This video, featuring Congressman Jack Kingston from Georgia, would be very funny if it wasn’t so scary. In it he talks, among other things, about Nancy Pelosi’s $30 million earmark to save California rats!

For those who are suffering economic hardships, Kingston suggests you go to Los Angeles and borrow some money from these rats, who can be found on Rodeo Drive sporting the latest in designer wear while sipping their cheese-laced decaffeinated lattes.

“They must be some fine looking animals. We don’t just spend money like that on just any old rats…,” he says.

“They probably wear flip-flops and sunglasses as they go to Saucelito for lunch and look out across the bay at Alcatraz and say ‘hey, is that where the Guantonemo prisoners are going to end up?’ Probably not, because that would be an earmark.”

He says there are at least $2 billion in “phantom” earmarks – projects for states that qualify as phantom earmarks because, unlike Pelosi’s earmark for the rats, there are no names attached to them.

He also calls attention to a “non-earmark earmark” to to study profit-making companies in American Samoa!

Did you see what Nancy Pelosi had to say about the dire job situation in America? In case you didn’t catch it, she said that 500 million Americans lose their jobs every month that the economic downturn lasts.

That means the country has lost at least 2 billion jobs since the recession began. Even allowing for those who work two, three or even four jobs, it means that not only are there no jobs left in America, but that we now have minus a billion jobs that were not there in the first place.

This is scary stuff.

It is not only scary to have such a huge shortfall in the job market – amounting in effect to more than six no-jobs for every man, woman and child in America – it is even scarier that someone with Nancy’s loose grasp of economic reality (or at least a loose grasp on her tongue) should be one of the most influential people in Congress.

Of course this is not the first time that Pelosi has exaggerated slightly. She helped to scupper the first economic rescue package (though some, including me, may say that is not a bad thing) by making absurdly partisan claims that it was the economic policies of George Bush that were solely to blame for the crisis, whereas it was Congress (led by Pelosi and helped by Barney Frank) that blocked reforms of Freddy Mac, Fanny Mae and the legislature that allowed the whole sub prime mortgage fiasco to happen in the first place.

I am pretty sure it will not be her last exaggeration. I wonder what her next one will be. Of course there was her recent promise that no rescue package would be passed that contained any pork. Did I hear someone say something about pigs flying?

In my new video I look at the way the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome has dominated the arts and humanities over the past half century, with the help of academic practitioners looking for theories to build on, trying to carve out some academic territory for themselves and becoming the high priests or priestesses of their chosen domains. In music, it ended with meaningless and very irritating noise.

Now I make some sweeping generalizations in this video, and may be overstating my case for effect, but that does not necessarily dilute the reality of what I am saying.

As I said at the beginning of the top ten composer series, we saw the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome ( a tendency to pretend to see or believe something out of fear of being thought of out of step with others, or out of fear that you might be attacked or ridiculed if you show your true feelings) running rampant during the elections.

“It’s the kind of pseudo-liberal academic milieu that produces people like the Beast with No Name, who is a Rhodes scholar and yet one of the most narrow-minded and bigoted people you can find. One of the problems is that lot of people who excel academically are people who are able to absorb and reflect back what their tutors want them to,” I wrote then.

“They are the kind of people who try to impose their narrow and very theoretical world view on others and become blinkered in their focus, doing their best to beat down anyone who doesn’t agree with them. (Now what does that remind you of?).”

Academia can provide you with the tools and techniques of art, but the academic process cannot make you an artist, or even an art critic.

From a broader perspective, Academia can provide you with a framework for examining things, but to get close to the true nature of anything you have to examine it through a number of different frameworks from a number of different angles. If you keep using the same theoretical frameworks, they become blinkers.

Many branches of academia, particularly in the field of arts and humanities, strive to create a single framework or model of things and academics fight to have their models adopted as the only ones that are valid. That is what gives them power.

Art and life in general cannot be confined by academic theories or opinion. The essence of art is that it must be transcendant, and to be transcendant it has to be organic. It has to be able to grow beyond prescribed boundaries to achieve new perspectives.

As in art, so in life.

Disagreements about how to end injustice, and specific injustices, are as old as injustice itself. Whether one is considering the injustices of colonialism, racist domination, oppression of women…in each and every one of these areas, those who can agree in broad general principle have often found themselves disagreeing over specifics, including some major ones. To make common cause does not magically bring about harmony.

When Gandhi fought to escape the injustices of British rule, he was opposed by people who resisted his ideas about throwing over caste distinctions. When Mandela picked up arms to fight apartheid, many withdrew their support from his movement. When King sought to expand his conception of civil rights to include equal access to economic opportunities, former and potential allies turned against him.

None of these examples of fights for justice achieved perfect justice, no more than the Civil War achieved a perfect Union. But I do believe that the U.S. Civil War achieved a more perfect union. Likewise, I believe the India of today is a far more equitable place than the India of one hundred years ago, that the South Africa of today, like the U.S. of today, has achieved within the past fifty years enormous strides toward racial justice.

My own dream is that within my lifetime, I see the progress toward the good of justice for women that Gandhi, Mandela, and King got to see the toward the goods of justice they pursued in their lifetimes. They managed to see results in their pursuits even though each had to learn when to resist pressures from people who genuinely shared their vision and when to resist the lure of becoming subservient to those who offered only short term funding and enrichment rather than truly shared commitment.

Now, even as I write this, millions of men and women are freshly galvanized to make it a reality that all the world comes to see women’s rights as human rights, to see woman as just as much the paradigm representative of humanity as man, and therefore to see a woman’s rights as indistinguishable from any human’s rights. With all that energy comes passion and motivation. But with it comes too friction and infighting. With it too comes the willingness by some to give up the chance to speak truth to power, in order perhaps, to gain power, but nevertheless at the sacrifice of a chance to speak without fear of offending.

I believe that at the end of every day, and at the start of every morning, a person needs to be able to reflect upon herself or himself, and address these questions to herself or himself: if I am fighting for justice, am I making choices that do not compromise my integrity? What can I tolerate in allies even if I cannot join wholeheartedly in every step they take? Can I broaden my toleration without selling out my convictions?

Especially in the fight against the subjugation of women, men and women must ask themselves these questions, because one of the hardest obstacles to achieving progress toward the good of justice for women is the tendency toward infighting on the one hand and selling out on the other. Fighters for the empowerment of women tend to care about all sorts of injustice and obviously have some very basic differences, including differences in sex, race, and class. These differences can lead to fissures and cracks that can render the fight for justice for women, for justice for people, very tough going. But the common interest in justice for all must be used to resist the fissures and to repair them, when possible. What cannot be repaired is selling out. Certainly, one person’s “sell-out” may be another person’s “reasonable compromise”. Personally, I believe in the necessity to question one’s own choices in such matters very closely, because it is very tempting to see oneself as the reasonable compromiser, the unifier, the one who moves beyond “unnecessary” partisanship rather than to recognize in oneself the more natural tendency in human nature toward selling out.

For my own part, I prefer to err on the side of sticking to my convictions rather than losing them in a process of mollification and conciliation. If enough other people join me in those convictions, then they and I will not have to mollify and appease: we will ultimately have coming to us those who would now have us coming to them. We will be numerous enough and bonded together strongly enough in the fight for women’s rights – the fight for human rights – to the point where will we have the upper hand, both ethically and tactically.

For my own part, I would rather take ten million baby steps toward the good without losing my footing in conscience than take a great leap and risk losing my moral compass. I will march with as wide a cohort as I can – even when we disagree on some things – in the name of reaching my goals. But I will not join ranks with those who are able to take heady leaps that gain them a seat at the local powerbroker’s table or a grant of some of that powerbroker’s money at the price of their integrity.

If ten million or twenty million or fifty-one million people choose to baby step along with me and I with them, we will, together, make the same rate of progress as those who choose to go it more or less alone. In the fight to beat misogyny and sexism, in the fight to achieve proper representation and empowerment for women, I expect great changes. I demand great changes. I will work toward great changes. But I know the greatest shifts toward justice take years to accomplish. To stick it out, every step forward must be appreciated and celebrated (e.g. Senator Clinton’s name placed in nomination even at the admitted charade of a free and open Democratic Party convention) and every step backward must be condemned and resisted (e.g. the retention of a speechwriter for the President of the United States of America who participates in boorish, distasteful and sexist party shenanigans.) Time is on the side of those who fight for justice, so long as those who fight for justice do so with patience and tenacity, and resist the parallel temptations toward selling out or excessive infighting.

Oh, he’s had watermelons (Rezko, Ayers) and apple boxes (Wright, Auchi, Kilpatrick) thrown at his house of cards, too, but the MSM has been fast to rebuild it. Just like they are now in scrubbing news sites of stories following the election about his meeting with Blagojevich regarding his Senate seat. No, I am not kidding you. News sites that just yesterday had the story now have a recant that they didn’t mean it. I am not making this crap up. Just look HERE (h/t to AmericanGirlinItaly for this link). Which country is this again, when we have news sources scrubbing their own sites of news that might cast aspersions on Obama by TELLING THE TRUTH when he is lying – from public view?? Wow. I think it is safe to say when that happens, we no longer have a Fourth Estate, but a government-run propaganda arm. I didn’t think that was supposed to happen in a democracy.

Oh, right – we no longer have a democracy after this year, which is how Obama even got to be the Democratic nominee. If we did, he never would have BEEN the Democratic nominee because his lying (which we are seeing daily on the whole Blagojevich thing), cheating, stealing, and nefarious associates would have brought him down LONG ago. As well they should have. And it WOULD have, had this indeed been a democracy in which the people’s voices, and VOTES, mattered. But, hey – why quibble now – that’s what the Obots say! After all, Obama is the President-Elect now, so we should all band together and sing his praises! Um, no, not me. Because democracy actually matters to me. And how someone got where they are matters to me.

Anyhoo, I don’t know that the PEBO can actually scrub the FBI files, and that may be the watermelon and apple box to his House of Cards. One can only hope. He has gotten by with too many lies, too many deceptions, too much duplicity by the colluding MSM as it is. If it takes a federal agency to expose Obama for who he is, more power to them. Their record of the two-hour conference call with Blagojevich and his buddies discussing the whole Obama replacement – with “the various Washington advisers” should make for some interesting reading, I would think…

And he can’t scrub the governor’s site, either, which has a little press release about discussing the whole Senate seat thing. Oopsie daisy!! Ahem. Do you think that Gov. Blagojevich is going to keep any secrets now that Obama, who WORKED FOR HIS ELECTION AND RE-ELECTION, is now calling for Blagojevich’s resignation? Uh, yeah, no. Should be an interesting few days.

This is an Open Thread. What’s on your mind?

Yes, that’s right, someone is actually working on a Barack Obama National Holiday, as was done for several other of Achievement and Greatness.

Let’s examine with what Barack Obama has in common with other people we name National Holidays after.

They were all long gone before we made a holiday in their names and they all achieved great things. They were honored with a National Holiday in their names AFTER they actually DID something for America.

George Washington was the first President of the United States. Barack obama hasn’t even served a term yet.

Abraham Lincoln still ranks Number One amongst greatest presidents in popularity polls. He presided over a civil war that freed the slaves. He is also well known for his Gettysburg Address. Barack Obama is known for his Typical White Woman Address. However, the plans for Barack’s National Holiday on his Inauguration Day will include celebration of Abe Lincoln’s birthday. It sure is nice of them to include Abe in Barack Obama Day.

Perhaps we could declare every Inauguration Day from this day forward as Barack Obama Day. Of course, in order to do that, we would have to imagine that nobody else will ever be inaugurated as President. Perhaps Barack can just be a permanent President. Cool huh? I think some other countries do it like that too…..

Both George and Abe already share a day named President’s Day. Perhaps Obama would like to hop on as America’s first living great man who fancies himself comparable to George and Abe. We could call the day Presidents and Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh Baaaaaaaaaa Maaaaaaaaaa Day.

Martin Luther King died for the cause of equal rights. We have a National Holiday in his name. He made the “I have a dream” speech. Deval Patrick Barack Obama made the “Yes We Can” speech.

Let’s see, I can’t think of any other individuals we have actually ever honored with a National Holiday. But we do have other National Holidays with reason:

New Year’s Day: In celebration of the start of a New Year. Generally people celebrate on the night before in places where people with no class get fall-down drunk, throw-up and then try to kiss someone at midnight. Hopefully they make it home without killing someone. In the USA, New Year’s Eve is lauded as the single most lucrative night for police departments seeking steep fines from drivers with high blood-alcohol counts.

Easter: In honor of the rising of Jesus on the third day, celebrated by Christians but everybody gets the day off whether they believe or not.

Memorial Day: In honor of people who have died, including those who died in service to our country. One Memorial Day, cemeteries become a kind of meeting place where everyone goes to pretty up the graves of their relatives and compare who spent more on the headstones. Most of them rarely return until the same time next year.

Independence Day is our celebration of America’s independence. Ironically, Taxation Without Representation seems to have returned to our shores, though.

Labor Day: I really have no idea how this one got started. I would imagine it was a successful attempt by unions to get another day off during the long haul between Independence Day and Veteran’s Day. Coincidentally, it is always celebrated on a Monday so that everybody can get that long weekend. I also know that Labor Day was formerly used as a measuring device for white shoes, as in “You don’t wear white after Labor Day”.

Columbus Day: To honor the man who managed to discover America when there were already people here who discovered it first. No easy feat. That must be why they named the place after Amerigo Vespucci. Beats me. All I know is I had an Italian Aunt who died not talking to me because i told her you can’t discover a place if somebody already discovered it first.

Veterans Day: To honor the people who put their lives on the line in order to retain what now appears to be a precarious Democracy in America. Many of them have limbs missing. Some of them were Prisoners of War. All of them risked their lives to serve America. Many of them died doing just that.

Thanksgiving: The very first Thanksgiving occurred when the settlers in America celebrated the bounty they had received thanks to the Native Americans, who taught the starving settlers how to hunt and fish. The settlers invited the Native Americans to join them in a three day celebration of the bounty. This, of course, was well before we annihilated them. Later, the 13 colonies each celebrated specific days of bounty Thanksgiving. It was Abe Lincoln who finally led the charge to make Thanksgiving for everyone fall on the third Thursday in November.

Christmas: In honor of the birth of Jesus. Perhaps Obama would like to hop on to this one as well.

As you can see, our very few National Holidays that are actually assigned to people, are attributed to people who actually lived and died and did some miraculous and noteworthy things for humanity in between.

Can anybody list the miraculous and noteworthy things for humanity Barack Obama has done yet? I’ll wait….

As far as I know, there are no people we have ever named National Holidays for who were alive when we declared the holiday. And we certainly never declared a National Holiday in someone’s name before he did much of anything. At least not in American Democracy. However, there are people in the past who ruled other countries and were celebrated that way while they were still living. They were kind of what you called “works in progress”. Usually, there were posters of their images on the outside and inside of every building. People had their pictures in their homes. There were statues built in their likenesses. People worshipped them out of fear and neediness– and some even had special salutes and parades in their honor.

Stalin, Mussolini, Napoleon and Hitler come to mind. In a more contemporary vein, Saddam Hussein also comes to mind. North Korea’s Dear Leader, however, is an example of a living person who is worshipped that way as well. And let us not forget Fidel.

So you might say the precedent has been set for Barack, although I am not so sure it would be a source of pride for America to follow these examples. Now, let’s see: What do all these Leaders have in common, living and dead? I know! They ruled/rule over heartless dictatorships, kept/keep their people suppressed and hungry, stifled/stifle free speech and tended/tend to get rid of anybody who irritated/irritates them or spoke/speaks out against them.

So you see, Barack Obama just doesn’t fill the bill, unless he wants to become America’s Fidel Castro or Dear Leader. This, of course, would require the removal of Democracy and Capitalism from our country. I know some folks seem rather interested in that concept, but, you see, most of us aren’t– and history tells us that most of us would be willing to fight vehemently in order to protect our Democracy. This is especially so for those Americans who came here to get away from that kind of rule.

But hey, we do understand Obama’s Narcissism and need for adulation. After all, who ever heard of “The Office of The President-Elect” until now? And with him comes many of his Narcissistic followers in tow, also known as Blood Sucking Dependents in most Baby Boomer homes. So I have an even better idea that might placate his nearly insatiable need to be worshipped:

Why don’t we just plaster his face on ALL of our currency? Take those other guys off and just put his face on all of our money, just like Saddam Hussein did. Is that cool or what? I mean, who needs old dead people like George Washington or Abe Lincoln when we have a Barack Obama? This would also make it much easier for children in our dumbed-down schools to answer questions like, “Who is on the twenty dollar bill?”. The answer would always be the same no matter which bill the teacher asks about: Barack Obama!

Guess what else? We already have a coin! No sense of leaving coins out. We already have the basic design.

We might as well put his face on all our coins too! That way, when the next Great Depression hits us, right after Barack redistributes incomes and most of the rich people move to another country to get away from here, we can all beg on the street and say, “Hey Buddy, can you spare a Barack dime? How about a Barack nickel, then?”

Also, since we will all be dependent on our government for survival during the Great Obama Depression, right after the top 20% move to their villas in other countries, we could put his name on a stamp. But not a USPS stamp, since nobody will be able to afford those. I’m thinking a more functional stamp:

And then there’s also that Mount Rushmore idea……

Well, I can certainly agree with that – that’s the only reason I am willing to consider McCain: Obama.

I could get rich selling this one. Aw, hell – any one of them…

Seems people are paying attention to Obama’s BFF, Jeremiah Wright, after all!! And to McCain’s character – I mean, that he has a demonstrable one, and it is GOOD!

PRECISELY!! It defies logic to even make the claim that to question the resume of someone, especially a candidate for the most powerful job in the world is racist!!

Oh, please – do NOT get me started on the Fourth Estate and the depths to which they have sunk this election. Show of hands who thought they sucked in 2000? And how much more do they suck now? Uh, yeah – total. They have failed miserably in their obligation to REPORT and not editorialize, or promote, or belittle, or act as if their sole responsibility is to tell us their OPINION, and not do their level best to report NEWS impartially, not rumors or lies or innuendo, but the actual facts of the story that they spent time RESEARCHING. You know, actually working on stories as opposed to regurgitating press packet info. Oh, damn – I got started after all…

It is our Constitutional Duty to not have leaders who defraud us, as the Democrats did this year. As they have for several years now as they work to deconstruct the Constitution and its protections. And you better believe, with what Obama has already shown us, should he “win” his way into the White House, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If state offices are already investigating private citizens without cause, what do you think will happen if Obama ends up as president with a Democratic House and Senate? We saw how they acted this year, especially with the caucuses and the RBC/DNC. We have seen how Obama’s “supporters” have acted. Obama hasn’t called them off as a candidate, no way will he call them off as president. It will be a new day – and not a bright one.

Amen to that. Love of country, love of the Constitution, love for the Bill of Rights, and love for true democracy – and if that means a revolution is needed, count me in.

George Bush was a catastrophic disaster. It will take years to undo the damage to our international reputation, domestic problems, and tightening of our Constitutional rights, even if we had a reliable and highly experienced Democratic candidate who could win.

Instead the Democratic Party left many of us, first by failing on so many lofty promises after taking over the House and Senate 2 years ago, and now by various inside and outside manipulations resulting in appointing an inexperienced candidate with a background that does not correlate with his rosy rhetoric.

Can democracy itself survive whatever happens? Because living in a democracy is all any of us have ever known, we tend to assume that a democratic society is how things will always be here instead of recognizing it for what it really is: a delicate, relatively new (historically-speaking) experiment. And, it’s being messed with!

I’m sure you are wondering who this grumpy old guy with the strange accent thinks he is for daring to attempt a state of the nation address in a country in which he is classified as a resident alien.

Well, sometimes an outsider can see things more objectively than those inside. I have stayed in many countries around the world and seen things at close hand in each of them, so I think I have a good basis for comparison.

I have also written macreconomic lectures for government officials and captains of industry, and I have seen how even very educated people can lose track of basic economic realities. One of the most fundamental economic realties about America is that it has many strengths, the five most important of which are its people, its infrastructure, its natural resources, its real estate, and its free enterprise system.

Let’s just have a brief look at these in more detail:

America has the hardest working people of any country anywhere in the world. They are also the most resilient. Americans might not have the undisputed lead they used to in industry, education, science and technology, but they are still close to the top and have a workforce capable of anything.

When it comes to infrastructure, I learned a profound lesson when I was in the Middle East, driving along a desert road in the United Arab Emirates in the late seventies. I came across an abandoned Rolls Royce and I thought “gosh, the owner must be filthy rich to just throw away an enormously expensive car like that”.

Then I realised something of much deeper significance. The country probably had a shortage of skilled mechanics who could fix it. It probably also had a very limited number of recovery services to collect it out there in the desert. In short, it didn’t have the social and industrial infrastructure for servicing and maintaining cars.

Buildings were going up all over the place, but I noticed that even some of the newest buildings were showing cracks and other faults that were being left unrepaired, because again there was no infrastructure to service and maintain them and fix this kind of problem.

The United Arab Emirates and the Middle East in general have grown enormously since then, with Dubai pouring its oil wealth into creating an eighth wonder of the world with its huge palm shaped offshore resort.

But given the fact that the social and industrial infrastructure for servicing and maintaining this resort has had to be imported in the shape of foreign specialists and labor, you have to wonder how long it will be before this resort is reclaimed by the desert sands on which it was built.

America’s social infrastructure, by contrast, is the greatest in the world in terms of its workforce, its mobility and its transportation systems. Just as importantly, Americans network socially and professionally more than any other nation, as can be judged from internet traffic alone. This is particularly important, because it is networking and communications that form the hub of economic activity.

Added to this, you have a country with a vast wealth of natural resources, and the finest real estate of any country, from the cornfields of Kansas to the vineyards of California and all kinds of agriculture in between.

Along with social freedom and democracy, it adds up to vast basic collateral and the richest country in the world, no matter how much the country may be in debt. It has a far greater ability to mobilise people and resources than any other nation. All of which, in my view, makes any economic woes a short term thing. American wealth is real wealth, not something built on sand.

I believe America can and will bounce back, whatever happens. But it won’t help if people panic and lose sight of the underlying economic realities, or vote in a socialist government that will stifle enterprise and turn this country into a second or even third class nation, as the socialists came close to doing in Britain.

I think it’s perfectly obvious to those who can look at the facts objectively that the crisis on Wall Street was largely due to the kind of backdoor socialism supported by Congress left wingers like Barney Frank and, yes, Barack Obama through Acorn, who put pressure on banks to lend money for mortgages to unreliable borrowers and pushed up house prices until the bubble burst. Unfortunately, both Bill Clinton and George Bush did nothing to remedy the situation.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, housing in America is grossly undervalued if you compare it to house prices in Britain and most of Europe and the quality of the properties you have here.

Now I don’t think everything in America is wonderful. I think your health care system sucks and is crippling the economy with the way it soaks up so much of the average earner’s income. It doesn’t surprise me that more people go bankrupt through medical bills than anything else. I am sure that some people have a heart attack when they are confronted by colossal medical bills. It’s one area where the laws of competition seem to have broken down.

I share most American’s disgust at the obscenity of CEOs lining their pockets with huge amounts of money while running their companies into bankruptcy, and I’m equally disgusted by a system that allows it to happen, just as I’m disgusted by a legal system that literally allows people to get away with murder (as with the O.J. Simpson trial).

Another thing I don’t like is the way that rap music seems to dominate popular music in this country. Even worse is the aggression and the ridiculous posturing that goes with it.
I mean, what is all this bilge about hoes and and pimps and gangstas? It’s not only destroying music and American culture but the English language as well. Which is why I wrote my anti-rap rap (see ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArsgUD6j5dc).

But whatever its faults, I still think America is the greatest country in the world. It is by far the freest, the most democratic – in the best sense of the word – and in many ways the most compassionate, tolerant and civilized country in the world. Any American who doesn’t believe this should try living in other countries, as I have, and see how they like it.

Of course there are big problems ahead, like global warming and energy. It’s obvious that America has to become more efficient in its energy use and less dependent on foreign oil. But these can be looked on as opportunities for new kinds of economic activity. And let me tell you, even at $4 a gallon, gas in this country is still half the price it is in Britain and most European countries.

So I think there is great cause to be optimistic about America’s prospects, provided you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and elect the wrong person. I have to say that when I look at Barack Obama and the support he’s been getting, it worries me. It worries me a lot.

Not only has Barack Obama destroyed any progress that was made on both fronts, but he also seems to have had a lifetime attraction to the most dangerous people of that time.

Is it really any wonder that Obama has “bumped into” Bill Ayers along the way?–an obvious fact no matter how often he denies it. Who with a brain cannot see that Barack Obama’s ability to shoot America back to the radical past can only be the result of influences of people like Ayers and Dohrn? From Frank Davis to Ayers is almost a *natural* progression for him.

The concept that these two people are old and therefore harmless is just plain ludicrous. They still have the same attitudes toward America and they still want the same goals achieved: The Overthrow of Democracy and Capitalism. To be sure, the learned a lot from their “mistakes” back in their Days Of Rage when their Declaration of A State of War was announced. Now they have a fresh new batch of naive American children to help nourish their hatred of this country–all of them ready to do their Comrade Barack Obama’s bidding.

Barack Obama has been endorsed by every single suddenly-revived radical fringe party and movement from the 60s and 70s. Does anybody really think this is a coincidence? Really?

Blogger Quipster has assembled a delightfully frightening trip down memory lane on Bill Ayers and Berdardine Dohrn–bringing us to the here and now, where it becomes horribly obvious that nothing has changed in the minds of these two people, and both of them are two of a number of influences upon the mind of Barack Obama.

Two terrorists lying in Wait. Then and Now. The following is a cross-post from Quipster’s site..

******************

Chucky and Tiffany”
Image courtesy of http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh247/mizzpixiedust/chucky.jpg.

What a wonderful opportunity to listen and see William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dorhn, then and now. The Ayers and Dorhnof the old Weather Underground. The 1960’s radical leftist group responsible for bombings at the Capitol and the Pentagon. The Ayers that remained unremorseful of the bombings, and did not rule out the possibility of doing it again, as of 2001.

Sound clips from then and now, 1970’s and 2007 courtesy of Powerline Part 1 and Part 2.

• The audio linked below falls into two categories: First, a number of “terror era” comments from Ayers and Dohrn from the late 1960s and 1970s emphasize how truly radical, violent, and virulently anti-American they were. The second batch comes from a recent reunion of aging radicals in November 2007. These clips show that Obama’s pals are as unhinged as ever, and they severely undermine Team Obama’s spin that Ayers and Dohrn are now “respectable” members of the political “mainstream.”
• The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1
• The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2

Videos and commentary from McNorman, Uppity Woman, and No Quarter.

• MSU SDS Reunion: Bernardine Dohrn speaks (1)
• MSU SDS Reunion: Bill Ayers speaks (1)
• MSU SDS Reunion: Bill Ayers speaks (2)
• Barack Obama Saul Alinsky Louis Farrakhan Tony Rezko Bill Ayers Bernardine Dohrn Reverend Jeremiah Wright SDS Weather Underground Malcolm X David Axelrod – “The Obama Nation” Jerome Corsi Ph.D.

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Image courtesy of http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2097817/posts.

From David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
March 6, 1970: “three members of the Weather Underground accidentally killed themselves in a Manhattan townhouse while attempting to build a powerful bomb they had intended to plant at a social dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey – an event that was to be attended by U.S. Army soldiers. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plot been successfully executed.“
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808

“The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
The bomb was packed with nails to inflict maximum casualties upon detonation.“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Chronology_of_events

See:

• http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/. No Regrets. August 2001.
• http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1. No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen. September 11, 2001.
• http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTViMGRmMmYxZTgwZTFjYmFjODU5YzM4Y2MwM2ViMjY. Obama’s Challenge. The campaign speaks to “Radicalism.” September 23, 2008.
• http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/04/020358.php. The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1. April 22, 2008.
• http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/04/020362.php. The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2. April 23, 2008.
• http://mcnorman.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/ayers-and-dohrn-still-radical/. Ayers and Dohrn Still Radical. October 8, 2008.
• http://uppitywoman08.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/what-ayers-and-dohrn-have-to-say-about-america-today/. What Ayers and Dohrn Have To Say About America Today. October 8, 2008.
• http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/10/09/what-ayers-and-dohrn-have-to-say-about-america-today/. What Ayers and Dohrn Have To Say About America Today. October 9, 2008.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2yYXVmrj5A
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP15wJl9YPo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzYDnlpBDc
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voBBx9EaEGA

Hoping to keep what’s really going on from the public eye, including his own longtime involvement with ACORN, and in order to quell the First Amendment once again while allowing voter registration fraud to continue on his behalf, Comrade Barack Obama’s attorney has written a ludicrous letter to the DOJ.

In typical Comrade fashion, Obama is attempting to deflect, reroute and change the subject while ACORN voter registration (and early voting!) fraud continues to be discovered throughout the USA in huge numbers.

As with Joe the Plumber, Obama is attempting to intimidate dissenters and blame everyone but himself and his beloved ACORN for their fraudulent voter registrations and attempts to plant deliberate seeds of chaos on Election Day.

Frankly, I am surprised the word “Racist” wasn’t used in the letter. Yet.

Obama campaign counsel Bob Bauer has sent a letter (.pdf) to the Department of Justice requesting that Special Prosecutor Dannehy — who is currently investigating the firings of U.S. Attorneys — expand her investigation to look into whether any administration officials have worked in a joint effort with the McCain campaign and the RNC in legitimizing the allegations of vote fraud.

In the letter, Bauer asks for an inquiry into what he calls a “systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud.” On a conference call with reporters, Bauer went further in explaining their position.

“These [vote fraud] allegations do not mean illegal voting,” Bauer said. “Nobody really expects thousands of Mickey Mouses or Tony Romos to show up at the poll to vote this fall. But at the end of the day, the reason that you’re getting the daily calls, the reason — quite apart from political desperation — that they’re resorting to this issue and not to others, is to utilize the mantra that they’ve hit upon and the organization whose name they plan to make famous as a proxy for attacking the electoral process itself.”

Bauer went on to say that the allegations are an “unprecedented effort to essentially sap the American people of confidence in the voting process” and that “an attack on the voters cannot go undefended.”

No Mr. Bauer, it’s an unprecedented effort to register anything that moves and get it to vote for Barack Obama, even if it is a seven year old child or a dog. After all, Comrade Obama has trouble closing deals and is generally accustomed to a combination of cheating and having someone help drag his butt over the line. (See “Democratic Primary”). This of course is only necessary if he can’t knock his opponents off ballots.

The idea of course it to keep what is going on quiet. Snatch it from the public and pretend the problem isn’t there, while Obama and his ACORN continue to perform their Magic in battleground states. Deflect. Reroute. Blame the messenger. Change the subject. Whatever it takes, it’s how Comrade Obama rolls.

But the McCain campaign isn’t going to be gagged by The Gagger In Chief, Comrade Obama.

In a response to the letter the Obama camp sent to the Justice Department, the McCain campaign has released this statement:

“After a week of shifting stories and clumsy corrections regarding Barack Obama’s connections to ACORN, the Obama campaign resorted to their now-customary heavy handed tactic of attempting to criminalize political discourse. Today’s outrageous letter to Attorney General Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Dannehy at the Justice Department asking for a special prosecutor to investigate Senator McCain and Governor Palin’s public statements about ACORN’s record of fraudulent voter registrations (including in this week’s Presidential debate) is absurd. It is a typical time-worn Washington attempt to criminalize political differences. For someone who promises ‘change,’ it is certainly only more of the same.”The letter’s request that the Department of Justice investigate ‘recent partisan Republican activities throughout the country’ is almost a parody of the Obama campaign’s attempt to intimidate their political opponents. In case Sen. Obama’s lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls ‘recent partisan Republican activities’ are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates. All of this is unfortunately reminiscent of the Obama campaign’s recent creation of a ‘truth squad’ of Missouri prosecutors and sheriffs to ‘target’ people who criticize Sen. Obama. Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act’s requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to preve nt voter fraud.”

Obama’s attorney is right about one thing he said in his ludicrous letter: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! America needs to RUN to the polls on November 4 and put a stop to this hoax candidate who has locked up his own records and hidden his own affiliations from the public in attempt to Overthrow Democracy and turn America into a Chicago Thug machine.

*Photo art: Freedom Fairy, of course.

So, did millions of Americans become intrigued with and mesmerized by Obama and end up on “dates” with him, only to have some doubts about his readiness and qualifications emerge in their minds, and so now they are choosing instead to “marry” McCain?

Or, are Americans becoming aware that, if they elect Obama, they will end up with a one-party government, with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi running our nation and Obama signing off on everything Nancy and Harry want?

There’s a reason our Founding Fathers created separate branches of government, and gave the Senate’s minority party more power than is the case in the House. The minority must have a seat at the table — and our nation is dangerously close to losing the voice of the minority.

You can view all the poll stories here.

What else is happening?

NEW MEXICO SPEECH

My name is Lynette Long.

And I am voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin on November 4.

I want to start by saying something about the Democratic Primary. First, let me say that I have a Master’s Degree in mathematics and I am the author of 14 math books. I’m a numbers girl and I naturally calculate and extrapolate numbers in my head.

The primary process consisted of fourteen caucuses and thirty-nine primaries. Obama only lost one out of fourteen caucuses yet he lost twenty-one out of thirty-nine primaries. You don’t have to be a mathematician to realize something is not right. I first noticed something was wrong when I watched the returns from Texas come in.

Texas is unique in the Primary world because it has both a primary and a caucus. It’s called the Texas Two-Step. Hillary Clinton won the Primary by four points, yet she lost the caucus which was held on the same day by twelve points. That’s a sixteen point swing. Almost four million people participated in both the primary and the caucuses. If a poll with only 700 participants the margin of error is usually 3 or 4, then in a primary and a caucus, with millions of participants a sixteen point would be near impossible.

After questioning the likelihood of the Texas two step results, I decided to analyze the rest of the caucus results. Washington State, Nebraska, and Idaho also held a primary and a caucus and the results were even more divergent than Texas results. The divergent results were partially the result of the disenfranchisement that is inherent in the caucus process since the elderly, mother of young children and shift workers are less likely to attend. But they are also the result of voter fraud intentionally perpetrated by the Obama campaign and voter intimidation by Obama supporters. The result is that the primary was stolen from Senator Clinton.

Even without factoring in the caucus results, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama were only 27 pledged delegates apart at the end of the primary process. Obama, Pelosi, and other senior Democrats paid superdelegates to cast their votes for Obama. The Selection of Obama over Hillary Clinton by the Democratic Hierarchy was a miscarriage of justice and my reason for my original contact with the McCain Campaign.

After the last Democratic Primary was over and it was clear Senator Clinton was not going to get the Democratic nomination, myself, and a small group of Clinton supporters met with Senator McCain.

I personally explained to Senator McCain that women comprise well over half of the population, yet you will not see a single picture of a woman on paper currency. Women are underrepresented in every branch of government and there has never been a female president or vice president.

Little did I know then that he heard me and the millions of women of this country who have gone unrepresented in the Executive branch of government for far too long.

When I made similar requests of the Obama campaign, I was laughed at by the canvassers outside my home, told there weren’t enough qualified women by a member of his Finance Committee, and asked by a member of a policy committee why I was making such a stupid request. Gender is the most fundamental human characteristic. The first comment made when a child is born is either, “It’s a girl” or “It’s a boy.” From that second on, boys and girls live in parallel universes in the same culture. You can’t learn what it is to be a woman, unless you are one. You can’t have a government essentially devoid of women that knows what’s best for women. You can’t legislate for women, without women.

But by choosing Governor Palin as his running mate, Senator McCain acknowledged that men can fully never know what it is like to be a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister – things Governor Palin knows all too well. Senator McCain chose the second only bi-gender ticket in American history reinforcing his image as a maverick. Choosing a Vice-President, was the first significant decision Senator McCain and Senator Obama had to make. Senator Obama talks about change but picked a running mate who is part of the Washington establishment. Senator McCain’s choice speaks for itself.

Obama is a brand just like any other brand. Obama the Brand has a logo, a tag line, and a song.

But Obama the man is not the same as Obama the brand.

Obama the brand talks about new style politics, while Obama the man used Chicago style politics in every election. Obama the brand is for women’s rights while Obama the man marginalizes women and his supporters wear Sarah Palin is a cunt t-shirts. Obama the brand is pro-Israel, Obama the man is not.

Obama the brand touts leadership while Obama the man voted present 130 times in the US Senate. Obama the brand claims change, while Obama the man picks a Washington Insider as his running mate.

Obama the brand is a post-racial candidate while Obama the man plays the race card at every turn, listened for 20 years to the racial teaching of Rev. Wright, and makes contributions exclusively to Trinity United Church of Christ, the NAACP and Care Africa. Obama the man and Obama the brand are not one.

I have given my loyalty to the Democratic Party for decades. My party, which is comprised primarily of women, has not put a woman on a presidential ticket for 24 years.

My party was disrespectful to all women when they refused to nominate my candidate, Hillary Clinton, for president or vice president, even though she received more votes than any other Democratic or Republican candidate in history.

My party stood silently by as Hillary Clinton was eviscerated by the sexist attacks of the mainstream media. My party’s candidate was mute when Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger openly mocked Senator Clinton from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ.

My party’s candidate was silent when the rapper Ludacris released a new song calling Hillary a bitch. My party’s candidate choose Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard, who said women can’t do science and math.

My party’s candidate pays the women in his office 77 cents on the dollar compared to me. My party’s vice-presidential candidate only pays women 73 cents on the dollar.

Neither my party nor its candidate has demonstrated in this election that they hold women in high esteem.

When it comes to women, sixteen is a special number. Did you ever hear the song 16 candles. Or the phrase “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” Eight plus Eight is sixteen, four times four is sixteen, and 2 x 2 x 2 x 2. But sixteen is special for other reasons.

• Guess what percentage of the members of the House of Representatives are women?
• Guess what percentage of the members of the Senate are women?
• Guess what percentage of the governors are women?
• Guess what percentage of equity partners in Law Firms are women?
• Guess what percentage of Science Professors at MIT are women?
• And guess what percentage of US Presidents or Vice-presidents were women?
• Not 16.

How can having a country composed of 52% women with only 16% representation be fair? How can it accurately represent the will of the people?

Sarah Palin is good for women. She has kept the debate about women in government and feminism alive. I happened to be on an Alaskan Cruise when Governor Palin was nominated for Vice-President. When we docked in Ketchikan my Blackberry was buzzing away with emails shouting, “It’s a girl.” I thought, “Who is a girl?” As soon as I stepped on-shore, I found out Sarah Palin was the VP pick. I can testify here today, that every person that I met in Alaska loved her. Alaskans are proud of their Governor.

I heard many people say they don’t think Sarah Palin is ready to be one heartbeat away from the presidency since Alaska has only 750,000 people. Let’s get this straight. Sarah Palin is only one of only fifty governors in the entire country.

If Alaska were a country, it would be the twentieth largest country in the world. The unique topography, economy, population, and climate of Alaska, all make Alaska a challenging state to govern. Home of the Alaska pipeline, Alaska hosts the majority of our oil resources and some of the largest fiscal projects in the country. Alaska, home to Mount McKinley, which towers over 20,000 feet, is home to indigenous peoples and remote towns that are not on the electrical grid. Alaska is the only state in the Arctic climate zone and is directly impacted by global warming. It is home to diverse wildlife and consequently management issues. Alaska shares a border with Canada and ten miles across the Bearing Strait is Russia.

I don’t want to hear Sarah Palin is only governor of Alaska. There is nothing only about Alaska.

I do not agree with Senator McCain and Governor Palin on all the issues, but I don’t agree with any candidate on all the issues. I am emphatically pro-choice, yet it’s a choice I hope most women don’t have to make.

Being pro-choice doesn’t mean I am pro-abortion. I would not want to trade places with any woman trying to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. It is not a choice to be made lightly. But even though I will defend a woman’s right to choose, I will not surrender by vote to the Democratic Party out of fear of losing that choice. I will not vote for a Democratic candidate I feel is unfit to lead, just to protect Roe V. Wade.

The Democratic Party has blackmailed and bludgeoned women with Roe v. Wade for decades. Women’s votes cannot belong to a single party, because if they do we are hostage to that party. Women make up 52% of the population and 56% of the electorate. If we band together, we can change the world.

No one knows what is going to happen during the next four years. In the recent past, the challenges to each President have been enormous.

When he took office, Harry Truman did not know that he would have to decide whether or not to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

Lyndon Baines Johnson didn’t know that on April 4,1968, Martin Luther King would be assassinated, propelling the country into racial unrest.

George Walker Bush didn’t know that on September 11, 2001, terrorists would wage the greatest attack on US soil.

We need a President that is prepared to lead on day one – ready to handle any attack, any crisis, any financial emergency.

I cannot vote based on POLITICAL PROMISES and POLITICAL PANDERING. But I can vote based on PRINCIPLES and PATRIOTISM. In Senator McCain and Governor Palin, I find two people with personal integrity and a love of their county — individuals who not only talk the talk but walk the walk. I can work with that. I will vote for McCain-Palin. In fact, I’ve decided to try to win one vote a day for the McCain-Palin ticket. My new personal mantra is, “A vote a day, keeps Obama away.”

Make no mistake about it, we are in a war. I am not talking about the Korean conflict where our soldiers literally stand shoulder to shoulder with the troops from South Korea starring at the demilitarized zone the most heavily armed strip of land I the world. I am not talking about Afghanistan where our troops search for Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists that perpetrated nine-eleven. I am not talking about Iraq, where over 100,000 of our young men and women are embroiled in a civil war. I am talking about a war on our own soil, a fight for our way of life.

This war pits socialism against capitalism. Barack Obama may call it “income redistribution” but socialism by any other name is still socialism. This war that if lost will undermine the underpinning’s of our economy and what we know as our way of life. This is a war between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Are you willing to fight for economic freedom or do you want to live in a socialist country?

Will you vote for John McCain and encourage everyone you know to do the same. Our country needs you. John McCain and Sarah Palin need you.

Join me on Election Day and save our country.

:::::::::

Visit my blog, LynetteLong.com. And read my other writings posted here at No Quarter.

How about this? We may be sleepwalking into monarchy. There is a fundamental matter at stake in this election: The loss of what our “Founding Fathers” so carefully laid out in our U.S. Constitution: The utter necessity for “checks and balances.”

Our great cartoonist Pat Racimora couldn’t contain herself yesterday afternoon when she saw our story about Howard Stern’s people-on-the-street interviews of Obama supporters.

That story was “Howard Stern Conducts an Experiment with Some, Um, ‘Low-Information’ Obama Voters.”

I am truly worried that the “low-information” status of voters extends far beyond one New York City neighborhood. The “low information” problem stretches across this nation.

Do people realize that if they vote for one party to control both the White House and both the U.S. Senate (particularly if 60 senators are Democrats) and House of Representatives, that there will be a monopoly run by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?

Wait until you see Reverend Amy’s new story later today. She hits the nail on the head.

And here’s more from Politico on the one-party “monopoly” government we’re headed towards unless voters STOP and THINK:

McCain backers raise divided government
Implying that the GOP won’t win back either the House or Senate, two McCain backers this morning sounded out a new talking point by raising the specter of Democrats in control of both the Congress and White House.

Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, posed it as a question.

“Do we really believe that the American public is going to feel safe by having both the head of the Congress and the head of the White House from the same party that has had so many challenges with the way they’ve run Washington over the last couple of years?” Davis asked in an appearance opposite Obama adviser David Axelrod in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

In the show’s next segment, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a frequent McCain surrogate and vice presidential runner-up, fleshed out the argument.

“I don’t think the country is going to like the Democratic Party running the table on taxes, on education, on health care and have kind of the liberal, unchecked, imbalanced approach to all of those issues,” Pawlenty said. “It’s going to be bad for the country. I think having John McCain as president to balance that out and be able to work across the aisle as he has throughout his career to get things done would be a good compromise, a good balance.”

Pawlenty added: “People like balance, especially in Minnesota.”

The comments, almost certainly coordinated, would seem to signal a new phase of the campaign. … (Read all.)

Look, I’m basically still a Democrat. But I’ve always LIKED the system that our “Founding Fathers” set up whereby there are RIGHTS given to the minority because it puts a “check” on a one-party government. It’s so basic: We need “checks and balances.”

Now, open thread time!

Everyone here has heard most of the elements of the post presented below. Some have even talked about the theory presented therein. Before you get bored and skip some of the rehashing, remember this. NoQuarter attracts more new viewers these days than Oberburp has in the past year. The new visitors deserve full qualification of facts, people and events before they can digest theories. This is a long post, but one worth reading.

Therefore I suggest that the following article, written by a kindergarten teacher, should be read by us and shared with anyone who is light Obama or center fence. There are two things amazing I find about people who will dedicate their lives to teaching five year old kids. One. They have to find a smile, every Monday through Friday Morning, before they greet the kids. Two. They get to hear the greatest questions about subjects we quit questioning.

One last thing. This kindergarten teacher is a man who joined me, and a lot of other people, to create the June 19th Seneca160 project, honoring Hillary. I am not discussing her now. I just want you to take in Shtu’s thinking. Get off the minute-by-minute news for a moment and provoke some thought. You might just find a way to create convincing posts, on your own blogs, that will move some votes.

NQ is The blog of bloggers.

- Eastan McNeal

Now. For Shtuey’s Piece

At the outset I must thank Ms Placed Democrat’s Renaissancelady 48 and Eastan McNeal at No Quarter for their exhaustive research, love of country, and wise counsel.

How did we get here? How is it that “subprime mortgages” have brought us to the brink of economic collapse? Most people believe it is due to the predatory lending practices of financial institutions. That is the lie you have been sold. The truth is far more insidious. We are in fact on the brink of economic disaster because of the people who have sent Barack Obama.

In order to understand how this happened we must begin with Saul Alinsky , the radical socialist who, after spending a great deal of time with the Al Capone crime family in Chicago, realized that the same shakedown tactics used by the mob to extort business, and control politicians, could be used by activists to shakedown banks and political institutions to advance a socialist agenda.

These were tactics utilized by groups like ACORN, in an effort to lobby the government to pass laws that forced lending institutions to issue mortgages to low income/”at risk” borrowers who often had no way of paying the money back.

But ACORN members probably did not lobby for these laws to bring down our economy, at least not knowingly. I believe that, apart from the leaders at the top, rank and file ACORN members legitimately believed they were fighting for low-income housing. But ACORN’s backers were simply using Alinsky’s method (never reveal your real agenda) to serve their own purposes.

Who are these people? You know the names of two of them: Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. I suspect that they are more front men than anything else, though who knows who Ayers was with while he was in hiding?

Where did ACORN get the funds to engage in the widespread lobbying (read extortion) that allowed them to shakedown lenders and politicians?

From the money diverted to them by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Fund, as well as with your tax dollars allocated by Congressional Democrats; the same Congressional Democrats that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie and Fannie in the form of campaign contributions; the same Congressional Democrats that ignored Republican calls for the regulating and reform of Freddie and Fannie — the institutions that took subprime mortgages, bundled them, and infected financial institutions worldwide … all in the name of granting minorities and low income families access to housing (always the trouble begins with the most honorable of intentions, or at least it is made to seem so), but with the Leftists’ hidden purpose of initiating a worldwide economic collapse.

All of it was accomplished with ACORN as the muscle.

The root of the problem lies with the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA was passed in 1977 and, according to Thomas J. DiLorenzo,

“compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call “communities of color” that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.”

DiLorenzo goes on to explain:

The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various “neighborhood organizations,” as they like to call themselves, such as “ACORN” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over

$1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty.

A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.

So-called “community groups” like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.” This can cost banks great sums of money, and the “community groups” understand this perfectly well.

It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.

A man named Bruce Marks became quite notorious during the last decade for pressuring banks to earmark literally billions of dollars to his organization, the “Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.” He once boasted to the New York Times that he had “won” loan commitments totaling $3.8 billion from Bank of America, First Union Corporation, and the Fleet Financial Group. And that is just one “community group” operating in one city – Boston.

Banks have been placed in a Catch 22 situation by the CRA: If they comply, they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don’t comply, they face financial penalties and, worse yet, their business plans for mergers, branch expansions, etc. can be blocked by CRA protesters, which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars. Like most businesses, they have largely buckled under and have surrendered to their bureaucratic masters.

Consequently, banks in every community in America have been forced to hold a portfolio of bad loans, euphemistically referred to as “subprime” loans. In order to compensate themselves for the added risk of extending these loans, many lenders have increased the lending fees associated with mortgage loans. This is simply an indirect way of doing what banks always do – and what they must do to remain solvent: charging effectively higher rates of interest on riskier loans.

But this is discriminatory!, complained the “community organizations.” Thus, if one browses the ACORN web site, one can read of their boasts of having “predatory lending laws” passed in numerous states which outlaw such fees, prohibiting banks from protecting themselves from the added risk involved in making forced loans to “subprime” borrowers.

According to the Consumer Rights League :

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

CRL goes on to report:

To understand the current subprime credit mess is to glimpse a world in which a politically active organization with a non-profit housing arm reaps millions of dollars through “rent seeking” or manipulation of favorable laws. ACORN and its non-profit housing arm have taken in millions of taxpayer and corporate dollars by abusing a three-decade-old law intended to help the poor obtain housing. For decades, the activist organization known as ACORN has grabbed headlines—and cash—by attacking mortgage lenders in the name of citizens’ rights. Considerably less attention has been paid to the amount of taxpayer money that funds ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) and to the financial rewards ACORN has amassed.

But from whom did ACORN learn these Alinsky tactics? In part, from Barack Obama.

As I said earlier, I believe rank and file ACORN members legitimately believe they are lobbying for minority and low income housing, unknowingly advancing a larger agenda to destroy our economic and financial institutions. But how has the cabal managed to infect the credit market worldwide? Let’s ask Penny Pritzker,

Barack Obama’s campaign finance chair.

It is now well documented that Pritzker was one of the driving forces behind the subprime mortgage fiasco, unleashing toxic loans into the market like a financial Typhoid Mary. Her bank, Superior, was the first to go under, and yet she made millions.

From Dennis Bernstein’s report:

Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.

“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.

“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”

In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.

Only a fool would believe that it is a coincidence that a man who helped train ACORN in the use of Alinsky tactics, and with Bill Ayers helped fund ACORN, selected the originator of the subprime mortgage vehicle that is destroying our economy to be his campaign finance chair.

But what was the lightbulb moment?

What was the missing piece of the puzzle?

It didn’t start falling into place for me until John McCain announced his mortgage rescue plan at the second Presidential debate.

Inspired by Hillary Clinton’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal, McCain is advancing what is essentially FDR’s Home Owners Loan Corporation idea that kept millions of Americans in their homes. It is a proven plan for success.

But Obama rejects it. Not only does he reject it, but Obama does so based on conservative talking points, namely that McCain’s plan would reward institutions’ unethical practices; practices that banks were forced to adopt because of ACORN’s coercive lobbying efforts, the passage of the CRA, and a mortgage vehicle essentially invented by his campaign finance chair. But in this rejection Obama strays from his usual modus operandi.

As we saw in the primaries, when the opposition issues a plan, Obama waits a few days and then announces the same plan. The media praise him and everyone genuflects. The most notable example of this was when Senator Clinton advocated a multibillion dollar stimulus package in the spring. One week later Obama released a virtually identical plan. Not so this time.

Not only has Obama rejected a plan originally put forward by a Democratic President, he has offered no solution of his own.

Why? Because Barack Obama needs economic turmoil to get into office.

It is the one thing that has opened any polling advantage for Obama in the election. And once in office the nationalization of our banking system will be easily executed. Treasury Secretary Paulson is already laying the groundwork by advocating the government purchase of bank stock.

Once in control of America’s financial institutions, it would be very easy, under the guise of halting the current economic crisis, to completely nationalize American banks and begin a widespread socialist wealth redistribution program which has been part of the Ayers/Obama agenda since the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Crazy? Here’s what Ayers said at an education forum in Venezuela, in the presence of Hugo Chavez:

“the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez.

“We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . .”

“Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolution.”

Read what Jon Markman has to say on the ramifications of Obama’s economic and tax policies. And take a look at a recent survey of CEOs.

These people are very concerned with job creation.

They require a President whose policies will allow them, in a weakened economy, to generate the jobs that will put Americans back to work, and drive the economic engine forward. Not only do they feel that McCain’s policies will allow them to generate those jobs, they overwhelmingly fear an Obama presidency. CEOs know what any fool should know; government does not create jobs (the lie that Obama tells us), companies and corporations create jobs; in a capitalist society.

And consider what is happening between Great Britain and Iceland. Interesting that British banks, that ended up being bought up by Iceland, secretly held ACORN assets. It’s a new world order after all. Eastan McNeal goes on to explain:

The first step toward ensuring that the goal of everyone equally owning everything is to first make sure that nobody owns anything. The only path to a functioning socialist democracy is through a temporary trip through a communist demise. In other words, every corporation and entrepreneur must be eliminated and their personal empires destroyed and turned over to the single payer-payee government larges before the collective wealth of the world can be redistributed and shared equally with and for all.

Obama is using home foreclosures, job loss, and economic collapse as a means of gaining power for himself and his backers; the most prominent, and the one who stands to gain the most, George Soros, makes money in part by destablizing foreign currencies as he did in Thailand in 1997.

Obama wants to win the White House on the back of your suffering while George Soros stands to make a killing.

The end result? A socialist takeover of financial institutions to effect a redistribution of wealth in any mode they please.

Do you trust a man who bought a $1.3 million mansion, with the help of a convicted felon, to equally redistribute the world’s wealth?

Would you trust a man who gained his party’s nomination through voter suppression and intimidation, and who voted to continue a regime of warrantless wire tapping, to preserve democracy?

No, me neither. That’s not leadership. That’s not change we can believe in.

Oh, and check out the freshman Senator from Illinois promising that ACORN will help him set his presidential agenda (and read Larry Johnson’s post on Sunday, “Barack Worked For ACORN, Promises to Do So Again.”

There is only one sure thing standing in the way of a leftist takeover of our financial institutions, and possibly the ending of democracy as we know it;

electing John McCain President of the United States on November 4th.

Speaking of Obama and ACORN, it’s about time the McCain campaign spoke up about what we’ve been saying for months:

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