating the Bible into Latin, while surrounded by objects—like an hourglass and a skull—that show how time flies while we slumber; note the sleeping dog and drowsy lion in the foreground.
Dürer was often on the lookout for subjects that would sell. In 1515 he produced a large print of an animal few in Europe had ever seen, a rhinoceros. Dürer himself never saw it, but relied on written descriptions sent to Nuremberg of a rhino that had arrived in Lisbon from India, a gift to the king of Portugal. Dürer deliberately left no right and left margins, so that the rhino's bulk fills the space and threatens to burst the image's confines.
The teaching of Luther that began the Protestant Reformation in 1517 heavily influenced Dürer. He attended the Augustinian Church in Nuremberg and listened to a sermon series offered by Johann von Staupitz, Luther's mentor, who preached on Christ's atonement rather than our own works as the key to forgiveness from sin. When Luther disappeared after the church council known as the Diet of Worms and few knew whether he was living or dead, Dürer offered a prayer: "O God, if Luther is dead, who will henceforth deliver the Holy Gospel to us with such clarity?"
Dürer wanted to produce a portrait of Luther, whom he called "this Christian man who has helped me out of great distress." He never did draw Luther and never did formally renounce Roman Catholicism, but Dürer's Protestant sympathies must have become evident by the time he wrote in 1524 that "because of our Christian faith we have to stand in scorn and danger, for we are reviled and called heretics."
Luther, like Dürer, understood how the printing press gave great liberty to individuals to see and read for themselves. Luther's primary impact was not as a producer of treatises but as a very popular writer of vigorous prose. Between 1517 and 1530 Luther's 30 publications probably sold well over 300,000 copies, an astounding total at a time when illiteracy was rampant and printing still an infant. Like Dürer's rhinoceros, the Reformation pushed its way to the edge of its theological frame—but then pushed further, with a wide variety of denominations and churches emerging. Some of them still celebrate Reformation Day every Oct. 31 and will do so later this month.
Dürer did produce in 1526 an engraving of Luther's younger associate Philipp Melanchthon, and put below it the humble inscription, "Dürer was able to draw Philipp's face, but the learned hand could not paint his spirit." Maybe, but Dürer suggested Melanchthon's intelligence by giving him a high forehead along with a large eye that seems capable of piercing darkness. Melanchthon in 1530 was the lead writer of the Augsburg Confession, one of the Reformation's leading documents, but Dürer had died in 1528. When Luther heard of the artist's demise, he wrote, "It is natural and right to weep for so excellent a man."
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14440
Big surprise; Colin Powell endorsing Obama. Not! I've always said that Powell is a liberal and his quote on abortion from 1996 is very telling.
Powell's quote from 1996 (RNC Convention no less)
You all know that I believe in a woman’s right to choose and I strongly support affirmative action. And, I was invited here by my party to share my views with you because we are a big enough party -- and big enough people -- to disagree on individual issues and still work together for our common goal: restoring the American Dream.
Sorry but Powell never shared the Republican or pro-life views that this board strongly supports. Looks like more of a political ploy to get a nice spot on the Obama administration (that's never going to happen anyway). The polls are tightening and for those that really track the polls you'll see the ones that sample Democrats, Republicans and Independents evenly, that the two candidates are within the margin of error. You won't hear that on the mainstream media!
10/18/2008 World Mag Issue:
After the bloodbath
Iraq: War is hell, but rebuilding Iraq’s political infrastructure is no picnic. Organizers for provincial and national elections must combat mass migration, continuing violence, and cross-party intrigue | Mindy Belz
Marwan Ibrahim/AFP/Getty Images
IN MOSUL, KIRKUK, ERBIL, and HAMDANIYAH, Iraq—When Eveline Aoraha goes to work, she wraps a handgun in a soft print scarf and pushes it into the bottom of a black leather purse. She always zips the bag. Within 10 miles of Mosul, she slips the gun from her bag, hands it to her driver, and wraps the scarf over her head.
Aoraha is one of three Assyrian Christians on a governing council of 41 in Nineveh province. Mosul is its capital. In the last four years, terrorist insurgents have killed 12 council members. Aoraha's colleagues, whom she calls "martyrs" to democracy, were Arab Muslims, Assyrian Christians, and Kurds; the oldest was 80, the youngest was a 34-year-old veterinarian and a mother.
All Mosul's leaders feel the terrorists' wrath. Duraid Kashmoula, a Muslim, has had his 17-year-old son and two brothers killed in the four years he has been governor of the province. He himself has narrowly escaped bombs at least three times, and just last month attended the funeral for his administrative assistant. The purpose of the terrorists, Aoraha said, "is to stop life here, and to stop development."
In so many ways the insurgents have succeeded. Iraq's third-largest city was one of its most picturesque: Parks and restaurants line one shady bank of the Tigris while ancient ruins front the other. The Nineveh bridge crosses the river into the city center where covered stalls sell melons and vegetables along the main traffic circle. Now the parks, the restaurants, and the hotels are all shuttered. The streets leading into the city center are lined with concrete barriers or simple dirt barricades topped with razor wire—anything to stop a bomb-laden car.
Checkpoints bottleneck traffic for hours, as nearly every vehicle is stopped and searched. Officials say overall violence in Mosul is down from one year ago. But during the week that I visited, insurgents bombed the house of a Sunni member of parliament from Mosul, wounding bystanders (the lawmaker himself was in Baghdad at the time); exploded a bomb near a soccer ground, killing five children; injured one resident using a roadside bomb; and detonated a vehicle near a police building, killing two and wounding about 40, including 15 policemen. Before the week was out, gunmen also killed an Assyrian Christian named Bashar al-Hazin, residents said, as he was walking between his church and home.
Improvements mean traffic is moving and people are walking the streets again, but Mosul feels like the neglected stepchild of the U.S. surge that has worked elsewhere. "Because of the success of the surge in Anbar, Diyala, and Baghdad, the insurgents come up to Mosul," said Khasro Goran, deputy governor of the province, and a Kurd. "Their intent now is to deform relationships for the next elections."
Aoraha contends, "The center of the Islamic [jihadist] state is in Mosul now. It is worse than Baghdad or Diyala." Two years ago Aoraha and her family moved 45 miles north of Mosul to a town where they feel safe, and she commutes to work three or four days a week, usually with five armed bodyguards. Her car speeds through town and into fortified government office compounds. Sometimes meetings are held outside the city at the nearby U.S. base—all meaning little interaction with residents. But many of her constituents also have fled. Officials say about 250,000 have left the city of about 1.7 million. Buses carry students and some workers from rural areas where they've taken refuge to universities in Mosul or to offices and return them to their villages of exile each day. Many say they've left Mosul for good.
No matter who the next U.S. president is, he will need new benchmarks for progress in Iraq because the venture that has cost about $500 billion will become his to own. Beyond accounting for combat forces, he will have to gauge political development and assess U.S. reconstruction teams and many nonmilitary programs. Local leaders are mindful that on the eve of U.S. elections and over 18 months into a proven counterinsurgency strategy, it's time for lasting political improvement. "To defeat terror, political powers must unite groups between military and politics," said Kashmoula.
To that end, Iraqis are scheduled to return to the polls for two pivotal elections—provincial balloting before the end of this year, then national elections in 2009. It has taken the surge by U.S. and Iraqi forces to make those elections possible. Now it will take full-fledged elections to make safety—and further minimizing of the U.S. role—possible.
"I wish elections would take place tomorrow," said Kashmoula, fingering prayer beads in an office that went completely dark with a power outage during our interview. On the day we met, the Baghdad parliament passed a long-debated law governing provincial elections. Under it voters are scheduled to go to the polls in Nineveh and Iraq's 16 other provinces—but not in Kirkuk—by the end of this year or early next year.
In Kirkuk, where Sunni Arabs and Turkmen oppose giving control of the historically Kurdish city to the Kurdish regional government, a fact-finding commission from the central government in Baghdad will begin this month to look more into holding a referendum, along with a citywide census, before provincial elections in the coming year; some say that is optimistic. Under the constitution a referendum should be held in connection with provincial elections to determine if Kirkuk remains under direct Baghdad supervision or becomes part of the Kurdish area.
New construction is up in Kirkuk, judging by the buildings rising concrete block by concrete block on its northern outskirts. Oilfields shoot brilliant flares skyward again along the city's western fringe. And violence is down 80 percent from two years ago, according to provincial governor Abdul Rahman Mustafa. "Kirkuk is different from other provincial conflicts and has become a national problem" because it has held up elections, he said. "But there is a lot of faking and exaggerating the facts, describing Kirkuk as a tinderbox of ethnic, regional, and sectarian violence, when it is no such thing."
Mustafa is ethnically a Kurd but politically independent. He laughs when asked how a homegrown politician in a divided city like Kirkuk can survive as an independent. "I am endangering my life by staying independent, but my independence has provided me power to maintain my position." As a lawyer in the city under Saddam's Arabization program, Mustafa could not issue contracts or engage in rent agreements on behalf of Kurds, only Arabs. He remembers how the city was nearly emptied of Kurds and of half its Christian population.
Mustafa has broad support in the city, but he recognizes that voters—like their counterparts in the United States—grow weary of politicians who toy with their city's future. While voter turnout in 2005 topped 60 percent here, registration for upcoming elections is lagging at about 29 percent of eligible voters. Kirkuk's status needs to be decided, he said, so that bigger issues can be confronted—like the fact that there is no airport, only minimal hospital care, and poor sewage.
"What is sad about Kirkuk is that everything here feels temporary, as if people are ready to leave at a moment's notice, especially Kurdish people," said Tanya Gilly, a member of parliament representing Kirkuk who divides her time between Baghdad and Kirkuk, where she lives in a neighborhood that receives running water two or three days per week. "Everyone feels they are in limbo and it will not change."
Throughout September a UN monitoring team met with Mosul and Kirkuk officials to work through the complexities of holding elections while a mass migration of Iraqis continues. Millions of Iraqis in the south and central areas have fled north and outside the country to escape violence. Those who have registered as internally displaced persons, or IDPs, will have the right to vote wherever they are.
Others who were forced to move under Saddam Hussein's regime are now eligible to return to their original homes, and to receive government compensation of 20 million Iraqi dinars ($16,000) for housing. That means Kurds once forced out of Kirkuk may return; and Arabs from Basra, forced by Saddam to relocate to Kirkuk, may go back to Basra.
For Iraq's minorities, including its historic Christian churches and the parties that represent them, the provincial elections present a turning point. Outside Mosul in the plains of Nineveh province, Assyrian parties staged demonstrations in the week following the vote in parliament. Their complaint: As part of the new provincial law, parliamentarians scrapped Article 50, a constitutional clause designed to guarantee proportional representation for Christians and other minorities. Without it they say Christians will have no voice in Iraqi governance.
In Hamdaniyah, a town about 25 miles east of Mosul also known as Qaraqosh, the men turned out on the streets early for a Sunday morning, halting traffic as thousands marched to protest the election law. Iraqi police and army units in trucks with mounted gunners followed the protesters closely as they formed a thick snake through the streets of downtown, then gathered outside government offices in blazing midday sun for speeches. "We are demonstrating our demands for full autonomy for our people—this was provided for by our constitution in Article 50 and endorsed by the UN," said Hamdaniyah mayor Nissan Karumi. Similar demonstrations are planned throughout the region and as far north as Dohuk, a largely Kurdish city that has also become home to an estimated 10,000 displaced Iraqis, most from Mosul.
Article 50 called for seats on provincial governing councils to be apportioned according to demographic makeup. Because no census has been conducted since the war and terrorist activities uprooted millions, there's no way to accurately show how many seats should go to which group. Many believe a census should be taken not only in Kirkuk but nationwide before elections are held.
In Nineveh a census likely would show that more Christians live here than ever before, as Assyrians and Chaldeans who lived in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra are taking refuge in the province's historically Christian villages. Some Assyrians say they are underrepresented on the Nineveh provincial council already: Currently only three of 41 members are from what are considered Christian parties.
And that is a reason Assyrian and Chaldean leaders also are pressing for a Christian autonomous region modeled on the Kurdish regional government to the north—with its own parliament, constitution, budget, even flag. They feel the only way to solve many of the injustices they face is to create a region in which they are guaranteed a majority in government.
An autonomous region has advocates in Washington among Christian human-rights groups and some lawmakers. But it seems doomed to fall on deaf ears in Baghdad except that it has received endorsement from key Kurdish leaders and is pushed by Kurdish regional government finance minister Sarkis Aghagon. Aghagon himself is Assyrian but has been a member of the Kurdish government since 1992, serving as its deputy prime minister from 2004 through 2006. In a Sept. 29 interview in his Erbil government offices, Aghagon said the autonomous region he envisions would stretch from the Syrian border to the north at Fishkabor (currently part of the Kurdish regional government) to Hamdaniyah. "We are trying to secure our people in an area where they currently live," he said.
Aghagon, who has used undisclosed funds to rebuild hundreds of historically Christian villages across northern Iraq and down to Nineveh Plain for returnees, sees the new zone as an administrative region controlled by Assyrian-Chaldean political parties. (Asked how much money is used for reconstruction and where it comes from, he said, "We don't have such measures. . . . We only provide support for emergency cases in those areas.") Other minorities and Arabs "will coexist with us. . . . We are not separating ourselves from those people. They will have members in the government."
Iraq has many Christians who live outside this area and do not personally share the region's ancient roots. Some pastors say they fear that a regional divide will make them more vulnerable where they are. Said one pastor who did not give permission to be named because of threats to his church, "Many in the Assyrian and Chaldean leadership talk as though they are spokesmen for all Christians. They are not." Another in similar circumstances said, "Personally I want Christians everywhere, on equal footing with all Iraqis, not with special treatment in a special area." He also said, "Too many of our brothers and sisters want first power and authority, not Bible study and discipline."
Goran, the Kurdish deputy governor in Nineveh, insists that what in the end is needed is a vote: "The Kurdish regional government requests a referendum so that people in the middle have to decide. The people of Assyrian places should get to decide their future, not somebody else."
One reason the Christian region has recently gained wider interest may be that it provides a needed pawn in the chess game of redrawing Iraq's map. For Kurds it could be traded away to gain greater control in the Kirkuk region. Or kept as a buffer zone to what is now a hostile Arab/Kurd border.
Politics is messy, and progress toward elections could set the stage for bitter rivalries that erupt in more violence—or actually help to strengthen the democratic process. It's clear that ethnic minorities, including Christians, will play a greater role than ever in Iraq's political future. And that going to the polls in Iraq has consequences everywhere.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14528
10/13/2008
‘Not a good week for Christians’
IRAQ: Targeted killings in Mosul have forced thousands of Christians to flee Iraq’s third largest city | Mindy Belz
Associated Press/Photo by Emad Matti
Christians across Iraq began a three-day fast Sunday to focus attention inside and outside the church on targeted killings of Christians in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and, as capital of Nineveh province, one of the ancient centers of Christianity in Iraq.
“These are like the days people of Nineveh fasted at the time of Jonah,” a pastor in Kirkuk told WORLD. Mosul church leaders report at least 25 and perhaps as many as 40 such deaths in the last week, he said. The killings highlight resurgent violence against the church in the north-central plains of Iraq as well as across the country at a time when security overall is improving. Two suicide car bombers also struck Mosul on Sunday, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
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"This has not been a good week for Christians in Iraq," said Andrew White, the Anglican leader of St. George's church in Baghdad. White met last week with Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to request additional U.S. assistance for Mosul, once a city of 2 million, where violence has spiked over the last month—and appears to be largely aimed at the city's Christianity minority.
His call was echoed by local officials: Mosul's provincial governor, Duraid Kashmoula, told reporters Sunday that nearly 1,000 Christian families—approximately 3,000 people—have fled their homes in Mosul in recent weeks following the worst violence against them in five years. Some are taking refuge in the more remote villages of Nineveh Plain while others are crossing the border into Syria or Turkey, and are less likely to return. Mosul residents told WORLD that Christian women must now wear hijab, the Muslim head covering, when outside, and none of the city's churches are currently holding services. Chaldean church leader Louis Sako said, “We are the target of a campaign of liquidation, a campaign of violence. The objective is political.”
WORLD met with Kashmoula in Mosul late last month, and the Muslim leader pledged to protect churches targeted during this upsurge of violence, but he complained that Iraqi Army units in Mosul lack the explosive detectors and other equipment now prevalent in Baghdad. “They have U.S. support, but it is not enough,” he said.
Iraq's parliament last month passed a provincial election law that shelved a provision for protecting minority rights. It would have designated provincial council seats for Christians, Yezidis, and other groups. Many feared that its removal from the law would eliminate protection for minority groups and—without stepped-up security to combat the new violence—remnant al-Qaeda in Mosul appear to be making that fear a reality.
http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/14540
I've always said you can tell so much about a person on how they stand on the pro-life issue. Never has there been a more stark contrast between our two parties. If you don't have respect for life, for what God created, what else don't you have respect for. What a plus Palin is for this ticket!
Oct 11th Speech:
Pro-life witness
CAMPAIGN 2008: Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin delivered a decidedly pro-life message in Johnstown, Pa., Saturday | The Editors
Associated Press/Photo by Keith Srakocic
At a campaign rally in Johnstown, Pa., Saturday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin delivered a decidedly pro-life message to the 5,000 in attendance:
John McCain and I believe in the goodness and potential of every innocent life. I believe the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who are least able to defend and speak for themselves. And who is more vulnerable, or more innocent, than a child?
When I learned that my son Trig would have special needs, I had to prepare my heart for the challenges to come. At first I was scared, and Todd and I had to ask for strength and understanding. But I can tell you a few things I've learned already.
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Yes, every innocent life matters. Everyone belongs in the circle of protection. Every child has something to contribute to the world, if we give them that chance. There are the world's standards of perfection ... and then there are God's, and these are the final measure. Every child is beautiful before God, and dear to Him for their own sake.
As for our beautiful baby boy, for Todd and me, he is only more precious because he is vulnerable. In some ways, I think we stand to learn more from him than he does from us. When we hold Trig and care for him, we don't feel scared anymore. We feel blessed.
It's hard to think of many issues that could possibly be more important than who is protected in law and who isn't—who is granted life and who is denied it. So when our opponent, Senator Obama, speaks about questions of life, I listen very carefully.
I listened when he defended his unconditional support for unlimited abortions. He said that a woman shouldn't have to be—quote—"punished with a baby." He said that right here in Johnstown—"punished with a baby"—and it's about time we called him on it. The more I hear from Senator Obama, the more I understand why he is so vague and evasive on the subject. Americans need to see his record for what it is. It's not negative or mean-spirited to talk to about his record. Whatever party you belong to, there are facts you need to know.
Senator Obama has voted against bills to end partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, a bipartisan majority passed legislation against that practice. Senator Obama opposed that bill. He voted against it in committee, and voted "present" on the Senate floor. In that legislature, "present" is how you vote when you're against something, but don't want to be held to account.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, described partial-birth abortion as "too close to infanticide." Barack Obama thinks it's a constitutional right, but he is wrong.
Most troubling, as a state senator, Barack Obama wouldn't even stand up for the rights of infants born alive during an abortion. These infants—often babies with special needs—are simply left to die.
In 2002, Congress unanimously passed a federal law to require medical care for those babies who survive an abortion. They're living, breathing babies, but Senator Obama describes them as "pre-viable." This merciful law was called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Illinois had a version of the same law. Obama voted against it.
Asked about this vote, Senator Obama assured a reporter that he'd have voted "yes" on that bill if it had contained language similar to the federal version of the Born Alive Act. There's just one little problem with that story: the language of both the state and federal bills was identical.
In short, Senator Obama is a politician who has long since left behind even the middle ground on the issue of life. He has sided with those who won't even protect a child born alive. And this exposes the emptiness of his promises to move beyond the "old politics."
In both parties, Americans have many concerns to be weighed in the votes they cast on November fourth. In times like these, with wars and a financial crisis, it's easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life. And it seems our opponent hopes that you will forget. Like so much else in his agenda, he hopes you won't notice how radical his ideas and record are until it's too late.
But let there be no misunderstanding about the stakes.
A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for activist courts that will continue to smother the open and democratic debate we need on this issue, at both the state and federal level. A vote for Barack Obama would give the ultimate power over the issue of life to a politician who has never once done anything to protect the unborn. As Senator Obama told Pastor Rick Warren, it's above his pay grade.
For a candidate who talks so often about "hope," he offers no hope at all in meeting this great challenge to the conscience of America. There is a growing consensus in our country that we can overcome narrow partisanship on this issue, and bring all the resources of a generous country to the aid of both women in need and the child waiting to be born. We need more of the compassion and idealism that our opponent's own party, at its best, once stood for. We need the clarity and conviction of leaders like the late Governor Bob Casey.
He represented a humanity that speaks to all of us—no matter what our party, our background, our faith, or our gender. And no matter your position on this sensitive subject, I hope that spirit will guide you on Election Day. I ask you to vote for McCain-Palin on the November fourth, and help us to bring this country together in the rational discussion of compassion and life.
http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/14539
The video: http://online.worldmag.com/2008/10/13/pro-life-palin/
The Creator is Clearly Seen
by Jud Davis
May 13, 2008
The Creator is Clearly Seen
Everyone knows there is a God. The evidence is all around us. In fact, the Creator designed the universe so that His many invisible attributes would be “clearly seen” in the things He made, so that we are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
“Despite his wonders, they did not believe.” Psalm 78:32, ESV
Theophilus sits in a coffeehouse with a latté and his Bible. His classmate, Epicurus, can’t resist needling him, “I don’t get you Christians. How can you say that God sends people to hell who have never heard? A God like that can’t be true.”
What should Theophilus say? “We don’t really know what God does with the unevangelized”?
Romans 1:18–21 has a more direct answer to modern Epicurus. Those who have never heard are willfully guilty for rejecting God because God has revealed Himself clearly in the wonders of creation.
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice of men, who are seeking to suppress the truth by means of their unrighteous lives.” (Romans 1:18)
God is angry with us. Notice why. God’s anger swells up because men are “suppressing the truth.”
The Greek word translated “suppress” means “holding down,” like chains in a prison. This same word was used to describe Joseph’s imprisonment in Genesis 39. God seethes with anger because unbelievers attempt to “imprison” the truth by their wicked lives.
Yet no matter how hard people wrestle to suppress God’s truth, God will not let them put it in a cage. Humans are “seeking”—but failing—to suppress the truth.1
God’s anger is not ordinary anger. Paul uses the Greek word or-ge(line over e) for “wrath.” This word comes from the verb that describes fruits swelling with juice. The idea is of a swollen indignation. Our sin against what we know about God has reached the point that it would be immoral for God not to act.
This or-ge “is being revealed” from heaven.2 God lets everyone know about His anger, not just once or occasionally, but continually. All of us know it . . . including Mr. Epicurus.
God directs this wrath against two things—“impiety” and “injustice.” Impiety, or ungodliness, refers to mankind’s failure to fulfill his obligation to his Creator. He holds the very molecules of our bodies together (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), and He enables the neurons in our brains to fire. So we are indebted to God, not just for health and life but for our ability to move and think. In return, we owe our Creator an infinite debt; we owe Him our complete love and devotion. Failure to pay this debt is impiety.
God’s indignation also swells against our “injustice.” Injustice refers to our failure to treat other human beings—God’s special creations—with the respect that we know they deserve. When we abuse or neglect others, we shred God’s Mona Lisa and smash His David into pieces. We commit a great offense against God’s creations, but our offense against their Creator is even greater.
“Because the thing which can be known about God is evident in them, because God made it known to them.” (Romans 1:19)
When we witness to people, we don’t have to worry about proving God’s existence. According to this verse, God makes Himself evident, open, and plain to everyone. He literally placed evidence “in them.” Apparently God placed a knowledge of Himself within all men—inside their minds, in their hearts, in the very core of their being.
The verb is present tense. God did not reveal Himself in the past and then stop. He continues to reveal Himself within us now.
So when people like Epicurus try to appease their conscience and justify their sin, they must suppress their knowledge of God. They grab at straws to patch together a cage around the truth. But God’s truth breaks free, like a tiger ill-suited for captivity.
The King of Heaven does not rely on petty heralds to share who He is. Nor does He post little notes on bulletin boards, hoping we’ll see them. God Himself takes a personal interest in making sure that each one of us has knowledge of Him.
God knows that all people fight against this knowledge. Jesus could say to everyone what He once said to Saul, a zealous Pharisee, “It is hard for you to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5). He pricks every heart, letting each person know about Him.
“For his invisible attributes are thoroughly known from the creation of the cosmos, being known by means of the things which have been made, whether his eternal power or divinity . . . .” (Romans 1:20a)
The Creator is Clearly Seen
What can we see about God? His invisible attributes! The Greek verb kathoratai intensifies the standard Greek word meaning “to see.” So we don’t merely “see” God’s attributes, but we literally see them “down” to the core. We clearly perceive, we abundantly know, we thoroughly recognize God’s invisible attributes.
Poor Epicurus was just bluffing. Everyone sees God clearly, even if they never saw a Bible or heard about Him.
God reveals Himself in two ways. One is through the special revelation of the Bible. Through the Bible God spells out the path to salvation (see “Do All Creationists Go to Heaven?” p. 64). God also communicates through the “general” revelation of creation. While it does not replace the saving truths that mankind must learn in the Bible, creation clearly teaches all men and women that God exists and that certain things are true about Him.
We know these things presently and continually. The moment God created the world (cosmos in Greek), His world began proclaiming things about the Creator, and it has continued ever since.
Psalm 19:1–6 is an important Old Testament parallel. God’s creation, surpassing all limits of language, culture, gender, and age, preaches about God constantly and effectively. The world does not need science to acquire knowledge of the Creator. According to the Bible, people already know the Creator and are desperately seeking any excuse to dispute His existence. As 2 Peter 3:5 says, “They deliberately ignore” the evidence that everyone plainly sees.
Romans 1:20 spells out the attributes that we can see in the world—God’s eternal nature and divine power. The Greek word for eternal, “a-i-di-os,” is unusual. It is related to the Greek word meaning “always.” God has caused an “always-ness” to be evident in the created order, and people connect this “always-ness” with the idea of a personal God.
His divinity, deity, divine nature is “thei-ot-ēs.” This term summarizes all the attributes that make God who He is. So God’s revelation of Himself is pretty all-encompassing. (See “Wonder of God” below.)
“. . . so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20b)
These are sobering words. The wonders of God preach His glory to all men. No man or woman can say, “I did not know” or “The revelation was not clear.” This God, who reveals Himself and knows all hearts, concludes of every man, woman, and child, “They are without excuse.”
What can be so plain and evident, when we behold the heavens and contemplate the celestial bodies, as the existence of some supreme, divine intelligence, by which all these things are governed?
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.2
“For, although they were knowing God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks.” (Romans 1:21)
Not only did we know about God at one time, we knew Him in person. We “were knowing God.”
Our modern-day, latté-drinking Epicurus has no right to accuse God of wrongdoing. Epicurus is guilty because he has willfully turned away. His mockery is only bravado, hiding what he knows in his heart about God. He knows that the real debate is not about the pagan in Patagonia. It is about sinners in Seattle trying to convince themselves that God does not exist.
God has given us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to understand. He could have left us in the dark because of our willful effort to cage His truth and because of our impiety and injustice. Yet God wants all to take His free offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.
God graciously transforms lives that were without form and void—lives dark with the disease of sin and dead to God’s ways, sinking under the abysmal waters of His wrath. This powerful God, who once transformed the empty vastness of space with just a word, is so great in His mercy that, in spite of our willful ignorance, He sees us in our darkness and cries out, “Let the light of the glorious gospel shine in their hearts!” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
WONDER OF GOD
“The heavens are counting out the weightiness of God.” —literal translation of Psalm 19:1
King David, the author of Psalm 19, loved to meditate on the truths revealed in God’s Word, but he never lost the thrill of studying God’s creation. Although not equal to the Bible, the creation gives us a visual display of God’s wonderful character.
As Charles Spurgeon noted in The Treasury of David (1:269),
“In his earliest days the psalmist . . . had devoted himself to the study of God’s two great books—nature and Scripture; and he had so thoroughly entered into the spirit of these . . . that he was able . . . to compare and contrast them, magnifying the excellency of the Author.”
While the Bible reveals God’s work of redemption in history, the Lord had another grand purpose for creation. It constantly “counts out” the weightiness of God. Like a banker who draws from a limitless vault of gold coins, God’s creation counts out the Creator’s infinite wonders for all to see.
These evidences are so clear that every human being knows all about God. God made creation this way so that we could fulfill our created purpose as well—we owe God our complete love and devotion, we owe Him honor and thanks, and most of all, we are driven to glorify Him. It is our privilege and duty, as special beings made in God’s image, to count out the weightiness of God.
Before his death at 54 in 1758, the famous theologian Jonathan Edwards began a Types Notebook, which he intended to publish as a grand proof that God has clearly revealed Himself through nature. In this notebook, Edwards observed the countless ways that nature proclaimed the glory of God.
Edwards mused on the birth of a child, filthy and helpless at first, yet the object of a parent’s love. He looked at marriage, the strong desire of a man for a woman. He looked at death itself and saw a divine meaning built into it. If a person rejects God, death helps us to imagine what follows—corruption, a putrefying mess that repulses us all, the darkness of the grave, and isolation. Edwards believed that God communicated things about Himself and mankind in such everyday experiences.
When Edwards looked at a tree, he asked himself questions like, “What is that tree telling me about God?” “What is God’s purpose in making this tree?” “How has God expressed His character here?” “Why are trees so lavish?” “Why are they so diverse?” “Why do trees live in harmony and dependence on other things?”
Such questions led Edwards to a radical love for God, who lovingly filled His creation with profound lessons and elaborate reminders about Himself. As Paul put it in Romans 1:20, the “invisible things” of the Creator are “clearly seen” in creation, so we can see His combination of attributes, including love, power, wisdom, and patience.
The more he meditated on God’s creation, the more Edwards realized that it does not offer just a few insights about divine things, but an infinite number. Just as we can never exhaust the wonder of God, we could never learn all the wonders that God has to show us in His creation.
Edwards expected “ridicule and contempt” because of his “fruitful brain” and overactive imagination that saw God all around him. Yet he unashamedly declared his belief that “the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of images of divine things, as full as a language is of words.”*
Modern writers are trying to publish a Reader’s Digest version of God’s creation that leaves God out of His own book. May every one of us take up Edwards’ challenge to study God’s creation so we can begin to count out His glory—to everyone all around us—as God intended!
*Henry Stout, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale, 1993), 11:152.
Dr. Jud Davis is the Associate Professor of Greek at Bryan College. He earned his PhD in biblical studies from the University of Sheffield in England. He has also written the book The Name and Way of the Lord: Old Testament Themes, New Testament Christology.
Footnotes
1. The word “seeking” is not in the original Greek, but the context requires it. (Grammarians call this usage a “conative” present.) Back
2. The sentence implies who is revealing—God—but it does not state His identity (a Greek usage known as “divine passive”)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n3/creator-clearly-seen
Obama raised $1 million for foreign thug's election
Democrat joined Libya's Gadhafi among top contributors to Odinga
Posted: October 14, 2008
9:27 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
NEW YORK –Sen. Barack Obama, with a donation of nearly $1 million, and a son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi were among the biggest contributors to the presidential campaign of controversial Kenyan leader Raila Odinga, according to an internal document obtained by WND.
The memo was prepared by the head of Odinga's campaign finance accounting section, Shakeel Shabbir, as an official report delivered to the national treasurer for Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement party, or ODM.
Among the 72 individuals and organizations that contributed money to Odinga's 2007 presidential run in Kenya, Shabbir lists "Friends of Senator B.O." as having donated 66,000,000 Kenyan schillings, about $950,000.
Saif el-Islam Gadhafi, the Libyan strongman's second oldest son, reportedly donated 53,450,000 Kenyan schillings, about $765,000.
According to several highly credible ex-ODM sources WND interviewed in Kenya, the $950,000 raised for Odinga's campaign came from a series of private meetings arranged for Odinga by Mark Lippert, a foreign policy adviser in Obama's U.S. Senate office. The meetings with top-dollar Obama fundraisers and donors took place during Odinga's 2006 trip to the U.S.
In Kenya, WND talked to several top ex-ODM officials who played key roles in Odinga's 2007 presidential campaign.
The officials became disaffected with Odinga after confirming he signed a memorandum of understanding with Sheik Abdullahi Abdi, the chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum, or NAMLEF. In the Aug, 27, 2007, agreement, Odinga promised that within six months of becoming president, he would "rewrite the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared religions."
The ex-Odinga officials also told WND that, as Christians, they were appalled to see Odinga use tribal violence as a strategy to gain power after he lost the election by some 250,000 votes to sitting President Mwai Kibaki, a member of Kenya's majority Kikuyu tribe.
Odinga called on fellow Luo tribal members to protest alleged voter fraud, resulting in a brutal wave of machete-wielding violence that killed an estimated 1,000 members of the Kikuyu tribe in January and February. Some 800 Christian churches also were destroyed or burned to the ground, without a single mosque being damaged.
In a move to end the post-election violence, Kibaki named Odinga as prime minister April 13, effectively entering into a power-sharing agreement brokered by former U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that established Odinga as a co-equal head of state.
WND contacted both Obama's Washington Senate office and his Chicago campaign office asking for comment on this story but received no response.
Odinga-Gadhafi alliance
The ex-ODM supporters of Odinga also confirmed a long-suspected alliance between Odinga and Gadhafi that dates back to Odinga's service as Kenyan minister of energy in 2001-2002.
Shakeel Shabbir's internal campaign finance memorandum was noted in Chapter 4 of "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." At the time the book was published, however, the authenticity of the memo could not be proved.
Research conducted in Kenya by WND this month confirmed Shabbir's funding memorandum had been smuggled out of ODM offices by Christian former-ODM officials who had turned on Odinga after the agreement with the Muslim leader was verified.
While several Internet sources posting the Shabbir memo have been taken down since publication of "The Obama Nation" brought it to international attention, it can still be seen here.
As energy minister, Odinga was introduced to the family of Sheik Abdulkadir Al-Bakri, one of the richest oil families in Saudi Arabia. Through his firm Pan African Petroleum Limited, Odinga is believed to have made millions on a concessionary petroleum deal he negotiated as a silent partner in the local arm of Al-Bakri International.
The Washington Times reported Odinga visited Obama during three trips the Kenyan politician made to the U.S. in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
The Times also reported Obama sent his Senate office foreign policy adviser Lippert to Kenya in early 2006 to coordinate a Senate "fact-finding" visit to Kenya later that year.
WND previously published a story referencing a copy of a private Dec. 22, 2006, e-mail in which Obama personally informed Odinga that "all our correspondence [be] handled by Mr. Mark Lippert."
Obama apparently sought to establish a level of separation between himself and Odinga in their communications regarding the Kenyan election, noting further in the e-mail, using Lippert as a go-between "will be for my own security now and in future."
WND previously reported that when Obama visited Kenya in 2006, the administration of President Kibaki objected that Odinga was using Obama's visit to win votes. Obama's repeated public appearances with Odinga, and the senator's almost daily criticism of the Kibaki government added to the administration's objections.
A report by Chicago's WBBM-TV news team, which covered Obama in Kenya, shows the senator making statements critical of the Kibaki government.
WBBM interviewed on camera Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua, who accused Obama of meddling inappropriately in Kenyan presidential politics.
Matua said, "I think Odinga has to look at critically where he is receiving his advice from. Just because somebody wants to run for president, and he is using Senator Obama as his stooge, as his puppet, to be able to get where he wants to get."
WND met with key officials in the Kibaki administration who affirmed their continuing conviction Obama used his 2006 Senate fact-finding visit to Kenya to advance Odinga's presidential candidacy. Obama, the officials charged, allowed Odinga to join him in many public appearances in Kenya and give speeches attacking Kibaki with themes that later became key attacks in the 2007 campaign.
Obama maintained close contact with Odinga throughout the Kenyan campaign, with Lippert continuing to review and share strategy documents with Odinga from Obama's U.S. Senate office in Washington, according to the ex-ODM officials WND interviewed in Kenya.
In the final days of the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary, while the post-election violence was still raging in Kenya, Obama told reporters from the BBC he continued to maintain contact with Odinga in Kenya by cell phone.
The Chicago Sun-Times called Lippert one of Obama's "inner circle of foreign policy experts," noting Lippert joined the Illinois Democrat's Senate office in Washington at beginning of his term in January 2004, moving over from a staff position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Newsweek reported Lippert, a lieutenant junior grade in the Naval Reserve with an intelligence background, also served a year's deployment in Iraq.
Lippert also worked for five years with the Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee and handled foreign policy and defense issues for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, according to the Sun-Times.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78035
Obama and ACORN: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide
Monday, October 6, 2008 7:26 PM
By: Lowell Ponte Article Font Size
Barack Obama is running as fast and as far away from his association with the radical group ACORN as he can, but he can’t hide from the facts of his close relationship with the organization.
ACORN, or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, describes itself as a “non-partisan” group devoted to helping the poor and to registering millions to vote. Critics accuse ACORN of involvement vote fraud, voter intimidation, shakedowns against businesses, and the promotion of socialist class hatred and class warfare.
Apparently worried by the connection between Obama and the group, his campaign has put claims of his ties to ACORN as the lead item on its “Fight The Smears” Web site — a site the Obama campaign created to counter what they claim are partisan lies made up against their candidate.
The release on the Obama site reads: “When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, ‘I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize.
“So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
Indeed, Obama was being far too modest. The 2008 Democratic presidential nominee had worked not just alongside ACORN, but also as a key operative for the organization.
He was its lawyer in several pivotal ACORN cases.
Obama funded a number of its activities, as well. When he sat on the board of the prestigious Woods Fund for Chicago alongside former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, he oversaw and approved many grants for ACORN.
As the National Review’s Stanley Kurtz reported, one Woods committee report boasted that the fund’s “non-ideological” public image “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being accused of partisanship.”
Obama was the Illinois director of ACORN’s controversial voter registration operation, and he trained the group’s leaders in the ways of radical, sometimes illegal, confrontational politics.
He also paid ACORN affiliates during his recent Democratic primary contest. For example, leading up to the 2008 Ohio Democratic Primary, Obama’s campaign between Feb. 25 and March 17 paid Citizens Services, Inc., a subsidiary of ACORN, $832,598, apparently for get-out-the-vote activities.
Obama’s mysterious, shrouded past as a “community organizer” is closely tied to ACORN, a group that supplies a large share of the Democratic Party political shock troops responsible for the party’s recapture of Congress in 2006.
ACORN has at least 350,000 dues-paying member families, and more than 800 chapters spread among at least 104 U.S. cities as well as in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, and Peru.
To outsiders, Obama’s “long service with ACORN led many of its members to serve as the voluntary shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000,” wrote Kurtz. “With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago ACORN leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and ACORN were ‘old friends.’”
ACORN’s Radical Roots
ACORN’s four co-founders were 1960s New Leftists. One was George Wiley, whose National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) members practiced confrontation politics, e.g., swarming into welfare offices and bullying social workers. The second ACORN co-founder was NWRO organizer Gary Delgado.
Wiley made no secret that he followed the radical tactics proposed in the far-left The Nation Magazine by socialist Columbia University scholars Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who argued that American capitalism could be bankrupted and destroyed by overloading our system with ever-rising costs and bureaucratic demands. (In 1996, President Bill Clinton invited Cloward and Piven to the White House as honored guests.)
ACORN’s other founders and longtime bosses were former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activist Wade Rathke, a close NWRO ally, and his brother Dale.
“We are the majority, forged from all minorities,” proclaimed ACORN’s founding 1970 “People’s Platform” manifesto. “We are the masses of many, not the forces of few…. We will wait no longer for the crumbs at America’s door. We will not be meek, but mighty.”
In ACORN, the Rathkes replaced Cloward-Piven tactics designed to overthrow capitalist America with the confrontational-but-compromising tactics of Chicago socialist Saul Alinsky.
“Instead of trying to overturn ‘the system — to blow it up, as Wiley wanted to do, ACORN burrows deep within the system,” wrote Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern, adding, “taking over its power and using its institutions for its own purposes, like a political ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’”
The Rathkes first established ACORN as the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now and struck a personal deal with that state’s liberal Republican then-Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, who reportedly paid the newly-sprouted ACORN $5,000 in cash to register voters. “Of course, they thought we were going to register Republicans,” Delgado later boasted. “We did not register a single Republican voter in that election. However, we did use those resources early on to build the organization.”
Obama, ACORN, and Vote Fraud
Selectively adding millions of Democratic names to the voter rolls remains one of ACORN’s most lucrative activities, for which this organization has been given millions of dollars by organized labor, non-profit foundations, and Democratic-controlled government agencies.
Because Obama had worked closely with one of its leaders, Madeline Talbott, ACORN, in 1995, specifically sought out this radical young lawyer to help craft its lawsuit to impose President Bill Clinton’s 1993 National Voter Registration Act, nicknamed “Motor Voter,” according to Chicago ACORN leader Toni Foulkes.
Obama’s ACORN lawsuit won, thereby slapping aside state officials who resisted Motor Voter because of what it soon proved to be: a 12-lane superhighway to massive vote fraud.
The Motor Voter law required bureaucrats at welfare offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and other government offices to register as voters those who used their services. “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship,” wrote Wall Street Journal reporter John Fund in his book “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.” “States also had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election official.”
Those who took advantage of government services such as welfare were disproportionately likely to vote for the Big Government party. Motor Voter also made it more difficult to purge voter rolls of fraudulent registrations.
Motor Voter, wrote Fund, “fueled an explosion of phantom voters.” But in Barack Obama’s Democrat-ruled Chicago, phantom voters and voting graveyards are nothing new.
Motor Voter was the Clinton administration’s attempt permanently to tilt voter rolls in favor of the Democratic Party. And Obama, working for ACORN, played a key role in imposing this law.
Perhaps thanks to ACORN’s and Motor Voter’s influence, of the 19 foreign terrorists who attacked America on 9/11, at least six were registered to vote.
In 1992, Obama took time off as a lawyer to direct Project Vote, ACORN’s voter mobilization entity, statewide in Illinois. Project Vote added an estimated 125,000 names to voter rolls, which helped propel Democrat Carol Moseley Braun into the same U.S. Senate seat Obama now holds.
Nationwide, ACORN’s Project Vote claims to have helped register more than 4 million voters in low-income and minority neighborhoods. Project Vote’s tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status prohibits its involvement in partisan political activity, but one of its leaders told Foundation Watch that “lots of grass-roots members” are assisting the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.
ACORN, wrote Foundation Watch investigators Elias Crim and Matthew Vadum last June, has a “record of highly-publicized voter fraud allegations” lodged against it “in Ohio (2004), Wisconsin (2004), Florida (2004), New Mexico (2004), Colorado (2005), Missouri (2006), and Washington State (2007).” They could have named other states as well.
In 2006, in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, Republican incumbent James Talent lost by about 50,000 votes to Democrat Claire McCaskill.
“A sizeable portion of that margin,” wrote columnist Carl Horowitz, “was attributable to ACORN organizers submitting phony or at least suspicious voter-registration cards to election officials in the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas. Several ACORN members in Kansas City were indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office just prior to Election Day, and eventually pleaded guilty. [Wade] Rathke, not one for subtlety, called City of St. Louis election officials ‘slop buckets’ when they questioned the veracity of ACORN-submitted forms.”
And who was Missouri state auditor during 2006, responsible at a statewide level for overseeing the honesty of voter registration? “That,” wrote Horowitz, “would be Claire McCaskill.” And Sen. McCaskill is one of Obama’s most ardent supporters.
In Florida, ACORN’s 2004 Miami-Dade field director, Mac Stuart, according to David Horowitz’s DiscoverTheNetworks.org investigation, “has testified that fraud is standard procedure for ACORN/Project Vote canvassers — behavior that is not only tolerated, but encouraged by supervisors.” Stuart reportedly told investigators: “[T]he voter registration project has been operating illegally since it started.”
In 2005, Virginia authorities sampled Project Vote registrations and rejected 83 percent of them for containing false or questionable information.
In Washington state, five ACORN employees were convicted in 2007 in what its Secretary of State Sam Reed called “the worst case of election fraud in our state’s history. It was an outrage.”
In this state the current Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire was elected literally by a handful of votes, but 450 apparently fictitious names were found registered to vote as Democrats at a single address. At least 1,700 ACORN voter registrations — using the names of Harry Reid, Dennis Hastert, and movie and sports stars — were later revoked in just one county of the state.
In Nevada, the state most likely to decide the 2008 presidential election, the Las Vegas Review-Journal last July 7 reported that a Clark County official “sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.”
ACORN, of course, blames a handful of overzealous activists or mercenaries for acts of voter registration fraud. ACORN denies that it condones or encourages any illegal behavior.
Intimidation Politics
Incidentally, Obama’s ACORN comrade Madeline Talbott, according to Kurtz, “was so impressed by Obama’s organizing skills that she invited him to help train her own staff.” In 1997, notes Kurtz, Talbott was “a key leader” of 200 ACORN protestors who on July 31 tried to storm a Chicago City Council session.
These ACORN demonstrators, wrote Kurtz, reportedly “pushed over a metal detector and table used to screen visitors, backed police against the doors to the council chamber, and blocked late-arriving aldermen and city staff from entering the session….almost certainly a deliberate bit of what radicals call ‘direct action,’ orchestrated by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott,” who was “led away handcuffed, charged with mob action and disorderly conduct.”
Obama has never been led away in handcuffs for radical behavior. But, notes Kurtz, Obama has used groups of ominously angry activists to intimidate and pressure local officials.
A newspaper photo of Obama in his “community organizer” days shows him next to activist group the Developing Communities Project (DCP) posters that read: “It’s a power thing.” The ACORN organizer manual likewise declares, “This is a mass organization directed at political power where might makes right.”
Obama supporters in 2008 have angrily demonstrated against, and shared information intended to disrupt, a radio talk show in Chicago that has had Kurtz as a guest. This could be a foretaste of how intimidation might be used to stifle criticism of a President Obama administration.
Money-Hungry ACORN
By the 1980s, ACORN was expanding its horizons from voter registration to housing.
“In 1985, ACORN illegally seized 25 abandoned buildings owned by New York City and installed squatters as residents,” recounted a New York Post editorial. “A weak-kneed City Hall eventually gave the group title to the buildings — proving that crime can pay.”
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Redevelopment Act (CRA), which, in retrospect, was the opening wedge for what now threatens to become a government takeover of all housing in America. Under Carter’s administration, the domestic Peace Corps government entity VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, gave a federal grant of $470,000 to ACORN to train volunteers to help low-income citizens.
A later congressional investigation found that ACORN illegally used this money for labor organizing.
According to ACORN co-founder Delgado, after two of “their own,” Sam Brown and Marjorie Tabankin, became directors of Carter’s ACTION agency and VISTA program, “over 3 million dollars was funneled directly to ACORN” and other left-wing organizations.
After the Clinton administration gave a grant worth more than $1 million to ACORN Housing Corp, an investigation by the inspector general of AmeriCorps found that AHC used government funds to register low-income persons for paid ACORN memberships, in violation of federal law.
Apparently this taxpayer money was given only to those poor people who agreed to pay $60 immediately back to ACORN.
By the infiltration of ideological comrades into positions of power at government agencies, ACORN became the recipient of a flood of taxpayer-funded grants, including some worth millions of dollars. AHC alone between 1997 and 2006 received more than $11,230,000 in public funds.
In 2005 alone, according to Department of Labor disclosure statements, labor leaders reportedly paid more than $2.4 million to ACORN in gifts, grants, and fees for organizing work.
Mandatory family membership dues bring ACORN another $3 million or so per year.
But foundations and churches, boasted Wade Rathke in 2004, account for less than half the revenue ACORN pockets from corporations that had been the targets of successful ACORN protest campaigns.
ACORN and Today’s Credit Crisis
President Carter’s CRA and related laws were repeatedly expanded to require lending institutions to avoid “redlining” policies that denied home loans to those in minority neighborhoods.
Obama was one of many lawyers who profited from successfully suing on grounds that discrimination was the reason an African-American was denied a home loan.
Banks and other lenders needed not only public good will but also the cooperation of government regulators to approve mergers and other business activities. Expanding laws such as CRA meant that if ACORN accused a bank of racial discrimination and unleashed protestors against it, however unjustly, that bank might suddenly face very unfriendly government regulators. Banks were thus set up to be easy victims for ACORN shakedowns, and paying protection money became necessary for bank survival.
“The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN,” said Robert L. Woodson, President of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.
“The 2000 tax return for the ACORN Housing Corporation,” reported the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), “disclosed grants from Bank of America, Fleet Services Corporation, Fannie Mae Foundation, Chase Manhattan Foundation, and Well Fargo Foundation totaling $4,752,198.” And AHC is just one of 100 arms of the ACORN octopus.
“The banks know they are being held up,” one financial industry consultant told EPI researchers, “but they are not going to fight over this. They look at it as a cost of doing business.”
Politicians and left-wing activist groups including ACORN were doing more than shaking down lending institutions for their own profit. They also demanded that lending standards be loosened for those in the underclass who tend to vote Democratic.
With a large political gun aimed at their heads, banks commenced making hundreds of thousands of what they called “Ninja” — no income, no job, no assets — loans to minorities who previously would have been deemed uncreditworthy. Knowing that many of these loans they were coerced to make would go bad, many lending institutions bundled them into new types of investment packages and sold them to shed risk.
The giant quasi-governmental lending institutions Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, both largely run by Democratic appointees, became sources of funding for groups such as ACORN that aided Democratic politicians — and promoters of high-risk subprime home loans.
Democratic executives at these institutions, such as former Clinton administration member and Fannie Mae chair and chief executive officer, Franklin Raines, arranged to have their incomes increase with the amount of lending their institutions did. In six years of recklessly having Fanny Mae assume an astronomical burden of risk, Raines pushed his own income above $90 million.
As former federal prosecutor James H. Walsh recounted in a Sept. 22 Newsmax.com article, Raines was an adviser to Obama until recent national financial problems made Raines too risky to embrace.
[Editor's Note: Read “Obama, Voter Fraud & Mortgage Meltdown” — Go Here Now].
Obama, noted Walsh, had been “the Senate’s second-largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Is ACORN troubled by what many are calling a credit meltdown and the likelihood that many minority homeowners may lose their homes? Probably not, because the ideological aim of ACORN’s radical founders was to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism. In the current financial situation, government will get bigger, free markets will become less free, and vast amounts of capital will shift from private companies to government.
For those like Barack Obama who share ACORN’s ideology, the situation is perfect — heads, government wins; tails, capitalism loses. If people keep their homes, many will naively thank the Democratic politicians and left-wing activists who caused their problems in the first place. If poor people lose their homes, they will be that much easier for ACORN to brainwash with class hatred against evil capitalists.
And lest we forget, the first think that congressional Democrats put into their proposed “bailout package” to solve the financial crisis was a permanent slush fund to be extracted from capitalist institutions that would start growing at more than $20 million. The beneficiaries of this now-deleted slush fund were to have been radical Democrat-allied organizations such as ACORN.
Greedy Lefists
The Rathkes commingled ACORN’s socialist redistribute-the-wealth ideology with their own hypocrisy and personal greed. From ACORN, they spun off approximately 100 other legal entities.
They then created a shell game under which money acquired by one ACORN front group, e.g., Project Vote, would be moved to other ACORN-controlled groups, in some cases to acquire property.
One former Arkansas ACORN chair, Dorothy Perkins, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, described the organization as “building up a land portfolio” that was supposed to “translate to money and power for the national organization.”
But that money was “never seen” by the poor people ACORN claimed to serve, she said, and “all the money ended up” under Wade Rathke’s control. Rathke, she said, ran ACORN “like a Jim Jones cult.”
Relatively little of the redistributed wealth of Rathke’s ACORN conglomerate trickled down to the poor, and comparatively little went to the organization’s thousands of full-time “community organizers.”
Typical pay was $25,000 a year or less, for which ACORN employees were expected to work 54 hours or more per week, weekends included. In 2006, ACORN required many of its workers in Missouri to sign an agreement that they would be “working up to 80 hours over seven days of work.”
ACORN went to court in California, arguing unsuccessfully that it should be exempt from minimum wage laws. But in recent years, ACORN has staged many demonstrations to demand a “living wage,” typically a minimum of $12 or more per hour, for minimum wage workers.
According to Mac Stuart, ACORN collected more than $4 for each completed, and illegally copied, voter registration. Its workers who found people and submitted their registrations were paid only $2, with ACORN and the Rathkes pocketing the difference.
But ACORN had many other sources for its annual $37.5 million budget, including millions in government and foundation grants.
ACORN head Wade Rathke was also chief organizer of a New Orleans local of one of America’s most radical labor unions, the Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU), and ACORN was a close ally of organized labor. Unions sometimes paid ACORN to have its low-paid workers march with picket signs pretending to be striking union members.
When ACORN workers, as well as those in his SEIU union local, tried to form their own unions to bargain for higher wages and shorter hours, Rathke successfully used a wide array of union-busting techniques to stop them — the same kinds of techniques he routinely condemned other businesses for using.
But the Rathkes fell from power in 2008 shortly before The New York Times on July 9 reported that in 1999-2000 Dale Rathke, then ACORN’s chief financial officer, had diverted $948,607 from ACORN and affiliated charitable organization accounts.
Other ACORN officials in 2001 reportedly obtained a restitution agreement from Wade Rathke to repay the missing funds in $30,000 per-year installments.
ACORN, meanwhile, continued to pay Wade Rathke considerably more than $30,000 each year, in effect covering these repayments, while Dale Rathke’s apparent embezzlement of almost a million dollars — in contributions to help the poor — was kept secret from the public and from those funding ACORN.
“How did ACORN handle the crime?” asked a July 13 New York Post editorial. “By disguising it on the books as a loan from one of its contractors….” and only letting Rathke go “when word of his fraud leaked to donors…. most of the people who covered up the embezzlement are still working for ACORN.”
“We thought it best at the time to protect the organizations,” said ACORN President Maude Hurd. “We did what we thought was right.” Or what served the interests of the left.
Welcome to ACORN, the organization that made Barack Obama what he is today, and that may make him president of the United States.
http://www.newsmax.com/headliness/obama_acorn_smears/2008/10/06/137891.html
Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past
Monday, October 13, 2008 2:22 PM
By: Lowell Ponte
“Barack Obama never organized with ACORN,” reads one of the banners on Barack Obama’s Web site, “Fight the Smears,” www.fightthesmears.org.
One apparent aim of the site is to distance Obama from the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose operatives are being investigated for potential voter fraud in at least 13 states.
“Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer,” the Web site continues.
“Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
“Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.”
The accuracy of these denials depends in part on their lawyerly wording, on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” in former President Bill Clinton’s sophistic phrase.
No one has accused the Illinois senator of having “organized with ACORN” or having been “an ACORN community organizer,” so these denials seem either misplaced or sleight of hand to distract from what his actual ACORN connections have been.
Toni Foulkes, longtime Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN’s National Association Board, says the organization “invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.”
Obama did give training to ACORN leaders every year from 1993 until at least 2003, when Foulkes published an article saying these things about him in the winter 2003 issue of the journal Social Policy.
Obama also reportedly helped train the staff of a high-ranking ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, later arrested for heading up a disruptive confrontation between ACORN protesters and the Chicago City Council described in a recent Newsmax investigation.
[Editor's Note: Read Newsmax's recent investigation of ACORN, "Obama and ACORN: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide" — Go Here Now].
ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg is referenced in the Oct. 11 New York Times as acknowledging that, in Times’ reporter Stephanie Strom’s words, “Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said."
So ACORN now says that Obama did training for the organization. But because Obama did these training sessions without pay, and because to hire means “to employ someone for a wage or fee,” it is technically correct to say he was never “hired” to do so.
ACORN both selected and paid Barack Obama as a lawyer in 1995 to sue the state of Illinois to compel implementation of a law known as Motor-Voter. ACORN, however, now says it was only one of several plaintiffs in the case and hence that it would be wrong to say Obama was the organization’s lawyer. But ACORN was the lead plaintiff, and therefore the case is recorded as ACORN, et al. v. Edgar (then-Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar).
In 1992 Obama became Illinois’ statewide head of Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is required to be nonpartisan to retain its tax-exempt status. The Obama campaign Web site says, “ACORN was not part of Project Vote.” Critics argue that the reverse is true.
In fact, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders in November: When “I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.”
Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty and two of her colleagues described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.
And the co-founder and then head of ACORN itself, former Students for a Democratic Society new leftist Wade Rathke described Project Vote, in 2004 as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”
As Newsmax reported last week, Rathke spun off nearly 100 legal entities from ACORN and moved large amounts of money among them. Rathke left the organization this year after it came to light that his brother had diverted almost a million dollars from ACORN coffers.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the New York Times that a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues today flow to ACORN and various of its affiliates as payment for services. But LaBolt contends that Project Vote and ACORN were not as intertwined in 1992 when Obama ran Project Vote. This month, LaBolt has been telling reporters that Obama had never been “an ACORN trainer.”
It “wasn’t until after Mr. Obama’s tenure had ended that (Project Vote) began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations,” Project Vote founder attorney Sanford A. Newman wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Note that this lawyerly letter never denies Project Vote’s deep involvement with ACORN.
“To say that Obama didn’t work for ACORN is just playing word games,” wrote Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center, co-author of an investigation titled Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community Organizing to Politics.
“It would be like a Sam’s Club employee indignantly insisting he didn’t work for Wal-Mart,” Vadum said. “It boggles the mind why anyone would deny such easily verifiable facts.”
Obama’s critics say he has been remarkably successful at burying his ACORN past until now, in large part with help from liberal allies in the national media who refuse to scrutinize Obama with the same probing investigations they aim at his opponents.
In a story reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” whose hero works in a government office rewriting history to erase Big Brother’s past mistakes, the Oct. 9th Cleveland Leader reported, “Attempts to hide evidence of Obama’s involvement in ACORN have included wiping the Web clean of potentially damaging articles.”
The above-mentioned Foulkes article that discussed Obama’s training of ACORN leaders recently was pulled from the Social Policy Web site, the Leader reported. Although this makes information about Obama’s past harder to find for journalists and voters, the Leader noted, scholarly duplicates of the Web retain copies of such texts despite any Orwellian efforts to rewrite Barack Obama’s past.
Los Angeles Times reporters Letta Tayler and Keith Herbert tried to clarify Obama’s past and found getting a clear fix on him elusive.
“Further blurring the picture,” they wrote on March 2, are Barack Obama’s “descriptions of community organizing in his youthful memoir, ‘Dreams From My Father,’ in which he admits he disguises names, creates composite characters, switches some chronologies, and uses ‘approximation’ of dialogue.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_acorn_organizer/2008/10/13/139989.html
Media Ignore Farrakhan’s Endorsement of Obama
Saturday, October 11, 2008 7:43 PM
By: Ronald Kessler
Imagine the media frenzy that would ensue if David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan endorsed John McCain for president. Yet Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media.
Speaking to a convention of the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan not only declared his support for Obama, but also told his followers that Obama was the “Messiah.”
[Editor's Note: Editor's Note: See the video of Louis Farrakhan calling Obama "The Messiah" — Go Here Now].
“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth,” Farrakhan said. “And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”
Farrakhan compared Obama to Nation of Islam founder Wallace D. Fard Muhammad, whom Farrakhan says also had a white mother and black father.
“A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” Farrakhan said. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”
Incredibly, only Fox News and a few other news outlets have run Farrakhan’s endorsement. Farrakhan made the statement last February, but it only recently appeared on YouTube.
While Obama has no control over who endorses him, the nature of those who express affinity with him provides insight into who he is and what his agenda could be. Obama’s endorsers and supporters range from admitted terrorist William Ayers and Weatherman Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn to Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, the New Black Panthers, the New SDS, and a host of other radical organizations and individuals.
Among other things, the New Black Panthers favors releasing all blacks from jails throughout the world and giving blacks reparations for slavery. The group asserts that until that happens, blacks should be exempt from all taxes.
The media blackout on Obama’s associations goes back to last January, when Newsmax began running stories on his minister’s sermons and the fact that his church gave an award for lifetime achievement to Farrakhan. When the media finally began picking up the stories in mid-March, the primaries began favoring Hillary Clinton instead of Obama.
Farrakhan has called whites “blue-eyed devils” and the Antichrist. He has described Jews as “bloodsuckers” who control the government, the media, and some black organizations.
“Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET [the Black Entertainment Network]?” Farrakhan said in a speech on Nov. 11, 2007. “Everything that we built, they have. The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, movie industry, and television. And they make us look like we’re the murderers; we look like we’re the gangsters, but we’re punk stuff.”
The month after that speech, Obama’s minister and friend, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, honored Farrakhan at a gala, bestowing on him its Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer award.
Obama has said he found religion through Wright in the 1980s and consulted him before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.
In the November/December issue of his church’s magazine, Trumpet, Wright heaped praise on Farrakhan, whom he helped in organizing the Million Man March in Washington in 1995. Wright lauded Farrakhan as one of the giants of the African-American religious experience in the 20th and 21st centuries.
“When Minister Farrakhan speaks, black America listens,” Wright said. “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.”
Hailing Farrakhan’s “integrity and honesty,” Wright said, “His love for Africa and African-American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change, and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.”
When no one in the media was picking up Newsmax’s stories on Wright’s award to Farrakhan and his sermons saying America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, a reporter for one of the cable news networks told me that if she proposed running such a story, her network would accuse her of “bias against Obama.”
VIDEO: Louis Farrakhan Calls Obama "The Messiah"
http://election.newsmax.com/obama_messiah.html
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/Media_Farrakhan_obama/2008/10/11/139620.html