Senator Joe Lieberman On Obama and Iraq

Senator Lieberman was the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee in 2000. He opposed quitting on Iraq and was driven out of the party for it. Now Lieberman, an independent, speaks out on the issues.

Luke Puckett Gets It

For more Luke Puckett videos please look at this post  – https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/if-you-ever-wanted-proof-that-democrats-want-higher-gas-prices/

In 2007 Joe Donnelly [our current congressman] voted four times against increased domestic drilling. These votes were, in order, Roll Call 40, Roll Call 553, Roll Call 578 and Roll Call 1171. They may be accessed at: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/index.asp – Luke Puckett

Luke is right on. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama say that expanding domestic energy production will not make prices go down in the near future. The evidence is in on just how wrong Pelosi and Obama are.

Dr. Morris Coats is the lead author of a study that shows how expanding production impacts futures markets to bring prices down because they know that more supply is on the way. This market impact lowers prices. The reason prices are falling now is because President Bush dropped executive road blocks to new drilling, and now it is time for Congress to do the same.

When Dr. Coats and his team submitted the study for peer review it was denied for publishing because the peer review committee said that it is so obvious that expected increases in supply will lower prices because of the effects on futures markets that this information is common knowledge and nothing new.

Read it for yourself right from the rejection letter:

I regret to say that we will not be able to publish this work. Basically, your main result (the present impact of an anticipated future supply change) is already known to economists (although perhaps not to the Democratic Policy Committee) . . . It is our policy to publish only original research that adds significantly to the body of received knowledge regarding energy markets and policy.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/newt/public/Newsletter072408_rejectionletter.pdf

Our friends at National Review have more details about this study and here is the link – http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzU1N2Q0MmQxMjNmOTMxZGZmODNiZGZhOWEzNzhlZTc=

UPDATE:  – The Detroit News isn’t buying Obama’s energy plan either:

But at the same time, he proposed taking away any incentive oil companies would have to expand drilling and increase supplies by pushing a windfall tax on Big Oil’s profits to fund the $1,000 rebate checks.

Perhaps the senator is hoping the checks will make Americans forget, as he apparently has, about what happened when Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter played the price and profit limiting game the 1970s.

As the pay-off for oil exploration dwindled, so did oil supplies, driving up fuel prices and creating long lines at the pump. There’s no reason to think Obama would be any more successful in executing this dubious redistribution strategy.

His plan also would give the state-owned oil companies in places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela a huge advantage over domestic companies, since they’d be beyond the reach of Obama’s profits grab.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080805/OPINION01/808050306

Chuck Norton

Obama Flips Twice on Offshore Drilling…in 48 Hours…

This one is straight from our friends at Hotair.com who deserve a big hat tip for catching this one.

The Original Flip is here where he tells FLORIDIANS that he would compromise on offshore drilling.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said today he would be willing to open Florida’s coast for more oil drilling if it meant winning approval for broad energy changes.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2008/08/01/0801obama1.html

Hours before in Springfield Missouri, Obama said this:

John Kerry eat your heart out.

You Owned It – You Bailed It Out – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Gave $200 million of Your Money to Politicians and Partisan Orgs.

You Owned It – You Bailed It Out – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Gave $200 Million of Your Money to Politicians and Partisan Orgs.

Yahoo News/Politico:

Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence

Lisa Lerer Wed Jul 16, 5:44 AM ET

If you want to know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have survived scandal and crisis, consider this: Over the past decade, they have spent nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions.

But the political tentacles of the mortgage giants extend far beyond their checkbooks.

The two government-chartered companies run a highly sophisticated lobbying operation, with deep-pocketed lobbyists in Washington and scores of local Fannie- and Freddie-sponsored homeowner groups ready to pressure lawmakers back home.

They’ve stacked their payrolls with top Washington power brokers of all political stripes, including Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis [come to find out it was $15,000 to thje lobbying firm Davis worked for and none of it actually went to Davis. Fannie and Freddie bought up most of the lobbying firms to make sure that no one would lobby against them – Editor]; Democrat Barack Obama’s original vice presidential vetter, Jim Johnson; and scores of others now working for the two rivals for the White House.

Fannie and Freddie’s aggressive political maneuvering has helped stave off increased regulation and preserve special benefits such as exemption from state and local income taxes and the ability to borrow at low rates.

When their stock prices took a dive last week, their government allies extended another helping hand with a plan for the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and, possibly, Congress to shore up the companies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080716/pl_politico/11781

The Wall Street Journal has more details:

And, oh, what a stream of political cash it is. First, there are Fannie and Freddie’s political action committees, which have already distributed roughly $800,000 to U.S. House and Senate Members this election cycle. Nearly half of the Senators have received funds and almost all of the money is directed to incumbents. Fannie gave $10,000 to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, $10,000 to third-ranking House Democrat Rahm Emanuel, $5,000 to Barney Frank, $10,000 to Republican House whip Roy Blunt, $8,500 to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and $7,500 to Minority Leader John Boehner and . . . you get the picture.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728651034091275.html

Fannie and Freddie have also given millions to partisan advocacy groups and think tanks, most of them among the far left.

Billions of your tax dollars went to bail Freedie Mac and Fannie Mae out. All the while they have been funneling money back to the political machine. It may be legal, but it is corruption that is obvious to anyone.

In the bail out bill that was passed by Congress, Republican Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina tried to offer an amendment to prevent taxpayer subsidized quasi-corporations like Fannie and Freddie from abusing the public trust by slicking the palms of politicians. The Democratic Leader Harry Reid refused to allow the amendment up for a vote (Link).

UPDATE: HERE.

Obama Flips on Iraq Again

How many times have we gone from unconditional immediate pullout, to timetable, to unconditional 16 month timetable, then conditions of the ground, then Moveon.org has a cow and just BEFORE Obama goes on his Iraq trip to learn “the facts” he is back to 16 month timetable (odd to make the policy before you go on the fact finding trip)….

Well now Obama tells Newsweek that he is  back on the ‘conditions on the ground’ scenario.

Is anyone else getting sick of Obama being on every side of every issue? In another reversal Obama now says he wants off shore drilling, but since he isn’t pressuring for it to happen it looks like more talk to be on both sides again. This is 2004 all over again. Why do the Democrats keep nominating people like this?

Newsweek: In Iraq, it’s not new that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has wanted to take control of his own country. But there’s always been this gap between his assessment of his abilities and American commanders’ saying he’s not up to it. As president, faced with that difference between what he says he can do and what the commanders say he can do, how would you choose between them?

Obama: Iraq is a sovereign country. Not just according to me, but according to George Bush and John McCain. So ultimately our presence there is at their invitation, and their policy decisions have to be taken into account. I also think that Maliki recognizes that they’re going to need our help for some time to come, as our commanders insist, but that the help is of the sort that is consistent with the kind of phased withdrawal that I have promoted. We’re going to have to provide them with logistical support, intelligence support. We’re going to have to have a very capable counterterrorism strike force. We’re going to have to continue to train their Army and police to make them more effective.

Newsweek: You’ve been talking about those limited missions for a long time. Having gone there and talked to both diplomatic and military folks, do you have a clearer idea of how big a force you’d need to leave behind to fulfill all those functions?

Obama: I do think that’s entirely conditions-based. It’s hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now, or a year from now, or a year and a half from now.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/148986/output/print

Ok so we are withdrawing but the size of force that remains for logistics, anti-terror forces, intelligence (and lets not for get security because that is always an issue) is entirely conditions based. This puts him on both sides of the issue rhetorically, but policy wise this is exactly the same position as McCain and Bush.

Obama has the most left wing and partisan voting record in the Senate, so as a traditional guy I had no intention of voting for him anyways, however this situation is so bad that the left is starting to say that Obama has damaged himself so badly that he is not likely to win.

Check Out what the Huffington Post had to say:

The Molten Core of Barack: Why Obama Can’t Win
Posted August 4, 2008

Barack Obama should not have to hit a three-pointer to win this election. It should be a lay-up. Yet if Senator Obama is doing so well, why is he doing so poorly? And if John McCain is doing so poorly, why is he doing so well?

The Rasmussen Reports Daily Tracking has McCain down only 1%, 43% to Obama’s 44%. Real Clear Politics National Average of surveys pegs McCain less than 3% behind, with Gallup showing it tied, and USA Today actually placing McCain ahead of Obama, 49% to 45%. CNN reports McCain is in a better position in Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin than he was a month ago and they have moved Minnesota toward McCain into the toss-up category…

Despite the McCain campaign’s effectiveness, however, the best campaign against Barack Obama is not being run by his opponent, but by Barack Obama. It is Obama’s campaign that presents their candidate as an ever-changing work-in-progress. It is his own campaign that occludes our ability to know this man, depicting him as authentic as a pair of designer jeans.

To earn the Democratic nomination, as Fred Thompson points out, Obama ran as George McGovern without the experience, a left-of-center politician who would meet unconditionally with Iran, pull us precipitously out of Iraq, prohibit new drilling for oil, and grow big government in Washington by all but a trillion dollars. In his general election TV ad debut, however, Obama pirouetted like Baryshnikov. With a commercial Mike Huckabee could have run in a Republican primary, Obama now emphasizes his commitment to strong families and heartland values, “Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses.” In this yet unwritten chapter of his next autobiography, Obama tells us he is the candidate of “welfare to work” who supports our troops and “cut taxes for working families.” The shift in his political personae has been startling. Obama has moved right so far and so fast, he could end up McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick.

General-election Obama now billboards his doubts about affirmative action. He has embraced the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption saying, “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…everything.” He tells his party “Democrats are not for a bigger government.” Oil drilling is a consideration. His FISA vote and abandonment of public campaign finance introduce us to an Obama of recent invention. And as he abandons his old identity for the new, breeding disenchantment among his formerly passionate left-of-center supporters and, equally, doubts among the center he courts, he risks becoming nothing at all, a candidate who is everything and nothing in the same moment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-castellanos/the-molten-core-of-barack_b_116904.html

I rarely agree with the Huffington Post, but facts are facts and numbers are numbers and Obama’s numbers have been dropping since February. He lost the popular vote to Hillary in the primary and holds on to the nomination by super delegates. He has already lost the bump he got from the Euro-tour and most importantly, Obama has lost two very important demographics, women over 40 and women over 50, which for a Democrat is unheard of in the last 20 years. Former Clinton Whitehouse political guru Dick Morris says that these numbers do not reflect racism, but reflect the fact that older women know a smooth talker who lacks substance when they hear one.

Chuck Norton

Pelosi Won’t Allow Vote on Domestic Energy Production – Orders C-Span to Stop Covering Speeches from the House Floor (so you can’t see them)

…and then puts the House out of session for 5 weeks with no energy policy fix.

Hat Tip HotAir.com and the Heritage Foundation.

Democratic House Speaker Nacy Pelosi gets shredded by the George on ABC’s This Week Without David Brinkley

Heritage: Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow C-SPAN show what happened on the House floor on Friday, but thanks to YouTube you can catch a clip here:

The Democrats voted to take a 5 week vacation rather than change our self defeating energy policy. Gas is $4.00 a gallon, out food prices are skyrocketing, unemployment claims are going up, 70% of the American people want more drilling, more nuclear and wind power etc and the Democratic leadership in Congress won’t even allow a VOTE. People are suffering (I know I am) and they order a vacation. It is no wonder that this new Democrat controlled Congress has a 9% approval rating. They don’t care about us. Throw them out.

Chuck Norton

Video: Dems won’t act even at $10 per gallon

Hat Tip Hotair.com

This video says it all. Democrats on the Senate floor make it clear that they will not vote to expand domestic oil production even if gas hits $10.00 a gallon. Had enough of Democrat Party lies about our energy policy? Lies like our oil companies are sitting on leases they don’t want to use, Factcheck.org blew that one out of the water and so did the WSJ… and so did we.. here and here.

Not only has the Democratic Party Leadership  become like so many in American academia, they are so far to the left they are becoming Marxist. They oppose capitalism and the production of wealth and they know affordable energy is the key to creating wealth. What is the opposite of wealth?

The Democrat Leadership knows that the vast majority of Democratic Party voters want expanded production of oil and other forms of energy the Democrat Leadership opposes such as nuclear power. They just don’t care.

Remember what this is doing to our food prices as well.

If you want something done about it, we need a Republican House and Senate in a big majority in the fall and I mean new Republican blood because some of the current ones have proven to be a disappointment.

Here is the video.

Chuck Norton

Bush and Batman Have Much in Common

Warning: This movie review may make neo-Marxists, Marxists, hyper partisans and those with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) foam at the mouth and flop on the floor in convulsions.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you,

Chuck Norton

What Bush and Batman Have in Common

By ANDREW KLAVAN
July 25, 2008; Page A15

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Courtesy Warner Brothers

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of “The Dark Knight” itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They’re wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Democrats Are the Party of the Rich

Vision readers may remember the post linked below that shows Obama’s biggest contributors. Money is more important to Obama than ever since he broke his promise to use the public financing system for his campaign.

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/factcheckorg-obama-is-lying-about-mccains-money-and-his-own/

Democrats, contrary to their claim that Republicans are the party of the rich, have been far more dependent on money from PAC’s, other special interests and big money interests than Republicans have.

David Brooks had a nice Op-Ed where he goes over these facts in an eloquent way.

Obama’s Money Class

As in other recent campaigns, lawyers account for the biggest chunk of Democratic donations. They have donated about $18 million to Obama, compared with about $5 million to John McCain, according to data released on June 2 and available at OpenSecrets.org.

People who work at securities and investment companies have given Obama about $8 million, compared with $4.5 for McCain. People who work in communications and electronics have given Obama about $10 million, compared with $2 million for McCain. Professors and other people who work in education have given Obama roughly $7 million, compared with $700,000 for McCain.

Real estate professionals have given Obama $5 million, compared with $4 million for McCain. Medical professionals have given Obama $7 million, compared with $3 million for McCain. Commercial bankers have given Obama $1.6 million, compared with $1.2 million for McCain. Hedge fund and private equity managers have given Obama about $1.6 million, compared with $850,000 for McCain.

When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.

Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government. Over the next few they might just take over the whole darn thing.

Flip-Flop-Flip-Flop-Flip This Video Says It All

Nuff said.

Chuck Norton

If You Ever Needed Proof that Democrats Want Higher Gas Prices… – UPDATED – They Want to Raise the Gas Tax Again!

Updated – see updates below – editor

If statements by Paul Tsongas and other Democrats from the 1980’s who advocated higher gas and fuel taxes, to “progressives” demanding that we “RAISE GAS TAXES NOW” (see photo below), to Barack Obama’s frank admission that current gas prices are fine, but he wished that we had gotten to the current prices a little slower (see video below)… all were not enough to convince you …

Democrats have opposed new drilling off shore, in the arctic tundra, have opposed new nuclear power and have opposed new clean coal and opposed the recovery of oil shale in the west, where we have more oil than the middle east.

Raise Gas Taxes Now! Click to enlarge.

Youtube has been terminating the accounts of those who post this video – this is the last one left . If anyone has this video please send a link. Transcript HERE. Mort Kondrake asks Obama if he would like to see $4.00 a gallon gas.  

The latest spin, in light of new polls saying that over 70% of the American people want us to expand energy production, Democrats are now adopting the rhetoric of “Drill Now” while legislation they are proposing pushes oil companies to drill at places that all have said are not economical to lease, or drill on leases where getting the oil would not be economically affordable due to reasons such as the oil is too deep to reach etc.

I was going to write a new article about this legislation but our friends over at Hansmast.com had a post that was so good I am just going quote it:

Democratic Energy Strategy

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) website on the legislation she sponsored:

The “Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008” would bar companies from obtaining any more federal leases for drilling onshore or on the Outer Continental Shelf, unless they can demonstrate that they are producing oil and gas from the leases they already hold or are in the process of diligently developing the leases they already hold.

Speaker Pelosi’s New Drilling Strategy by Michael Rimerez via Powerline.com

More on why there’s not drilling today on those leases and why drilling in ANWR *will* bring prices down now. Also, in 2005 I posted some research done by a fellow-blogger and engineer (Alton Foley) about how the footprint of ANWR drilling is equivalent to scale of a tic-tac in a football field. The idea of environmental impact is laughable based upon scale alone, not to mention a host of other factors.

One final note: Look at how Obama cleverly shifts the goal posts in this quote: “[Drilling in ANWR] is not something that’s going to give consumers short-term relief and it is not a long-term solution to our problems with fossil fuels generally and oil in particular”. Well duh! But certainly a shifty way to make it sound like it won’t do any good now or later without acknowledging that at the very least it will do good later.  http://hansmast.com/?p=715

The Wall Street Journal reminded us what the The U.S. Minerals Management Service had to say about unused oil leases:

Oil companies acquire leases in the expectation that some of them contain sufficient oil and gas to cover the total costs. Yet it takes years to move through federal permitting, exploration and development. The U.S. Minerals Management Service notes that only one of three wells results in a discovery of oil that can be recovered economically. In deeper water, it’s one of five. All this involves huge risks, capital investment – and time.

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121478199392114387.html

Obama: Tax Energy Companies When They Drill, Tax them When they Cant!

It gets better, Congress isn’t the only one trying to play games with the voters to keep gas prices high, the latest from the Obama Campaign is to tax oil companies for “winfall profits” after they invest billions in getting more oil and tax them if they can’t get oil off the leases they have now, even if it is completely infeasable to do so:

Obama Suggests Charging Oil Companies for Unused Leases

Sen. Barack Obama said that rather than opening up more federal land to drilling, he would instead dun oil companies for the leased lands they are currently sitting on and use the proceeds to fund sustainable energy projects.

Instead of opening more lands to drillers, Obama said he supported a bill in Congress that would levy a fee on oil companies that have rights to exploit federal property but don’t.

Obama’s remarks were mixed in with a host of energy proposals he has pushed recently, including stepped-up investment in renewable energy research and a windfall tax. Aides said it was the first time on the political hustings that Obama has voiced support for a Senate bill that would implement the dunning procedure on fallow federal leased land.

The bill is sponsored by [Democrats] Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

The Obama campaign says it calculated that 68 million acres of leased land remain untouched, compared with the 1.5 million acres that President Bush would like to see opened to exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

The majority of these unexploited acres are currently inaccessible by pipeline and much of the land has dubious production value.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/06/24/obama-suggests-charging-oil-companies-for-unused-leases/

Indeed there are some leases that have oil that we can get to but aren’t and WHY is that? Because eco-extremists in league with the Democratic Party have prevented the building of pipelines and other needed infrastructure to make use of the oil once we have drilled for it. ANWR by comparison has all of the proper needed infrastructure nearby.

So what have we learned – that having an oil lease and actually getting to a point where you can drill on the lease and being able to economically make use of the oil once you have drilled to it are two totally different things (see at the bottom of this post where I elaborate on this).

Joe Donnelly – What Have You Done?

Our very own Congressman Joe Donelly is playing the same game. He says he supports more domestic energy production and may even reverse his position now that gas is $4.00 a gallon – but his previous votes say the opposite. Luke Puckett has something to say about it:

How long will it take to get that oil in the arctic tundra Luke?

But wait a minute Luke –

Cynthia McKinney, Green Party Candidate for President says, “Isn’t ANWR a place with pretty little trees and pretty little squirrils that EVIL REPUBLICANS want to bulldoze over and MURDER??

When Giant Mosquitos Attack!

Ok lets try again and lets see what the arctic tundra really looks like.

Of course, all the oil in the world will do us no good if we don’t build some refineries, that Cynthia McKinney and her friends in the Democratic Party have prevented us from building for 30 years.

Chuck Norton

Related Posts – https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/wsj-obama-pelosi-and-kerry-lying-about-oil-leases/#comment-17066

UPDATE – I just had a great convo with Reasonable Citizen at his blog here:

http://kindlingman.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/oil-leases-for-the-last-time/#comment-10167

Reasonable Citizen is a liberal guy but he is NOT one of the far left haters or crazy types that used to come here so often. As Reasonable Citizen shows in his blog, there is an accusation (conspiracy theory) from the far left that oil companies are squating on leases in order to keep the price of crude oil high, thus allowing them to do nothing and still make good profits on the crude they are producing.

Chuck: Of course at $140 if the oil companies could get more oil out of these leases economically there is a huge profit motive to do so. But having the oil lease is no good if you are prevented from using the lease because the oil is too deep or too hard to get to, or because eco-extremists have prevented you from building the infrastructure needed on the lease so that making use of that oil once you get it is feasable.

RC: I am not convinced of this. I cannot imagine that any oil company, or combination of oil companies, would spend $37 Billion for leases in March 2008 in which they do not know if oil resides underneath. They have geologists up the wazoo to determine the probability of striking oil and they do this for a living. They are professionals. I do not buy the argument that you buy enough oil leases in the hopes that one pans out. That would be amateurish and unacceptable to any set of stockholders.

They have no incentive to drill for oil if other wells are producing and profits are good.
And they can sell any of their oil leases anytime they want. But they don’t. Because holding them without producing oil keeps the market supply low and the price high. If prices fall too low, then everyone loses. The game is about maximizing profit and not oil production. This is a commodity and unless you can drill cheaper or transport cheaper or crack it cheaper, it is in your best interest to have the highest possible oil prices at your lowest current cost of production.

Chuck: Let me explain why you are mistaken. IF we raise domestic production, OPEC will lower production to keep the prices up [it is more likely that prices will drop some but at a certain price point OPEC would lower production to keep prices from falling below a certain point]. So by expanding drilling and production here, instead of $700 BILLION a year going out of Americans pockets to OPEC, a big chunk of that pie would go to Americans, in American companies and taxed by our government. It would lower our trade deficit BIG time.

RC: Perhaps the whole thing is beyond my understanding. I am familiar with verticalized industries and familiar with senior management thinking yet the oil company logic escapes me.

I agree that eco restrictions are a problem in NEW oil fields but the leases are not for new oilfields. If I could find the map that shows the known oil fields and unused leases I would post it. I did not save that link.

I admit that I do not know enough to continue this. My visceral feeling is that I am right on this but I cannot match my feeling with arguments. Thanks for stopping by and making me think.

Chuck: Oh I forgot – If I am wrong, the oil companies are lying, and the The U.S. Minerals Management Service is wrong…. that getting the oil on these unused leases should be no problem at all – then I have your fix.

Have the government pay oil companies what ever it takes to get the oil from the leases, so the government can sell the oil themselves and keep whatever profits they can make and/or sell it to Americans at a discount.

Use the power of the government to prevent eco-extremists from getting in the way and use the power given to Congress under Article Three of the US Constitution to take the juristiction away from the courts on this issue. They could do it with a majority vote.

If Democrats wanted to make sure that unused leases are used, this is a 100% surefire way to do so…. but such a move would not match their agenda.

Reasonable Citizen is right that there are some leases with oil that go unused that can be drilled. BUT when you consider the costs that come with…

1. Fighting eco-extremists and/or local government in court to build the infrustucture to make use of it once you have drilled to it, complete with even more lawsuits and appeals.

2. Fight eco-extremists and/or local government to build an oil pipeline to move it, complete with lawsuits in every juristiction the pipe goes through and lets not forget about appeals.

3. The time and money it takes to get through federal red tape to do anything on the land that you have the oil lease for – oh and did I mention that the eco-extremists sue every step of the way and claim that the federal regulation isnt being complied with or that it would disturb the habitat of the Red Chested Nut Scratcher Bird? … and lets not forget when the eco-extremists lose in court they appeal.

4. Ok how many years and millions upon millions have just been blown and you still havent moved 1 drop of oil yet? And by the way, if you lose in court or have some federal agency stop you, congrats you just bought an oil lease for nothing.

5. When you finally start to drill, IF the geologists got it right – hope and pray that something you didn’t detect prevents you from getting to it on the spot where you built the oil rig or doesn’t drive up the costs considerably.

6. Oh by the way we need a refinery to make this oil into gas and other useable products.

7. Do you get the risks that energy companies have to deal with yet?

UPDATE II – ARE THEY NUTS? DEMOCRATS TRYING TO RAISE GAS TAXES AGAIN! (Hat Tip Hotair.com)

Oberstar, D-Minn., said his committee is working on the next long-term highway bill. He estimated it will take between $450 billion and $500 billion over six years to address safety and congestion issues with highways, bridges and transit systems.

“We’ll put all things on the table,” Oberstar said, but the gas tax “is the cornerstone. Nothing else will work without the underpinning of the higher user fee gas tax.”

At the very least, the gas tax should be indexed to construction cost inflation, DeFazio [D-OR] said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,386643,00.html

The American people keep having to go without and Congress raises its spending every year. It is no wonder why this Congress’  approval rating has dropped to 9% since the Democrats took over in 2006. Democrats blocking almost all new domestic energy production was bad enough and now this. Is it possible to be any more out of touch?

Update III – Factcheck.org  Parrots Our Analysis On Unused Oil Leases. Once Again The Vision Gets it Right

Remember what we said just above on the years federal red tape you have to go through before a company can drill on the land it has the lease for.

That’s because these leased lands that don’t contain productive drilling operations likely are not lying idle as Obama implies. There are a lot of steps and procedures involved in setting up a productive oil well on leased land, both onshore and off. The Bureau of Land Management’s Web site lists the regulatory hurdles that need to be cleared as part of the larger five-step life cycle of a well. The path to setting up an offshore drilling operation is even longer, as shown in a large flow chart developed by the MMS.

And there is a lot of activity occurring on leased lands that does not qualify as “production.” For 2006, the BLM reported that there were 77,257 productive holes onshore in the U.S. Beyond that, there were 6,738 applications for drilling permits, 4,708 holes in which companies had begun drilling and 3,693 where drilling had ended among onshore lands. That’s a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished that do not count as “productive” holes. And that doesn’t even include holes that might have been continually drilled throughout the year for exploratory reasons.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_the_democrats_correct_in_stating_that.html

What can we say folks – NEVER doubt the Vision.

UPDATE IV – Pelosi and House Democrats Pass Bill to Allow Offshore Drilling..Where the Oil ISN’T!!

Guess where most of the oil is folks…. you guessed it, it’s within 50 miles of the shore line.

House Passes Bill To Expand Drilling, Fund Renewables
Republicans Say Measure Isn’t Enough

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 17, 2008; A10

The House approved a package of energy initiatives yesterday, including measures that would allow oil drilling as close as 50 miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and finance the long-term development of alternative energy sources.

In the first substantive votes since gasoline prices rose above $4 a gallon this summer, the House divided largely along party lines, 236 to 189, with most Republicans rejecting the Democratic-sponsored legislation because it would prohibit exploration of much of the known oil reserves closer to the coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091601216_pf.html

Media Bias You Can Believe In – UPDATED

 

If you ever doubted media bias or how bad the elite media has been in the tank for Obama this one will remove much of that doubt: 

Courtesy: Richard Drew of the Associated Press

3 Anchors to Follow Obama’s Trek Abroad

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2008; C02

The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle East next week for Barack Obama’s trip, adding their high-wattage spotlight to what is already shaping up as a major media extravaganza.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/16/AR2008071602562_pf.html

This one speaks for itself. The only reason Obama is going to Iraq is because he was shamed into it by McCain for making Iraq strategy plans and not even speaking to the commanders on the ground.

UPDATE – A talking head on the evening news said that Obama should avoid an “Ich bin ein Berliner” moment and another talking head said, maybe he should say “Ich bin ein beginner”. That’s funny. Obama’s European leg of the trip is designed to make a big campaign rally of European socialists to make it seem like all of our allies want him elected. When the media will leave out is that France and Germany had their anti-American Bush hating governments thrown out and had pro-American pro-Bush governments elected.

UPDATE II – I had this quote from the New York Times and forgot to paste it in this post so here it is:

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks – which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people – spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/17/america/17anchors.php

Chuck Norton

Profiles in Outrageous Hypocrisy – Obama Surrogates Target Cindy McCain for Being Wealthy – UPDATED

UPDATED SEE BELOW!! 

Our friend Amanda Carpenter of Ball State University fame beat us to the punch on this story, But considering that she was a part of this breaking news story I guess that makes it ok ;-)

Jamal Simmons, who works for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said on CNN today that Cindy McCain’s wealth generates a “red flag” he criticized her for having 8 houses, says that makes the McCains out of touch, and claims that the McCain campaign isn’t being financially transparent.

Here is the video – notice that CNN is doing its usual job of “fair & balanced” by pitching two leftists and a very vocal and biased moderator against one conservative, our intrepid Ball State grad, Amanda Carpenter.

 

As Amanda points out in her column today Barack Obama has stated that the wives should be off limits:

“I would never consider making Cindy McCain a campaign issue and if I saw people doing that—I would speak out against it,” Obamasaid in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on June 18. http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/394432.aspx  [- Complete with video.]

Mrs. McCain is reportedly worth more than $100 million due to the beer distribution company she inherited from her parents, Hensley & Company. The McCain’s keep their finances separate and Mr. McCain has recused himself from Senate votes on alcohol issues.

Some Democrats, like Simmons, say the McCain campaign is hiding information Mrs. McCain’s wealth. Ironically, the information about her credit card debt comes from Mr. McCain’s Senate financial disclosure forms, readily available on the internet through the Center for Responsive Politics.

McCain’s 2008 report, which includes tax information for the previous year, is 51 pages long. By comparison, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2006 report, which contained information about her former President husband’s international speaking fees and their joint finances, is 11 pages long. Her 2007 form is unavailable although it was due last May. She filed for an extension on May 12.

Obama’s 2007 Senate financial disclosure forms are 8 pages long.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/07/16/obama_surrogate_targets_mrs_mccain

 

I will be watching to see of Obama speaks out against the DNC – would anyone like to place any wagers?

As Amanda rightly points out Teresa Heinz loaned the Kerry Campaign millions, requiring more financial disclosure. The Clintons loaned the Hillary Campaign millions. Cindy McCain lets her husband use her jet at a discount and McCain fully documents it in his own financial disclosure forms. Amanda also rightly points out that McCain has been more transparent than anyone when it comes to financial disclosure. McCain has obeyed all Senatorial and Federal Election Commission disclosure requirements so that resolves the “transparency” issue. 

The real reason why they want to open Cindy McCain’s private records is so they can go on a fishing expedition through her life. Until Cindy McCain loans a pile of money to her husbands campaign she is entitled by law to the same privacy as any other American.

McCain has been the leader in Congress in attempting to bring more transparency to politics. A good student of political science will see that this is nothing more than an attack on John McCain where he is strongest. This isn’t the first time the Obama campaign has used this strategy. Over the 4^thof July week several of Obama’s campaign surrogates launched a coordinated attack on his military service in an attempt to take that issue out of the campaign.

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/obama-campaign-attacks-mccains-military-record-in-trial-balloon/

Obama says that it isn’t right for a campaign to go after McCain’s military service and several of his campaign surrogates do just that all at the same time over the 4th of July weekend. Obama says that the wives should be off the table after Michelle Obamamakes a series of regrettable statements that might indicate that she has similar views as many elitist Marxist academics – only to send out his surrogates to attack Cindy McCain with class warfare rhetoric and false claims of “non-transparency”. Hmm perhaps now is a good time to review the millions in illegal campaign money the Clintons and Gore’s took from agents of the communist Chinese government, some of which they got caught for and had to give back or donate to charity.

Let’s get back to the “Cindy has 8 houses so the McCain’s are out of touch” comment. Teresa Heinz Kerry is financially worth over 10 times what Cindy McCain is. Here is an article from the AP that tells of the Kerry’s many homes. I will include a portion of the list:

• Boston: A five-story, 12-room Beacon Hill town house that serves as Mr. Kerry’s main residence. Assessed value: $6.9 million.
• Nantucket, Mass.: A three-story, five-bedroom waterfront retreat on Brant Point. Assessed value: $9.18 million.
• Washington, D.C.: A 23-room town house in Georgetown. Proposed 2005 assessment: $4.7 million.
• Ketchum, Idaho: A ski getaway converted from a reassembled barn near Sun Valley. Assessed value: $4.9 million. Mrs. Kerry also owns two adjoining lots valued at $1.5 million and $1.8 million.
• Fox Chapel, Pa.: A nine-room colonial on nearly 90 acres in suburban Pittsburgh. The property also includes a nine-room carriage house. Assessed value: $3.7 million.

http://www.washtimes.com/news/2004/mar/22/20040322-104317-3064r/

 

The Bottom Line.

The simple truth is that there are very few members of the Senate that I would consider to be “in touch”, but the Democrats want to apply one standard to Cindy and another for Teresa. I believe that if the spouse goes out on the campaign stump and makes speeches they become fair targets for critique. This isn’t about what wife has more money. This isn’t about whom it is fair to critique and it most certainly isn’t about truth or “transparency”. It is about politics, political dishonesty and the hypocrisy that has tainted our political process.  

Chuck Norton

UPDATE – The Day After the DNC Attacks Cindy McCain for Being Wealthy Obama Launches on the Right for Attacking Michelle:

And I’ve said this before: I would never have my campaign engage in a concerted effort to make Cindy McCain an issue, and I would not expect the Democratic National Committee or people who were allied with me to do it. http://www.glamour.com/news/blogs/glamocracy/2008/07/barack-obama-ta.html

Amazing isn’t it?

 

UPDATE – Michelle Obama says thanks for the $600 stimulus check maybe that can get her a pair of earrings…:

“You’re getting $600 – what can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month,” she said. “The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/11/michelle-obama-spend-600-stimulus-check-earrings/

Holy cow, and they say that Cindy McCain is out of touch. Last time I went to Target they had plenty of earrings below $100, not to mention $600. Of course, based on what is publicly available about her income will she even be getting a check anyways? She commented on policy, so it’s fair to critique it.

One thing is for sure, if Cindy McCain said anything even close to this, the elite media would be sounding alarms, and the Obama campaign would be going into overdrive.

MSNBC ‘In the tank for Obama’ Claims Iraq Surge Isn’t Working

 

MSNBC, which has been taken a beating in the ratings and has been criticized for its unfair coverage against Hillary Clinton during the primary, has now jumped even deeper in the depths of leftist cookdom when host Chris Mathews stated and argued with great emotional vigor that the Iraq surge isn’t working…

Here is a link to the video from Newsbusters (right click and save as to download) – http://newsbusters.org/static/2008/07/2008-07-15MSNBCHB2.wmv

PAT BUCHANAN [in a classic bit of realpolitik]: Do you want to get into the substance, or the politics? [Green can be heard laughing in the background.] Look, the American people believe we made a mistake going into Iraq. Barack wins that. The American people believe the surge has worked, it is working.

MATTHEWS [shouting]: No it hasn’t! The American people haven’t been asked the right question. Pat, you know you’re wrong on this. Pat, you’re disagreeing with yourself on this, Pat. You have said in the past the reason to stick the army in there with greater strength a year or two ago was to get the Iraqis to solve their own fish. To put it together themselves politically so that we could come home.  By that definition, have we won?

BUCHANAN: By the loudness of your argument and your intensity, you are suggesting McCain indeed has a powerful point.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2008/07/15/mad-matthews-no-surge-hasnt-worked

Chris Wallace in Variety – MSNBC in the tank for Obama:

Continuing Fox News‘ war of words with MSNBC, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace accused its rival of being “in the tank” for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, while further pressing the news channel’s case that the mainstream press exhibits a liberal bias.

“I think MSNBC’s coverage went so far over the line that it lost all credibility,” Wallace told reporters Monday at the Television Critics Assn. press tour.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988942.html?categoryid=1236&cs=1

Chuck Norton

The Elite Media Really Does Make Stuff Up

 

Examine this picture from the AFP on Yahoo News (hat tip Hotair):

Click to see full size and be sure to look at the red device on the end of the soldier’s rifle barrel.

Here is the caption alongside the photo which proves to be totally bogus:

US soldiers secure the area at a newly installed check-point at the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq. A string of suicide attacks against Iraqi security forces killed at least 37 people on Tuesday, including 28 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up among a crowd of army recruits, security officials said.(AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Iraq-Photos/ss/1479#photoViewer=/080715/photos_wl_me_afp/cb6ddab308c64c2b5ae4c9a76aa5435b

Via Hotair: 

The red attachment is a laser transmitter, part of the MILES system used by soldiers for non-lethal combat training.  When soldiers press the trigger, it sends a laser burst that can be detected on gear that other soldiers wear, and it can also be used with blank cartridges for more realistic training.  Any rifle equipped with the MILES system is useless for actual security purposes. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/15/media-fires-blanks-on-military-picture/

 

The picture in question could not be of soldiers securing anything. It is a file photo of a war-games exercise and the laser device on the end of the rifle barrel demonstrates that beyond reasonable doubt. It is most likely that AFP found a file photo and invented the caption. Another example of why more and more reasonable people have no trust in the elite media.

Chuck Norton

Obama’s ‘Self Reliance Tour’ – All Rhetoric.

Senator Obama has been on the so called “Self Reliance Tour” as of late, and that includes his recent speech to the NAACP.

Obama, in recent weeks, has taken on the message of Bill Cosby by telling black families that they essentially need to get their act together socially and exercise more restraint, responsibility and self reliance.

If ANY white man went to the NAACP and said such a thing that message would not have been well received to put it mildly.

It is no secret that Obama took a huge hit among white voters, including union workers that tend to vote Democrat, with statements about the middle class such as his “guns and religion” comment that so damaged his campaign. The poll numbers reflected that damage.

Obama knows that the self reliance message is one that rings true with Middle America where the concepts of freedom, limited government and rugged individualism are a staple of society even among moderate and Reagan Democrats.

Obama’s voting record shows him to be the very most partisan of the very left wing of the Democratic Party. The self reliance tour would have destroyed him in the primary and it is not a political message that he has ran on before. The left has no where to go but Obama so he can afford to use a message like this without much risk.

Remember that Obama was outspokenly opposed to the welfare reform that was signed into law by President Clinton and now he takes credit for it. Here is the post complete with Youtube video showing his flip-flop on welfare reform/self reliance – https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/obama-flips-on-welfare-reform-and-on-faith-based-charities/

Chuck Norton

Politico: Obama Purges Past Criticism of the Iraq Surge from Campaign Web Site

UPDATE See Below- The rewrite of history continues

Politico:

The Daily News report by James Gordon Meek says: “Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop ‘surge’ in Iraq, the Daily News has learned. The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a ‘problem’ that had barely reduced violence. ‘The surge is not working,’ Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks – not U.S. military muscle – for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0708/Surge_meets_purge.html

 

The rewriting of history has begun. Soon we will see even more statements from Obama that begin like this:

“What I have always said is this….”

…and then he will proceed to rewrite his past statements and history just as he has repeatedly done on issue after issue. Even left wing staples such as the New York Times and some 527 groups are all over Obama for this behavior and now the next phase of it is beginning.

The volume of kick back from left wing groups has caused Obama to reverse his previous reversal on starting the troop withdrawal immediately.

McCain promptly took advantage of the situation by pointing out the obvious; Obama is going to Iraq on a fact finding mission and Obama has just made a new Iraq policy again before he ever even got there and talked to General Patraeus and gotten the facts.

Obama’s long line of flip flops complete with video clip evidence has been catalogued right here. Just take a peek at the link on the left that says “Campaign 2008”. 

Chuck Norton

UPDATE – Obama NYT Op-Ed rewrites his previous positions and now he has back on the pullout bandwagon after the left had a fit over his “conditions on the ground” statements he had made to after the primary.

Here is the link to the Op-Ed and be sure to look at his rewrite of history about his position on the surge – http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?ex=1373774400&en=6e3c74f501639e3d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Let us not forget this:

‘600,000 Pieces of Evidence’ that Saddam Actively Aided Terror Groups Including Al-Qaeda

 UPDATED!! – See Below

A new Pentagon report reveals proof of how Saddam actively aided Al-Qaeda – surprise the elite media ignored or distorted the evidence.

The United States has had control of Iraq for 5 years giving inspectors plenty of time to go through Saddam’s memos, military, intelligence and bureaucratic records. A recent report released by the Pentagon from inspectors on the ground reveals 600,000 pieces of evidence showing all of the former Iraq regime’s terrorist connections. The evidence shows that Saddam supported, trained and equipped virtually ANY terror group that opposed American or Israeli interests, including deliberate support for Al-Qaeda and groups that reported to Osama bin Laden.

The Wall Street Journal Summarizes the details:

Saddam’s Terror Links

Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq’s links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.

Naturally, it’s getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study’s revelations float by. But that doesn’t make the facts any less notable or true.

The redacted version of “Saddam and Terrorism” is the most definitive public assessment to date from the Harmony program, the trove of “exploitable” documents, audio and video records, and computer files captured in Iraq. On the basis of about 600,000 items, the report lays out Saddam’s willingness to use terrorism against American and other international targets, as well as his larger state sponsorship of terror, which included harboring, training and equipping jihadis throughout the Middle East.

“The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam’s ‘coercion’ toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power,” the authors conclude. Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cooperated with Hamas; the Palestine Liberation Front, which maintained a Baghdad office; Force 17, Yasser Arafat’s private army; and others. The IIS gave commando training for members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the organization that assassinated Anwar Sadat and whose “emir” was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command when the group merged with al Qaeda in 1998.

At the very least the report should dispel the notion that outwardly “secular” Saddam would never consort with religious types like al Qaeda. A pan-Arab nationalist, Saddam viewed radical Islamists as potential allies, and they likewise. According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to “form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia,” where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces. Saddam also trained Sudanese fighters in Iraq.

For 20 years, such “support” included using Fedayeen Saddam training camps to school terrorists, especially Palestinians but also non-Iraqis “directly associated” with al Qaeda, continuing up to the fall of Baghdad. Saddam also provided financial support and weapons, amounting to “a state-directed program of significant scale.” In July 2001, the regime began patronizing a terror cartel in Bahrain calling itself the Army of Muhammad, which, according to an Iraqi memo, “is under the wings of bin Laden.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120631495290958169.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

For years we have heard from the elite antique media that “Saddam had no operational link with Al-Qaeda” and reported it with the attitude that Saddam and Al-Qaeda were opposed to each other in some way. In fact some of the elite media said the same thing about this report.

What does “operational link” mean? George Soros doesn’t control the day to day operations of Moveon.org, yet without the support of Soros, Moveon.org could not exist in any meaningful way. Saddam’s relationship with Al-Qaeda was no different. Saddam did not call the day to day shots in Al-Qaeda, he didn’t have to as they had the same enemies. Saddam helped to made it possible for Al-Qaeda to exist in the form that it did by supplying them with money, weapons, training, sanctuary and medical support. The media tried to redefine “operational link” to no “operational control”. Definitions and context means things and in journalism context is everything.

 Chuck Norton

UPDATE: A leftist blogger took issue with my post and with the Wall Street Journal article.

Leftist blogger said this:

The WSJ article did all it could to obfuscate the issue. I forwarded you the actual report URL. The report found evidence of Saddam support for PLO terrorist activity and NO al Qaeda direct involvement. You needn’t have gone any farther than the Executive Summary: “This study found no “smoking gun” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”  

My response:

As far as the report. It is obvious that you didn’t read it any farther than the summary. No “smoking gun” was elaborated on in the report in detail, meaning that Saddam did not have operational control or even any great operational influence on bin’ Laden. The report does say that the Iraqi regime supported terror groups of all kinds, including material support and training for groups they knew full well were working with bin-Laden. George Soros does not have operational control over Moveon.org – he just makes it possible for them to exist through financial support. Its the same thing.

You really should correct yousrelf on your blog. All someone would have to do is pull the quotes and documents out of the report to show that you didn’t read it. The real question is, do you want to tell your readers the truth and the WHOLE truth without spin or leaving critical details out [like the elite media did]…?

Do you have the courage to just admit that Saddam was helping all sorts of terror groups including bin-Laden’s with money, training, materials, and sanctuary? The report states it and Iraqi regime evidence admits it, will you?

Obama Flip Flops On Negative Attack Ads

 

The RNC attack ad on Obama’s flip flops came out hours after Obama broke his campaign promise about misleading negative attack ads. The long list of recent Obama reversals continues.

At a rally in Wilson, North Carolina on April 28, 2008, Obama made his position on negative ads clear. As you can see he is not ambiguous about his words here:

Yesterday morning this ad started appearing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan:

Now while negative ads are often a part of a campaign, it is the campaign that decides how misleading the attack ad will be. I have a sneaking suspicion that Factcheck.org is going to be all over this one.

Misleading is a generous term to describe this ad. Obama claims that the GOP plan won’t yield more oil for 7 years. This isn’t true as some places to drill can yield oil in a shorter time. What Obama doesn’t say in this ad is that his plan will not yield one more drop of oil EVER. He leaves out that there is only one country in the world that does not drill to expand its own energy resources and that is the United States. What Obama leaves out is that in 1996 the Republican Congress passed an energy reform bill that would expand domestic oil production and President Clinton vetoed it. Clinton also made one of the largest coal mines in the United States a national park with the stroke of a pen without notifying the states governor or its congressional delegation.

Clinton’s Coal Gate –http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=285982232964929

Obama leaves out that in President Bush’s first year in office congressional Republicans, seeing what was coming, pushed for an energy reform bill and Democrats blocked it. Democrats are still blocking the efforts to expand domestic production.

The most important thing that Obama leaves out is that he is on the record supporting current gas prices. This is nothing new. Democrats have vocally called for gas prices in America to be as high as fuel costs in Europe since Paul Tsongas took office.

Obama Declaring His Support for Higher Gas Prices. Mort Kondrake asks if higher gas prices are a good thing. Obama answers that he only wished that we had not gotten to these prices so quickly saying that he preferred a “gradual” increase to current prices. 

The Democrats talk about “energy alternatives” for decades and yet we haven’t seen any affordable and practical alternatives as of yet and pie in the sky Flintstones air cars and pixie dust magic fuels are not going to bring us the affordable energy we need in the near future. Many countries such as France have been very successful at using nuclear power yet Democrats have opposed this as well.

Related Posts

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/wsj-obama-pelosi-and-kerry-lying-about-oil-leases/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/have-they-stopped-drinking-the-kool-aide/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/new-york-times-throws-obama-under-the-bus-over-flip-flopping/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/obama-reverses-himself-on-terrorist-surveillance-program/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/profiles-in-hypocrisy-obama-speeches-say-he-supports-equal-pay-for-women-and-mccain-doesnt-but-obama-pays-women-in-his-campaign-less-mccain-pays-women-more/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/obama-flips-on-welfare-reform-and-on-faith-based-charities/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/hotaircom-obama-still-doesnt-get-youtube-does-he/

https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/factcheckorg-obama-is-lying-about-mccains-money-and-his-own/

Chuck Norton

Have They Stopped Drinking the Kool-Aide?

 Editors Note Sept. 2010 – youtube has been actively banning videos with “Obama vs Obama” content and is also trying to shut down our youtube channel.

Have They Stopped Drinking the Kool-Aide? RNC, 527’s, Press, Finally More Critical of Long Series of Obama Reversals (and re-reversals).

The IUSB Vision has been ahead of the curve keeping its readers apprised of the long series of reversals coming form the Obama campaign. During the last few days the far left, including Code Pink and the New York Times, have been very critical of Obama for these reversals. Fox News has been on it for a while longer. Obama has adopted so many of President Bush’s positions that some have said that Obama is running for Bush’s third term (see previous posts for details).

Here are some of the results from others catching on; telling you what blogs like this one have already made you very aware of.

The list goes on and on. What is amazing is that while Fox News, NYT and the Washington Post have started to report this, most other media outlets are still mum on the issue.

Chuck Norton

Profiles in Orwellian Doublespeak: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) – UPDATED!

 

It sounds so yummy doesn’t it? “Employee free choice” – I mean who in the world could be against employee free choice right? Why it must be those evil Republicans right? …. read on. 

UPDATED – SEE BELOW: Service Employees International Union is giving $85 Million to Democrats, but isn’t fully funding its pension for union workers! – Hmmm maybe this is who they need card check violence and intimidation.

Now do you want to know what the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) does? It takes secret voting in the work place AWAY from employees. It demands what is called a “card check” where the employer or union can come to you with a card to sign your signature to that indicated your vote that all can see.

Anyone who understands union history can see the danger in that. Union elections have had more than their fair share mafia interference, including union officer candidates being killed such as Jimmy Hoffa and coal mining union candidates etc. The union will know how you are voting to pressure you and so will the employer know who to retaliate against if you vote “wrong”.

Union rank and file opposes the bill, but union leadership supports it because they can buy political influence to help keep them from being prosecuted in Democratic controlled parts of the country.

Our Congressman Joe Donnelly voted for this bill (H.R. 800). The union leadership and Democratic Party leadership is openly lying about the effects of this law.

This video from gives an amusing description of the bill:

Here is their website – http://www.myprivateballot.com/

Here is Congressman Buck McKeon talking about the bill.

Here is a video of the workers from Indiana telling about workplace pressure and abuse that they faced.

Union threatens a 16 year old girl.

Federal indictment from April 2008. Union thugs stabbed employees, slashed tires, used caltrops on people’s cars, anbushed people and beat them, threw scalding coffee in the face of employees and made numerous threats. 

Chuck Norton

UPDATE!! – The service Employees International Union has pledged $85 Million to Democrats, but isn’t fully funding its pension for union workers! – Hmmm maybe this is who they need card check violence and intimidation. Todays New York Sun has the details:

Yet in 2006, the SEIU National Industry Pension Plan, a plan for the rank-and-file members, covering 100,787 workers, was 75% funded. That is, it had three-fourths of the money it needed to pay benefit obligations of workers and retirees.

In contrast, a separate fund for the union’s own employees, numbering 1,305, participants was 91% funded. Even better, the pension fund for SEIU officers and employees, which had 6,595 members, was 103% funded.

For the SEIU to hold pep rallies to attack private equity funds, while allowing the pensions of their own rank-and-file members to perform worse than those of union officials, is sheer hypocrisy. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/holding-up-a-mirror-to-the-seiu/81472/?print=5752365121

Hate America Left Reveals Itself in a Series of “Don’t Celebrate the Fourth” Columns

 

Don’t celebrate the 4th hate screeds are popping up all over the in the last couple of days.

 

Take this screed from The Progressive – a far left magazine: 

Why I’m Not Patriotic
By Matthew Rothschild, July 2, 2008

It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.
Spare me the puerile parades.
Don’t play that martial music, white boy.
And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.
You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.
It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.

Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.  Yet most people accept it without inspection. 

Why?
For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.
 
The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.
 
World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions-notes left by the killer after the fact.The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.

The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

So those who are patriotic and display nationalism insofar as having pride in America’s traditions of freedom with responsibility are equated by the far left with the radical oppressive “nationalism” and communism and are given a moral equivalency to those who love America and celebrate the 4th of July. Of course bogus moral equivalencies are a staple of leftist propaganda and internal psychosis. 

 

Take a look at that last line about the Cuban missile crisis. To the far left, it is not that an evil Soviet empire, that had sworn to take over the world by force if needed, that placed put nuclear missiles just 90 miles off our shore that threatened the lives of Americans and our national security… OH NO… the problem is American nationalism… it’s OUR fault. Now you know why I refer to this type of thinking as the psychosis that it is.

 

The Progressive continues: 

When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.

Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?

No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.

Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?

No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.

http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx070208

How about this – we are the greatest country in the world because we unleashed the creative genius of man to a level greater than that of any other in the greatest experiment in freedom that the world has ever known. The United States gives more to global charities than the rest of the world combined. We invent the cures, we invent most of the great technology and we grow the most food to help feed the world. There are graveyards all over the world filled with the graves of our dead who fought for the freedom of others.

 

Indeed we have troops around the world, but not as conquerors, but as defenders of the peace, stability and freedom. We have saved Europe from itself in two world wars and the Cold War. We helped Japan to remake itself into the wonderful place it has become and we continue to defend it from nearby enemies. Those troops stationed overseas that The Progressive hates so much have saved the people of South Korea from the grim fate of rule by Kim Jong Il.

 

Leftist Robert Sheer shares his don’t celebrate the 4^th screed with us too:

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling – but before we are too besotted by ourselves – might we also for once consider our imperfections? …

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors.

That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished – for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting it’s black gold back. It was always about the oil – that’s why “we” invaded Iraq – only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/robert-scheer/iraq-oil-pact-debases-our-nation.html

 

Well you heard it. You’re a bunch of unsophisticated beer swillin’ hicks who are too stupid to have adopted his leftist “enlightenment”. I believe, as most Americans do, in the moral superiority of liberty; an ideal that the left has always rejected. Their ideal has always been central control, with themselves in control.

  

The far left, such as many college professors, are creatures of emotionalism, envy and ideology that has rendered them into some of the poorest critical thinkers in the country.

  

Hey Mr. Sheer, I have news for you, if all we wanted in Iraq was their oil Saddam Hussein would have been MORE than willing to sell us all they could produce at a discount to get around the sanctions imposed from violating the terms of the cease fire agreement.  That agreement ended the first Iraq war that started when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Speaking of Kuwait, pseudo-intellectual leftists like Sheer and many leftist academics, media pundits, academics and some politicians said we liberated/invaded Kuwait to take their oil. Now that history has proved them wrong many of them take credit for supporting it.

 

The first round of Iraq oil contracts did not go to even one U.S. Company. The Kurdish North of Iraq has signed a contract with one American company just recently and our companies are currently bidding on a new round of oil contracts in competition with the rest of the world. So much for the “we invaded to make Bush’s oil buddies rich” conspiracy theory.

  

Here is more of the same from a leftist Philadelphia Enquirer columnist.

A not-so-glorious Fourth,  U.S. atrocities are unworthy of our heritage.

By Chris Satullo

Put the fireworks in storage. Cancel the parade. Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time.

This year, America doesn’t deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.

For we have sinned.

We have failed to pay attention. We’ve settled for lame excuses. We’ve spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.

The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.

The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.

The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.

Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/chris_satullo/20080701_Chris_Satullo__A_not-so-glorious_Fourth.html

 

It is amazing to see the lengths of tortured “reasoning” the left has to go through to trash America.

 

Americadoesn’t torture its prisoners. The few people who have abused prisoners were tried and convicted. The U.S. Marines punished and expelled David Motari for abusing a dog in Iraq. There is an ongoing debate as to whether water boarding is torture or not. Our own soldiers are water boarded in escape and evasion school as a matter of training. We also expose our own soldiers to tear gas as a matter of training. Three high value intelligence targets were approved for water boarding by the president.

 

The next one I find most amusing, the left claims that Bush is evil because enemy combatants weren’t charged or given habeas corpus. Can anyone name me one country in WWI or WWII that gave enemy combatants or PoW’s habeas corpus, access to civilian courts, or charged all such prisoners with a crime? You can’t because no one has. No one has done that and before today in past wars United States has never done such a thing. No European country has ever given prisoners of war habeas corpus or access to civilian courts. You don’t hold a prisoner in war time to try him in court to be tried by tyour local prosecutor, you hold him to keep him secure from rejoining the war and as a source of intelligence.

 

The third statement by Satollo involves a similar deception, shipping prisoners to “foreign lands” and the “spawning rebellion” language is designed duplicate imagery of when the British would take Americans overseas to be tried for pretended offenses. It was in reality nothing more than political kidnapping.

 

Satullo is comparing this with the Rendition Program. A policy that started under President Clinton where terrorists are sent to their HOME countries to face terrorism charges at home so they could be judged by their peers and their own governments. These prisoners aren’t sent to a foreign land to be tried, they are sent to their home to be tried; a difference that Satullo was all too willing to ignore so long as it served to fuel his hate America rhetoric.

 

Anti-America rhetoric has been common staple of the far left. Here are some other examples.

 

Senator John Kerry in testimony to the Senate in 1971:  

At times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

 

Not only did Kerry attribute such behavior to our people in uniform, he alleged that this behavior was U.S. Policy. Kerry’s and the far left’s Winter Soldier project that told stories of constant American atrocities was proven to be nothing but lies http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200401270825.asp .

 

More recently in late 2003 the Democratic Leadership and the far left could not retrain themselves any further and started the nonsense again and made every effort to ensure that America would lose the war:

And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs. – John Kerry Dec 4, 2005 http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_120405.pdf

 

Senator Dick Durbin compared our troops at Guantanamo Bay to Nazi’s and Soviets in spite of the fact that multiple inspections of the facility prove that prisoners there enjoy very high standards of treatment. Here is the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7FaSEQ-fKc

 

Senator Harry Reid gave the enemy a propaganda coup when he declared that “the war is lost” and that the USA “can’t win”. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18227928/

 

I could list these statements till I ran out of room on the page many times over. Countless statements by the far left that it was a war for Halliburton and that Bush lied us into war because he wanted to steal Iraq’s oil etc. Claims now laughed at by thinking Americans. Why? For Example: how could the Democratic Leadership claim President Bush  lied them into war when they were all saying the same thing from the Clinton’s Presidency until 2003. Examine the following video’s:

 

I am old enough to remember statements by the far left about the “real reason why we liberated Kuwait”. Of course now history judges that war as a success many of those same people now take credit for supporting it. Now that the latest Iraq war is nearly won – success has many fathers – more and more Democrats will adopt Bush’s position on the war and will start to claim credit for this success that they tried so hard to sabotage almost every step of the way since late 2003.

 

The far left believes that freedom, capitalism, and the Judaea-Christian ethic that the country is based on are all wrong. They believe that the United States itself in its foundations is flawed from its conception. Hence that is why the far left, such as many leftist American academics and radicalized students, wanted us to lose the war in Iraq (leaving before the job is done = lose. A concept even my teenager can understand). To them diminishing the role of the United States in the world is a good thing which is lie so many leftist academics sang the praises of the Soviet Union during the cold war and still practices apologetics for the likes of other murderous tyrants such as Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, Yasser Arafat, etc. When Bill O’Reilly talks about the hate America left on his program, this is exactly who he is talking about. 

 

Happy 4th! God Bless America!

Chuck Norton

 

New York Times Throws Obama Under the Bus Over Flip-Flopping and Adopting of Bush Positions – UPDATED!

 

The Vision always trying to keep the readers informed with the best news analysis, has been telling about the Obama flip-flops and other “typical politician” behavior for some time now. Today the New York Times editorial board, which is the tip of the spear of the far left, now tells its readers what we at The Vision have been telling you for a while and they are not happy about it in the least.

UPDATE SEE BELOW: NYT Op-Ed goes after Obama for flip-flops and Adopting Bush Positions

 

July 4, 2008

Editorial

New and Not Improved

 

Senator Barack Obamastirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obamaon the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election. His team explained that, saying he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was forgoing public money, he also was eschewing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt.

Even his own chief money collector, Penny Pritzker, suggests that the magic of $20 donations from the Web was less a matter of principle than of scheduling. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” she explained as she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.

The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11.

In January, when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. “We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend,” he declared.

Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever.

Of course, no national security surveillence of overseas communications requires a warrant. Every President since George Washington has monitored overseas communications in times of war. Mail to England was inspected before it left the country. President Wilson and FDR also monitored all communications that crossed the border. Of course the New York Times knows this, but like so much of the elite media now adays, the facts arent nearly important as the narrative they want to tell.

The NYT continues to “bash” Obama:

The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation.

On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obamaon two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/opinion/04fri1.html?_r=4&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Of course, as long as the government hands out money for services neutrally to denominations that can get the work done there is no establishment clause issue, the Supreme Court has made such a principle clear. The government as far back as the Second Congress gave money to church groups for a variety of purposes. It was always understood that as long as one denomination wasn’t overly favored there was no problem, but lets not confuse the NYT with the facts while they are “trashing”  their favorite politician with the facts on his reversals.

 

Washington insider Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post also catalogues Obama’s flip-flops and the adopting of President Bush’s positions on a host of issues.

A Man of Seasonal Principles

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 4, 2008; A17

 

You’ll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin. Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he’d worn one after Sept. 11 but then stopped because it “became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism.” So why is he back to sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered him the caucuses — hence, the Democratic nomination — Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he’s running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the gun-and-God-clinging working-class votes he could not win against Hillary Clinton, the pin is back. His country ’tis of thee.

In last week’s column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama’s brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecomimmunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.

Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, Obamaimmediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional.

Obama spokesman Bill Burtonexplains the inexplicable by calling the November — i.e., the primary season — statement “inartful.” Which suggests a first entry in the Obamaworld dictionary — “Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial.”

Obama’s seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What’s left?

Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.

Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obamawill have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama’scynicism. He will make the move much sooner. He will use his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and to formally abandon his primary season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.

The shift has already begun. Yesterday, he said that his “original position” on withdrawal has always been that “we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.” And that “when I go to Iraq . . . I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

He hasn’t even gone to Iraq and the flip is almost complete. All that’s left to say is that the 16-month time frame remains his goal but that he will, of course, take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.

Done.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070302451.html

 

Just remember that The Vision beat all these guys to the punch in the analysis of what was starting to happen with the Obama campaign.

Chuck Norton

UPDATE !! July 8th New York Times Bob Herbert:

Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

There has been a reluctance among blacks [read his leftist friends – isn’t it amazing that the left, not only mired in the idea of group think and group identity, claims to speak for all blacks – Chuck Norton] to openly criticize Senator Obama, the first black candidate with a real shot at the presidency. But behind the scenes, there is discontent among African-Americans, as well, over Mr. Obama’s move away from progressive issues, including his support of the Supreme Court’s decision affirming the constitutional right of individuals to bear arms. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Obama Reverses Himself on Terrorist Surveillance Program – Adopts Bush’s Position Again – UPDATE: Obama reverses and adopts Bush position on Iraq withdrawal

 

The list of reversals from the Obama camp is so fast and furious that I am having great difficulty keeping up with them. I wont keep you waiting. Now that Obama has all but secured his primary victory, his campaign has rapidly reversed itself on issue after issue, abandoning his stance in the primaries and adopting President Bush’s position. 

————————————————————————–

UPDATE: As the WSJ predicted it is now official (even though his words have changed to “slow” or “steady” withdrawal recently), Obama has reversed himself and now has adopted President Bush’s position on Iraq withdrawal. Politico has the details:

Obama rewrites Iraq plan By: Mike Allen July 3, 2008 04:47 PM EST Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) promised primary voters a swift withdrawal from Iraq, in clear language still on his website: “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” Not anymore. Heading into the holiday weekend, Obama and his advisers repudiated that pledge, saying he is reevaluating his plan and will incorporate advice from commanders on the ground when he visits Iraq later this month.  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11517.html

Evening News Analysts had this to say during Special Report with Brit Hume in reaction: Washington insider Fred Barnes had this to say, “Today we have learned that Barack Obama can hold two completely contradictory positions in his mind and hold allegiance to both of them.” Roll Call Editor Mort Kondrake said, “Obama is trying to have it both ways on free trade. He has these investment bankers he is trying to impress. He is juggling two different groups.”

—————————————————————–

Today’s(July 2nd) Wall Street Journal has the details:

We’re beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of “George Bush’s third term.” Maybe he’s worried that someone will notice that he’s the candidate who’s running for it.

Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn’t merely “running to the center.” He’s fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he’s embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush’s policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?

Take the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Last October, while running with the Democratic pack, the Illinois Senator vowed to “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies” that assisted in such eavesdropping after 9/11. As recently as February, still running as the liberal favorite against Hillary Clinton, he was one of 29 Democrats who voted against allowing a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reform of surveillance rules even to come to the floor.

Two weeks ago, however, the House passed a bill that is essentially the same as that Senate version, and Mr. Obama now says he supports it. Apparently legal immunity for the telcos is vital for U.S. national security, just as Mr. Bush has claimed. Apparently, too, the legislation isn’t an attempt by Dick Cheney to gut the Constitution. Perhaps it is dawning on Mr. Obama that, if he does become President, he’ll be responsible for preventing any new terrorist attack. So now he’s happy to throw the New York Times under the bus.

Next up for Mr. Obama’s political blessing will be Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy. Only weeks ago, the Democrat was calling for an immediate and rapid U.S. withdrawal. When General David Petraeus first testified about the surge in September 2007, Mr. Obama was dismissive and skeptical. But with the surge having worked wonders in Iraq, this week Mr. Obama went out of his way to defend General Petraeus against MoveOn.org’s attacks in 2007 that he was “General Betray Us.” Perhaps he had a late epiphany.   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121495450490321133.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

The article goes on to list many of the domestic policy issues that Obama has recently reversed himself on; changing his position from what it was in the primary race to now adopting President Bush’s position.  Leftist blogs such as the Huffington Post are saying the same thing.Be sure to read the previous posts on this blog outlining all of the flip-flops complete with youtube video to see the reverals for yourself.

 

Chuck Norton

Here are related posts on Obama’s reversals and such.

Pay for women.

Welfare reform, faith based charities, NAFTA.

Gun rights and the Heller court decision.

Campaign Finance and taking money from special interests and energy companies.

Energy policy and oil leases.

PROFILES IN HYPOCRISY: OBAMA SPEECHES SAY HE SUPPORTS EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN AND McCAIN DOESN’T – BUT OBAMA PAYS WOMEN IN HIS CAMPAIGN LESS! McCAIN PAYS WOMEN MORE!

UPDATE II: Pittsburgh Trib Review – “With McCain Women Make More” The Trib-Review points out that inspite of a new Obama ad saying that McCain opposes equal pay for women it is Obama is the one who doesn’t practice what he preaches:

Rogers points to Senate Records showing that women working in Sen. Obama’s senate office were paid an average of $9,000 less than men.

It appears that in the McCain senate office, the women on average are paid more than the men.

After you read this entire post, see the related post HERE. 

*****

We all heard the speeches by Senator Obama in New Albany, Indiana and Albuquerque, New Mexico,  where Obama lectured us, and the McCain campaign on equal pay for women. Well CNS News decided to take a look at Obama’s campaign finance reports and come to find out that Obama pays women on his campaign less then what the men get paid. It gets better. CNS News checked McCain’s records and found out that McCain pays the women more money than he does the men.

But first, here is the New Albany lecture:

Here are the details from CNS News:

Obama’s for Equal Pay, Yet Pays Female Staffers Less Than Males
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
June 30, 2008

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.

That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.

Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination.

“Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer,” Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. “It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family’s income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You’d think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay.”

On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to datacalculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729.The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.

The Obama campaign did not respond to written questions submitted on the matter Thursday by Cybercast News Service. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200806/POL20080630a.html

On this issue Obama talks the talk, but McCain walks the walk…and where is McCain’s campaign to inform people about this? Out to lunch as usual.

Chuck Norton

Obama Flips on Welfare Reform and on Faith Based Charities

UPDATE – SEE UPDATE SECTION BELOW: OBAMA CAMPAIGN FLIPS ON NAFTA RENEGOTIATION AGAIN!

The saga of reversals continues almost daily as of late… 

First it was we will withdrawal form Iraq immediately, then it was withdrawal conditional on the situation on the ground, recently it was the slow steady withdrawal ….

Iran isn’t a serious threat than it is.

Renegotiate NAFTA than lets not – then deny that I said lets not – then admit it after you got caught.

Negotiate without prior condition with Iran, than reversal, reversal again and reversal again.

The DC gun ban is constitutional, then it isn’t constitutional and went too far.

He says he doesn’t take money from big corporations and special interest – then he does in the millions.

He says he isn’t taking money from energy companies – too bad the FEC Reports prove otherwise.

He promises to abide by federal campaign spending limits – then reverses

Well now is the latest flip – this time on welfare reform via ABC News:

Obama Shifts on Welfare Reform

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace Report: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul “slashed the rolls by 80 percent.” Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction.

“I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare,” Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. “Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems.”

Obama’s transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, the Obama campaign has altered its stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s, sweeping gun ban. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/obama-shifts-on.html

 

Here is the video:

 

So now Obama takes credit for what he opposed; the Republican driven welfare reform of 1996 that President Clinton signed into law after opposing it. It seems there is truth to the old saying that “success has many fathers.”

 

And now for Obama’s reversal on faith based charities and missions.

 

I had missed this flip flop so I would like to thank our friends at Poligazette.com for giving me a heads up on this one. I find this flip flop to be especially disturbing for reasons that I will elaborate on shortly.

After Obama was elected to the US Senate Obama made the following speech at a church on the subject of faith’s role in the public sector (follow the link below for the video):

A gangbanger has a hole in that mans heart, a hole that government alone cannot fix.

The work of Marion Wright Edelman is exactly how we should prioritize our resources. My Bible tells me that if we train a child as to how he should go he will not stray from it.

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abe Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King…

The majority of great reformers in American History were not only motivated by faith but they repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their quote “personal morality” in to public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of our morality; much of it is grounded in the Judaea-Christian tradition.

Not every mention of God in the public is a breach of the wall of separation…[ for example] one can envision certain faith based programs targeting ex-offenders or drug abusers that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems. http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid353515028?bctid=416343938

 

The position that Obama articulates here on faith based missions is the same position that the vast majority of Americans have. Faith based charities are more efficient and effective than other charities and government programs and those facts are not in dispute.

 

Today Obama delivered this speech on the subject that contains a subtle, legalistic, yet stunning and highly disturbing reversal:

Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/07/youve_got_to_ha.html

 

Here is the rub…Obama says, “or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

Constitutional Law and Supreme Court decisions make it crystal clear that religious groups CAN discriminate on who they hire. Why?? It’s called freedom of expressive association. It is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. If you are a Christian group for example, you do not have to hire radical Muslims or atheists or anyone who is hostile to your mission. Religious groups will not back down on this, they will sue. Obama knows it, after all Obama used to TEACH constitutional law, and after seeing this quote right from his mouth, religious groups who do charity now know that this means that he is out to destroy them. 

The Supreme Court decision in BSA v. Dale gives a great summary of the right of freedom of expressive association- http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-699.ZO.html

 

Our friend Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief of Poligazette.com had this to say on the subject:

I agree with that Chuck; religious organizations are free, and should be free, to hire who they want. If they don’t want to hire people who aren’t of their religion, they’ve got every right to do so. After all, it’s a religious organization. What’s next? The Catholic Church will be sued for refusing to elect a Hindu as the new Pope?

 

And rest assured, sounds absurd, but leftist groups would certainly make such a case, and as I will outline below, already have. 

 

Our left of center friend Claudia at Poligazette.com gave us the expected leftist talking point on the issue… and she was very aware of the freedom of expressive association issue when she made her comment (I am not picking on Claudia; her comments typify and serve as a quintessential example of what the left feels about this issue.):

Chuck and Michael, the non-discriminatory hiring practice rule is perfectly reasonable in the context of what he’s proposing. Religious organizations would be forced to be non-discriminatory in hiring ONLY in those activities that are receiving public funds. That is, if the Catholic Church wants to exclude women from the priesthood, that’s there business. Now, if they want to exclude them from a charity group that receives federal funding, that’s another matter. The government shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing activities with discriminatory policies. If the religious group simply can’t stand the idea of hiring or giving charity to groups or individuals on the basis of religious prejudice, fine (well, not fine, but certainly legal), they simply can go about their charity business without taxpayer money.

 

The giving of tax funded charity should be nondiscriminatory, that’s a given and isn’t a problem. Christian groups give aid all sorts of people in disasters all over the world and even have done so for disasters in Muslim countries. The rub again is in the hiring.

The far left, as I will demonstrate further below, does not believe in freedom of expressive association. How many other freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights should be surrendered by anyone participating in the public sector? So bye-bye Salvation Army and prison ministries that have the BEST offender non-recidivism rate of any prison program. No more faith based drug-rehab programs whose success rate is not in dispute.

The left claims to believe in separation of church and state, but doesn’t that separation go both ways? Obviously not if the government can tell church groups who they can hire.

How can the left make the case that a government who can tell charities and church groups who they can HIRE is in any way a limited one? (I have never heard a leftist extol the virtue of limited government, which is a primary staple of Americanism)

Allow me to explain my zeal on this particular issue. It is no secret that I have become a known activist in the matter of campus free speech. Most universities take taxpayer money to some degree. Leftist students and faculty/administration have repeatedly tried to take control of conservative student groups and religious students groups by force of numbers, and attempted to elect themselves to the leadership of those student groups, solely for the purpose of keeping them from expressing their message or having any campus activities.

When the victimized student groups resists, the student government and or university administration would cry “discrimination” and yank their funding and ban them from campus. This is a pattern of behavior that I have seen over and over in the research for my upcoming book. I have cataloged dozens of such cases. This has forced such groups to sue, and they win in court over and over because the First Amendment is clear. Here is one such case here: http://www.centerforacademicfreedom.org/news/default.aspx?cid=299

The truth demonstrated by recent history again and again is that to force a group to take in members who are hostile to their mission is religious bigotry and/or an attempt to silence those with just such a mission. It is censorship and a violation of freedom of association.

Are not people of faith taxpayers as well? The position of the far left seems quite clear. People of faith should pay taxes up the wazoo, but groups of faith based citizens who pay taxes are not entitled to squat back unless they give up First Amendment freedoms and submit themselves to attack from the inside…. all in the name of “anti-discrimination”. So apparently the faithful should pay taxes, sit down and shut-up. The left claims the virtue of non-discrimination however there is not a clearer example of bigotry and discrimination than the examples outlined here.

Is it that the left cannot understand the difference between rational discrimination and irrational discrimination? Should day care centers be forced to hire former child sex offenders in the name of non-discrimination? Should women’s shelters be forced to hire radicalized Muslims who believe that “honor killings” are justified when a wife disobeys her husband or is seen going anywhere with a male non relative? Or is the discrimination card used as a tool to silence, harass, or destroy others whenever situational ethics makes it convenient and is the discrimination or bigotry card a tool used to let bystanders know that it is dangerous to side with the enemies of the far left?

Obama knows full well what the First Amendment means on this issue and that Supreme Court president backs it up clearly, Obama has now sided against the First amendment, but only when it comes to faith based groups. The Bill of Rights does not selectively end when any person or group enters the public sector.

 

Chuck Norton

UPDATE !!! OBAMA CAMPAIGN FLIPS ON NAFTA RENEGOTIATION AGAIN!

Our friends at Hotair were on the ball today and gave us a heads up on yet another of a long string of reversals after reversals from the Obama camp. If the McCain camp ever wakes up and starts paying attention they might realize that they now have enough ammo to destroy Obama’s credibility even worse than how Kerry sabatoged his own 2004 campaign with his flip flops.

“You can’t open up negotiations unilaterally,” senior Barack Obama adviser Linda Douglas told Joe Scarborough this morning about NAFTA.  Really?  You could have fooled Barack Obama himself.  She claims that Obama made it clear that we cannot act to end a trade agreement without working with our partners … but Obama in fact made the opposite point during a February presidential debate.

Here is the video from the Obama Campaign on NAFTA this morning:

Senior Obama advisor Linda Douglass rewrites history saying:

You can’t open up negotiations unilaterally. What he has said, he certainly wants to speak when he’s president of the United States, to Canada and Mexico to see about strengthening NAFTA. There are concerns about NAFTA. But he has made it very clear, you cannot as the United States go in and unilaterally open up trade agreement like that. It’s very important to Senator Obama to see that all of our trade agreements are, both, he supports free trade. He supports fair trade. And he supports trade that has strong enforcement mechanisms. Trade that has labor protections, environmental protections. Those are the kinds of things that he’s going to be pushing for when he is president.

But that is quite the opposite from what Obama said to Tim Russert on Feburary 26th:

Obama Campaign Attacks McCain’s Military Record in Trial Balloon.

 

Sunday on Face the Nation, the CBS Sunday morning political talk show, Obama campaign minion, former General Wesley Clark, launched attacked McCain’s military record as not being one that helps him qualify to be Commander in Chief.

UPDATED: SEE BELOW – Another Obama campaign minion goes after McCain’s service.

UPDATED II: SEE BELOW  – Now other Democrats are piling on McCain over service.

UPDATED III: SEE BELOW – Democrats criticizing McCain for making military service a part of his campaign – themselves ran for office using their military service.

Here is the Video:

 

Of course it is the unspoken message that goes with Clark’s comments that generated the controversy and generated a rebuke of Clark in the blogosphere and in the media.

Most of the media is missing the big picture on purpose. Allow me to explain.

No campaign sends one of its guns to the Sunday morning talk shows without well scripted answers to imagined questions and talking points. Being the July 4th week patriotism was bound to come up. What we saw yesterday was a trial balloon to see if it is possible to hit McCain where he is strongest. Odds are internal polls show that when it comes to “patriotism” Obama has a problem. Obama has stated that this impression has been worsened by his own gaffes. After the no flag pin gaffe, the comments about “guns and religion”, the no hand over the heart gaffe, wanting to withdrawal (lose) in Iraq before this near victory we have now is secured, sitting in that pew for 20 years in Rev. Wrights church while he damns America, then getting caught giving thousands in donations to Pfleger’s church who is renown for his hate America rhetoric. 

 

 

So Obama’s campaign tried to float trial balloon to see if they could try to even the score by hitting McCain where he is strongest. When it didn’t work Obama triangulated against Clarke (who is a part of his own campaign) and has an excuse to make that speech with his pronouncements about patriotism, but carefully not naming Clark specifically. The media went nuts covering the speech making Obama look good, playing that clip over and over, thus raising his poll numbers when it comes to patriotism.  What we saw was a conflict set up between two people, Clark and McCain, then along comes Barack Obama to “take the high road” and get the press to go ape over it. This political maneuver is called “triangulation” and it was mastered in the 1990’s by political genius Dick Morris when he was the senior political advisor to the Clintons.

Here is the Clip:

Senator Obama with Wesley Clark.

 

Of course, Wesley Clark told the world that John Kerry’s military service made him more qualified to be Commander in Chief during his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention:

John Kerry has heard the thump of enemy mortars. 

CLARK: He’s seen the flash of the tracers. He’s lived the values of service and sacrifice. In the Navy, as a prosecutor, as a senator, he proved his physical courage under fire. And he’s proved his moral courage too.

John Kerry fought a war, and I respect him for that. And he came home to fight a peace. And I respect him for that, too.

John Kerry’s combination of physical courage and moral values is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander in chief.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25727-2004Jul29.html

 

Now you can see why what Clark did was a trial balloon. McCain’s service is well known to anyone in politics; it is one of the most told stories in politics since the 1980’s. For those who may be unaware here are a few of the details:

McCain was awarded a Silver Star Medal for resisting “extreme mental and physical cruelties” inflicted upon him by his captors from late October to early December 1967, the early months of his captivity, according to the citation. The North Vietnamese, according to the Navy, ignored international agreements and tortured McCain “in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes.

“McCain was taken prisoner in October 1967 after he was shot down while on a mission over Hanoi. He wasn’t freed until March 1973, after the United States signed peace agreements with the North Vietnamese. His captors tortured him and held him in solitary confinement. Still, he declined an offer of early release until those who had been at the prison longer than him were let go.

That decision earned McCain a Navy Commendation Medal. Although McCain was “crippled from serious and ill-treated injuries,” he steadfastly refused offers of freedom from those holding him prisoner. “His selfless action served as an example to others and his forthright refusal, by giving emphasis to the insidious nature of such releases, may have prevented a possibly chaotic deterioration in prisoner discipline,” the citation says.He retired in April 1981 with the rank of captain. In that time he received 17 awards and decorations. Besides the Silver Star Medal, McCain also received the Legion of Merit with a combat “V” and one gold star, a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Bronze Star Medal with a combat “V” and two gold stars.

The citations refer to his “accurate ordnance delivery” and his “aggressive and skillful airmanship.” He earned his Bronze Star the day before he was shot down, for participating in a mission over an airfield in Phuc Yen, 11 miles north of Hanoi. The citation for his Distinguished Flying Cross sums up McCain’s misfortune the following day:”Although his aircraft was severely damaged, he continued his bomb delivery pass and released his bombs on the target. When the aircraft would not recover from the dive, Commander McCain was forced to eject over the target.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/08/politics/main4080395.shtml?source=related_story

 

Does anyone seriously believe that a retired general such as Wesley Clark genuinely believes that such service is not an asset to anyone running to be Commander in Chief? Didn’t Wesley Clark run for president on his own military record?

Obama has still not rebuked Clark by name.

For those who think that I am just shilling for McCain, I have made it clear that I will likely not be pulling the lever for him in November.  https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/the-case-against-john-mccain/

Chuck Norton

 

UPDATE: Obama campaign advisror Rand beers says that McCains military service “hobbles” him as a war time president (via ABC News):

While Barack Obama was urging supporters not to devalue the military service of rival John McCain, an informal Obama adviser ( Rand Beers) argued Monday that the former POW’s isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator’s capacity as a war-time leader.

The Beers remarks, which were made at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington, D.C., drew a swift rebuke from a McCain spokesman who portrayed them as an example of Obama saying one thing and his supporters doing another.

“Mr. Beers’ remarks are part of a pattern of Obama supporters attacking John McCain’s military service, and a reminder of why it’s what Sen. Obama, his supporters and his campaign actually do that matters most,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers tells ABC News. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/top-dem-mccain.html

 

Bob Dole released a statement today on the issue. It speaks for itself. http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2008/06/30/and-now-senator-bob-dole-jumps-in/

Here is another article about the far left’s attacks on McCain’s service, while not asscoiated with the Obama campaign itself it speaks volumes on the venom of the political extremes. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11429.html

 

UPDATE II – Democrat Senator Jim Webb piles on. Says that McCain should “Calm Down” when it comes to his service:

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) waded into the debate over John McCain’s military service Monday to say that the Republican should avoid using military service in politics. http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2008/07/01/webb-mccain-should-calm-down-on-using-military-service/

How interesting – Obama aids and supporters attack McCain’s service and its McCain who should calm down.  As Jim Webb started to run for Senate, did he say this about John Kerry who themed his night at the 2004 Democratic Convention based on his 3 months of service in Vietnam? Did Jim Webb ever say this about Wesley Clark who ran for president on his military record? If anyone wanted proof more that this is not a coordinated attack on McCain in one of the areas where he is strongest … I predict we will get more as the campaign continues.

Update III – Webb ran for Senate on his own military service. Here is the opening words of his first campaign ad:

RONALD REAGAN: One man who sat where you do now is another member of our administration, assistant secretary of defense James Webb, the most decorated member of his class. James’ gallantry as a Marine officer in Vietnam won him the Navy Cross and other decorations…

ANNOUNCER: Soldier, scholar, leader. Now Jim Webb is running for Senate.

 

 

WSJ: Obama, Pelosi, and Kerry Lying About Oil Leases

UPDATE: ANWR information below.

In what is a nice relief to those of us who study energy policy, a big news outfit has finally stood up to the lie from the Democratic leadership (and every leftist pundit on the talk shows) that we could double US oil production by just drilling more on existing leases.

 

The WSJ puts ink to paper on the obvious…just because you have a lease to explore and drill doesn’t mean that you will find oil that you can extract economically.

 

Today’s WSJ has the details:

 

“I want you to think about this,” Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last week. “The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They’re allowed to drill it, and yet they haven’t touched it – 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America’s total oil production.”

Wow, how come the oil companies didn’t think of that?

Perhaps because the notion is obviously false – at least to anyone who knows how oil and gas exploration actually works. Predictably, however, Mr. Obama’s claim is also the mantra of Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Nick Rahall and others writing Congressional energy policy. As a public service, here’s a remedial education.

Democrats are in a vise this summer, pinned on one side by voter anger over $4 gas and on the other by their ideological opposition to carbon-based energy – so, as always, the political first resort is to blame Big Oil. The allegation is that oil companies are “stockpiling” leases on federal lands to drive up gas prices. At least liberals are finally acknowledging the significance of supply and demand.

To deflect the GOP effort to relax the offshore-drilling ban – and thus boost supply while demand will remain strong – Democrats also say that most of the current leases are “nonproducing.” The idea comes from a “special report” prepared by the Democratic staff of the House Resources Committee, chaired by Mr. Rahall. “If we extrapolate from today’s production rates on federal lands and waters,” the authors write, the oil companies could “nearly double total U.S. oil production” (their emphasis).

In other words, these whiz kids assume that every acre of every lease holds the same amount of oil and gas. Yet the existence of a lease does not guarantee that the geology holds recoverable resources. Brian Kennedy of the Institute for Energy Research quips that, using the same extrapolation, the 9.4 billion acres of the currently nonproducing moon should yield 654 million barrels of oil per day.

Nonetheless, the House still went through with a gesture called the “use it or lose it” bill, which passed on Thursday 223-195. It would be pointless even if it had a chance of becoming law. Oil companies acquire leases in the expectation that some of them contain sufficient oil and gas to cover the total costs. Yet it takes years to move through federal permitting, exploration and development. The U.S. Minerals Management Service notes that only one of three wells results in a discovery of oil that can be recovered economically. In deeper water, it’s one of five. All this involves huge risks, capital investment – and time.

Yet companies are not allowed to explore where the biggest prospects for oil and gas may exist – especially on the Outer Continental Shelf. Seven of the top 20 U.S. oil fields are now located in analogous deepwater areas (greater than 1,000 feet) in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2006, Chevron discovered what is likely to be the largest American oil find since Prudhoe, drilled in 7,000 feet of water and more than 20,000 feet under the sea floor. The Wilcox formation may have an upper end of 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and should begin producing by 2014 – perhaps ushering in a new ultradeepwater frontier.

Likewise, in April, the U.S. Geological Survey revised its estimate for the Bakken Shale, underneath the badlands of North Dakota and Montana. The new assessment – as much as 4.3 billion barrels of oil – is a 25-fold increase over what the Survey believed in 1995. Such breakthroughs confirm that very large reserves exist, if only Congress would let business get at them. http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121478199392114387.html

 

The other rediculous talking point from the Democrats is “Drilling wont give an immediate reduction in fuel prices so increased domestic energy production should be opposed”. They give some similar rhetoric on expanding nuclear power.

So lets examine their logic:

Don’t go to college because it will be at least four years until you can get a degree to get some good money out of the investment.

Don’t irrigate lands in starving nations because it will be a season or two before you can get any food.

Don’t start the Manhattan Project in 1939 because it would not yield a nuclear weapon by 1940.

Dont invade France in on June 6th 1944 because it would not result in an immediate end to the war.

 

Of course such idiocy speaks for itself which is why the latest polls say that Americans want to drill by a 67% to 18% margin. What is even more ironic is that expending domestic energy production would very likely lower prices within weeks. Why?… I thought that you would never ask.

Part of the price we pay for oil comes from the futures commodities market. Energy traders buy future oil contracts for a set price depending on how the market for supply and demand looks. If we started working on expanding production of energy today two things would happen:

1. OPEC would lower the price of oil in an effort to make expanding oil production here less financially appealing.

2. The futures traders would know that future oil demands will be met by increased supplies and the high prices they are paying on futures contracts now would start to fall over time.

 

Of course both candidates oppose drilling at ANWR, which is park that is 1/3 the size of Great Britain and the area that has the oil is a moonscape like tundra obove the arctic circle where the oil producing facilities would be about the size of an airport.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on ANWR Drilling:

California Representative Nunes talks about his visit to ANWR – you can see what the place looks like in this video:

For a more scholarly approach to everything ANWR please visit the following link:

http://www.anwr.org/

 

Chuck Norton

HOTAIR.COM: Obama Still Doesn’t Get Youtube Does He?

I have lost count of how many times Senator Obama has flip-flopped and flipped again on various issues.

First it was we will withdrawal form Iraq immediately, then it was withdrawal conditional on the situation on the ground, recently it was the slow steady withdrawal ….

Iran isnt a serious threat than it is.

Renegotiate NAFTA than lets not – then deny that I said lets not – then admit it after you got caught.

Negotiate without prior condition with Iran, than reversal, reversal again and reversal again.

He says he doesn’t take money from big corporations and special interest – then he does in the millions.

He says he isn’t taking money from energy companies – too bad the FEC Reports prove otherwise.

He promises to abide by federal campaign spending limits – then reverses

the list goes on and on… well here is the lastest via hotair.com:

 

In days gone by, politicians could issue mutually-contradictory messages with near impunity as the mainstream media rarely would double-check the historical record.  Now, with video on line and millions of fact-checkers scrutinizing every statement, any obviously false statement will get exposed in short order.  Yesterday’s assertion by Barack Obama that he never said the DC gun ban overturned by the Supreme Court was constitutional or that he supported it became the latest in his flip-flops to be exposed by a simple review of the videotape record:

 

 

Obama is right to the extent that his statement didn’t come in November 2007 but more recently in February 2008, as he tried to sweep the primaries by running to Hillary Clinton’s left. He nods when asked about the constitutionality of the DC gun ban, and expresses his support for it by saying “Right” when the interviewer asks about it. Obama then goes into an extended explanation of how he sees the DC ban as part of a Constitutional effort at gun control.

Now the Constitutional law scholar wants us to believe that he always thought the DC ban was unconstitutional, and that his earlier comments were “inartful”. This video shows very clearly that the only artifice involved is in his new position. Obama has done a complete 180 on gun bans, attempting to paint himself as a moderate when the paltry record of Obama’s political stands shows just the opposite. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/27/obama-still-doesnt-get-youtube-does-he/

 

Kinda says all that needs to be said doesnt it.

The Washington Post called him on it while some other news outlets gave Obama a pass:

Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.

Oh, I’m sorry. He didn’t change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.

That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.

Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn’t it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn’t change your mind?

Regardless of what you think of the merits of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the capital’s handgun law, it seems to me we’re entitled to a clear position by the presumed Democratic nominee. And I’m a bit confused about how the confusion came about.

Here’s how the Illinois senator handled the issue with the Chicago Tribune just last November:

“The campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he ‘ . . . believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.’ ”

Kind of a flat statement.

And here’s what ABCreported yesterday: ” ‘That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position,’ Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.”

Inartful indeed.

But even though the earlier Obama quote and the “inartful” comment have been bouncing around the Net for 24 hours, I’m not seeing any reference to them in the morning papers. Most do what the New York Timesdid: “Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would ‘provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.’ ”

Supporting the individual-rights view? Not in November.

Even the Tribune–the very paper that the Obama camp told he supported the gun ban–makes no reference to the November interview.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062701118_pf.html

 

 

 

FACTCHECK.ORG: Obama is Lying About McCain’s Money and His Own

 

The amount of special interest money pouring into the Obama campaign is why he has flip-flopped and opted out of the public finance system. Obama is the first presidential candidate to opt out of this system, designed to lessen the influence of special interests, since 1972.

 

Obama said his reason for opting out of the system was this:

Obama: We face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.

 

 

Factcheck.org says:

Obama announced he would become the first presidential candidate since 1972 to rely totally on private donations for his general election campaign, opting out of the system of public financing and spending limits that was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

One reason, he said, is that “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.”

We find that to be a large exaggeration and a lame excuse. In fact, donations from PACs and lobbyists make up less than 1.7 percent of McCain’s total receipts, and they account for only about 1.1 percent of the RNC’s receipts.

To say that either the McCain campaign or the RNC are “fueled” by money from lobbyists and PACs is an overstatement, to say the least. Such funds make up less than 1.7 percent of McCain’s presidential campaign receipts and 1.1 percent of the RNC’s income.

McCain – As of the end of April, the McCain campaign had reported receiving $655,576 from lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That is less than seven-tenths of 1 percent of his total receipts of $96,654,783. His campaign also took in $960,990 from PACs, amounting to just under 1 percent of total receipts. The two sources combined make up less than 1.7 percent of his total.

RNC – The Republican National Committee has raised $143,298,225, of which only $135,000 has been come from lobbyists, according to the CRP. That’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent. It also took in about 1 percent of its receipts from PACs, CRP said. Taken together, that’s about 1.1 percent from PACs and lobbyists.

The Obama campaign already has raised $265 million through the end of April, more than two-and-a-half times as much as McCain has taken in.

Obama makes a point of refusing money from those who are currently registered to lobby at the federal level. The CRP has a broader definition, counting money from anyone working at a lobbying firm, registered or not, state or federal, and their families as well. By CRP’s definition Obama himself has taken in $161,927 from lobbyists.

Also, for what it’s worth, the Democratic National Committee has historically been far more reliant on PAC and lobbyist money than the RNC. In 2004, PACs provided about 10 percent of the DNC’s total fundraising and only about 1 percent of the RNC’s total, according to the CRP.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_lame_claim_about_mccains_money.html

 

 

According to CRP’s definition of special interest money here is the list of the top 20 donors to the Obama campaign.

 

Goldman Sachs	$571,330
University of California	$437,236
UBS AG	$364,806
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$362,207
Citigroup Inc	$358,054
National Amusements Inc	$320,750
Lehman Brothers	$318,647
Google Inc	$309,514
Harvard University	$309,025
Sidley Austin LLP	$294,245
Skadden, Arps et al	$270,013
Time Warner	$262,677
Morgan Stanley	$259,876
Jones Day	$250,725
Exelon Corp	$236,211
University of Chicago	$218,857
Wilmerhale LLP	$218,680
Latham & Watkins	$218,615
Microsoft Corp	$209,242
Stanford University	$195,262

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

 

 

Obama also claims that he doesn’t take money from energy companies – but once again Factcheck.org says otherwise:

 

Obama says he doesn’t take money from oil companies. We say that’s a little too slick

In a new ad, Obama says, “I don’t take money from oil companies.”

Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.

We find the statement misleading:

• Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.
• Two of Obama’s bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.

 

Exxon Mobile               $30,850

Hess                             $5,200

Shell                             $9,900

Conoco Philips             $4,300

Chevron                       $9, 500

BP                                 $6,396

TOTAL – $66,146

 http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_oil_spill.html

 

Chuck Norton

Obama’s Campaign Theme of “Judgment” Leaves His Campaign on the Brink – UPDATED

UPDATED – See Below

Barack Obama has made “judgment” the primary theme of his campaign. He claims to have had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. He claims better judgment in his associations such as not taking money from some of the lobbyists who have given money to Senator Clinton’s campaign. Obama claims that judgment trumps experience.

Some of the minor themes of his campaign have been “hope” and the ability to transcend race and bring the country closer to a post-racial America.

It is very easy to be caught up in Obama’s striking oratory and while it is no secret that this writer is no supporter of Obama’s far left politics, I was hoping that Obama was at least a sincere man. This hope started to unravel when he started borrowing text and themes from speeches by others such as President Reagan and Governor Patrick of Massachusetts without giving the proper credit.

It has now been revealed that Obama has been associating himself with radical preachers and organizations that preach hate, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories. These are not casual associations. They are relationships that have been ongoing for 20 years.

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, the Chicago preacher has been most notable in the news, but he is far from the only purveyor of hate Obama has had long associations with. I will list several others but let us start with Rev Wright.

Wright on September 16th 2001 did not give the kind of memorial service after 9/11 that you would expect to help the victims of the attack and their families. Wright launched in a tirade blaming America for the attacks. Wright has attacked Colin Powell, Tiger Woods and even refers to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as Condoskeezza Rice. For those of you who are not aware of the word SKEEZ it is a grotesque sexual reference that the Urban Dictionary defines as “a word formed by mixing skank and sleeze” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skeeze&defid=1147958).

Wright refers to America as the US of KKK A. Wright claims that the AIDS virus was invented by whites to kill blacks. Are unprotected sodomy and the sharing of drug needles only something that black people have done? Are the victims of tainted blood transfusions only black people – of course not – which is why such conspiracy theories are ridiculous on their face.

Other nuggets dropped by Rev. Wright include:

Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.

Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.

America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . .  We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Gaddafi.

Rev. Wright’s sermons and videos have been for sale on his web site. There is not enough room in this publication to outline the hate and venom that this man has espoused. Wright has lavished praise on the black nationalist and anti-Semite Minister Louis Farrakhan and accompanied Farrakhan to visit Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The Obama campaign at first claimed ignorance about Wright and then the campaign started spreading the word to the Washington press corps that Obama was not there when Wright made such statements. Of course since Obama had attended the church for 20 years and got married there such claims stretched credibility. Obama delivered a speech on this matter and says that he disagrees with and disavows Wright’s political views and admitted that he did Wright’s statements. Obama defended Wright’s statements in that he is a product of the black anger of his generation.

While some lingering anger from injustices of the past is understandable, what is not acceptable is the constant America bashing, the conspiracy theories, the hate against whites, Israel, Condi Rice and others…and all in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ at the pulpit. What is not acceptable is the repeated association with nutty hate merchants like Farrakhan.

Obama’s condemnation of Wright’s statements and actions stretches credibility. When you or I go to a church and you see something hateful or obviously nutty repeated from the pulpit, do you continue to attend that church? Obama condemned Don Imus for making one insensitive joke about a ladies basketball team and said that Imus should be fired, yet Obama had thousands of church choices in the Chicago area but it wasn’t just any church that attracted Obama – it was THIS church. 

If this was Obama’s only lack of judgment in his associations it could be forgiven. Unfortunately there are many others. William Ayres is a professor in Chicago; he is famous as a former “weatherman” terrorist who took credit for planting bombs in the name of radical leftism.  Ayres was quoted in the September 11, 2001 New York Times as saying “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.” Obama and Ayres have been friends since at least 1995. They served on the Woods Fund together and Obama attended Ayres home for “meet the candidate” events.

While Obama served as a paid board member of the Woods Fund, the fund gave $75,000 to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN); a group that refers to the establishment of the nation of Israel as a catastrophe. The co-founder of AAAN is Rashid Khalidi, who according to The Jewish Press, a weekly news magazine, Khalidi served as a director of the PLO press agency WAFA while the PLO was still listed as a terror group by the State Department. Khalidi held a fund raiser for Obama for his failed 2000 bid for Congress.

The Obama campaign started a religion site affiliated with his campaign at faith.barackobama.com. The site contained testimonials from not only the aforementioned Rev. Wright, but also Rev. J. Alfred Smith of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland California and Rev. Michael Pfleger from Chicago. Rev. Smith has had a long association with the sometimes violent Black Panther Party. Smith’s own web site shows him receiving awards from the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. The co-founder of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, attended services at Smith’s church and Rev. Smith lead the funeral ceremony for Seale’s mother on February 1st.

At Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton’s funeral eulogy in 1989 Rev. Smith said, “We celebrate his homecoming not as a thug, not as a criminal, but as a member of the Allen Temple family. The Black Panther headquarters were down the street. Do you think it’s closed? It’s not closed. Trust me, it will rise again.”

Rev. Pfleger has invited Minister Farrakhan to speak at his own church, has a long history of radical leftist activism, threatened the owner of a legal gun store saying, “We’re going to find you and snuff you out.” Saying further, “If it takes whatever it takes.”

The Chicago Tribune reported, “One of those long-time supporters was Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically active leader of St. Sabina Church. He gave Obama’s campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.”

The Bottom Line

This is not simple guilt by association like someone’s “crazy uncle” who robbed a bank and therefore you might be a bank robber too. Everyone knows that you can’t chose who your relatives are. Obama’s campaign is about judgment and who a president associates with. The New York Times article insinuating that John McCain had an affair with a female lobbyist had importance because it speaks to the judgment of a presidential candidate and who he associates himself with.

If any one of Obama’s troublesome choices of association stood alone, it could be forgiven as a lapse in judgment or unfortunate circumstance; however it is clear that there is a pattern of repeated associations with radicals, haters, nutty conspiracy theorists and those who espoused violence.  Those associations span years and render Obama’s recent distancing from such views less than credible.

If Obama does not share the views of these people and did not speak up to them to voice his displeasure or disagreement over the years and while he was a sitting Senator, all the while using them for “street cred” and campaign labor and campaign fund raisers; the word insincere hardly begins to describe it.

Chuck Norton

UPDATE – The list of 60’s communists in the Obama Campaign grows longer and some of them have a history of violence. The City Journal has the details (continue reading the article for the rest of the list):

Michael Klonsky, whose disgust for mainstream politics led him to launch a new, Maoist Communist Party in the 1970s, today supports Barack Obama so enthusiastically that until recently he was blogging on the Illinois senator’s campaign website. And boycotting this November’s election, Klonsky maintains, would be a “tragic mistake.” He notes that Barack Obama isn’t Hubert Humphrey, 2008 isn’t 1968, and the strong movement he served back then is “relatively weak” now. “My own support for Obama is not a reflection of a radically changed attitude toward the Democratic Party,” Klonsky recently explained to me. “Rather, it’s a recognition that the Obama campaign has become a rallying point for young activists and offers hope for rebuilding the civil rights and antiwar coalitions that have potential to become a real critical force in society.”

Michael Klonsky is hardly the only ’68 radical supporting Obama this year. In 1968, when Mark Rudd organized the student strike that shut down Columbia University, the SDS chapter that he chaired ridiculed Kennedy and McCarthy as “McKennedy,” claimed that “neither peace candidate offers an alternative to the war policies of Lyndon Johnson,” and suggested “sabotage” as an alternative to voting. Rudd succeeded Klonsky as national SDS leader, presiding over the organization’s metamorphosis into Weatherman and performing “a liaison function” for the plot to bomb a Fort Dix soldiers’ dance that instead killed three Weathermen, including two of Rudd’s Columbia SDS colleagues. http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0629df.html

Obama’s Yes We Can Campaign Sounds Good But……

YES WE CAN! – It is the message that has been all over the news as the theme of Senator Obama’s campaign. However, what the antique media has decided that you didn’t need to know is that Obama is borrowing his message and theme from a man greater than he; with the very important twist that Obama leaves out a crucial context of that message. Our friends at Newsbusters.org have edited a little reminder of just who the original truly is and I present it to you in The Vision. – Chuck Norton

We as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around and this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people.

From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

It’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work–work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes; they just don’t know where to look.

Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic “yes.”

I believe we, the Americans of today, are ready to act worthy of ourselves, ready to do what must be done to ensure happiness and liberty for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children. And as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.

With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans. – Ronald Reagan

Video at http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?RsrcID=1435

Chuck Norton

Watershed Moment: Hillary Clinton’s Existential Dilemma

Ah yes. Barely had the ink dried on my last article in these hallowed pages when at last one Hillary Clinton did what we all had expected her to do: she acted like the Hillary that she is.     

Hillary Clinton finally put the race issue into the presidential campaign and succeeded in dividing the Democratic Party along racial fault lines. Thanks, Hillary, right on queue. Worse yet, she did it even better than we expected; she has now succeeded in alienating even liberals from her own party, the very ones mind you, that were planning to endorse her.     

That’s astounding, folks, and staggering in its implications. Imagine that! A mere taste of racial politics directed against another liberal and they scramble like cockroaches when the light comes on. Nay who would have guessed it; who among us would have dared to think it possible: liberals who get squeamish when they are on the receiving end of racial bigotry, the same treatment Republicans have gotten for decades.     

Hell’s bells folks, Hillary’s politics remind me of an old spoof named, The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati: Frankenstein gives me the shakes. And Count Dracula’s driving me batty. But they’re not on a par with the worst one by far: the cockroach that ate Cincinnati.  Oh he must have needed a seltzer It’s amazing how much he got down. For lunch he’d just chew up a suburb or two. And for dinner he ate the whole town (burp!). And so today we mark another milestone in American political history, the melding of racial politics and scorched earth strategy. Congratulations Hillary, you have successfully coined a new political term for the American lexicon: the Liberal White Witch.    

Oh but Hillary isn’t finished just yet with racial politics, not even close. She is now openly courting Hispanics, further alienating the black vote, indeed to the exclusion of it to overcome the very disparity she herself has created. The very vote that made her husband the “First Black President,” and helped give her the chance to become the Democratic nominee is now being shunned for another constituency to make up the difference. But now the stage is being set for Hillary’s final contribution to American political history, the destruction of the very democratic coalition that brought her to power.    

Hillary Clinton’s own scorched earth strategy has now come to fruition as two choices; and both of are them bad. On the one hand, if she picks Barack Obama as her Vice Presidential running mate, she cannot win in November, and she knows all too well why. If she chooses Obama, she only keeps the black votes she needs to win in the blue states. She doesn’t get any additional votes to bring her across the finish line, either in the Electoral College, or the popular vote.     

In order to win, the Democratic nominee must win additional states from the Republicans in order to get elected; and Obama is from Illinois,  already a blue state in the Electoral College. In the end, then, she really gains nothing; she only keeps what she already has. But she cannot win with the current Democratic coalition intact; she must expand her party’s coalition.       

She is now forced to do so because of who she is running against: John McCain. McCain brings in new voters to the Republican camp, and if Hillary does not follow suit, and in a very big way, she will find her Democratic head served on the Republican silver platter on the night of November 4, 2008.    

But now the math gets really interesting. If Hillary Clinton chooses to expand her Electoral College vote by picking someone else as her Vice President, she loses the black vote. African Americans are now invested in Barack Obama; he is their candidate, and they will not be denied their place at the table having come this far. He represents something they have yet to see, a ceiling they know must be broken for their voices to be heard. And if Hillary decides to dash those hopes once again, she will find her head on that same Republican silver platter in November.    

And so the watershed moment in American political history is now upon us. If Hillary Clinton chooses Barack Obama as her running mate, she knows she cannot win the presidency. The Obama candidacy for Vice President will not allow her to win in the Electoral College; she must expand her democratic base or she will lose the election to John McCain. If she chooses to win the election, the democrats will lose the black vote for a generation or more, and probably permanently. Never again will the black vote be as solidly Democratic as it has been for the past two generations. 

Gerry Rough 

Lazarus Come Forth: The Rise of John McCain

John McCain, the man who would dare question Republican Orthodoxy, will soon take the mantle as the Republican nominee for the presidency, despite being left for dead only a few short months ago. But Mac is back with a vengeance, and it will no doubt come as a complete surprise to those who have derided him as the political equivalent of a heretic; he has challenged the odds, toughened his message, and some say he has even defied gravity.     

For an orthodox republican, he has shown a flagrant willingness to challenge the accepted party line when it seems to suit him. Worse yet, he has even shown that he believes what he says and votes on principle of all things. Shocking! This is but a foretaste of things political to come, the trade winds that will guide the McCain juggernaut to victory in November.    

The bottom line is that the McCain juggernaut is now unstoppable, whether it currently looks that way or not from the media who refuse to tell the story from an insider’s cultural perspective. Despite the talking heads on television who have told us that McCain’s victory is the result of his reliance on the independent vote to carry him to victory, the real story that is not being told is that both conservatives and evangelicals who vote in republican primaries are also quite practical: they really like winning. And that more than anything is driving Republicans to rally behind McCain, a nominee who can carry them to victory. Further, even though the current topic of conversation is about the fracturing Republican Party, it is assumed in conservative circles that this is only a temporary detour on the path to November.     

As Republicans, we assume it will all work out in the end. For Democrats, by contrast, the fractures are much deeper. There is the sense of real division. When Democrats come together, they don’t assume anything; they just make it happen anyway. This is one of the many differences between Republicans and Democrats as separate subcultures.    

But John McCain’s victory in November will take place for two basic reasons. The first of these is the issue of electability, the one reason for his eventual election that dwarfs all other considerations. The fact is, McCain can appeal to both Liberal and Conservative, Democrat and Republican, Independent, Libertarian, and even Hispanic. Even the networks have begun to report on this story. It is more than just an oddity that he is a genuine war hero — as opposed to the fraudulent John Kerry kind we saw in 2004. It is certainly notable that he was right in his criticism of the war in Iraq, even when it was political suicide to do so.     

And it is more than just another day at the political office that it was John McCain who teamed up with Senator Ted Kennedy to push through comprehensive immigration legislation, despite the blatantly false accusation that it was an “amnesty” bill, which it was obviously not but was demagogued to death by conservative talk radio. It is still more than just coincidence that he is for lower taxes, which he voted against only for the reason that there were no corresponding spending reductions — an obviously Republican position despite his detractors who deride him for wanting to — gasp! — cut spending.     

Add to this that he is pro-life and pro environment, meaning that he believes global warming is real, wants nuclear power plants and plans to invest in energy independence technologies, and you have a presidential candidate who is right in line with a clear majority of Americans on these and other important issues. Put another way, McCain doesn’t need the polls to inform his political judgments; he already takes the most popular positions on all of the major issues that challenge this generation, and that makes him virtually unbeatable, at least in regard to substance. The novelty of electing our nation’s first woman or African-American is quite another matter.    

The other major issue that will lead McCain to victory is the issue of expandability.  John McCain can do something that no other Republican candidate can do; he can expand the party with liberals, moderates, Hispanics, and independents. He has a wider appeal than any other candidate, save that of Barack Obama. McCain has seen correctly that the party must expand in order to survive, not just appeal to the base. And this sets him dramatically apart from Hillary Clinton, who has successfully alienated her own core constituency to the point of being completely unelectable. The McCain strategy of expansion is the future of American politics, not the politics of exclusion, and it is McCain alone who can carry that torch better than any other candidate.

Gerry Rough 

The Case Against John McCain

“I served 12 years with John McCain and almost at every turn on domestic policy John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side…on many votes we had Democrats but we couldn’t get John McCain. On domestic policy he is very dangerous for Republicans.” – Senator Rick Santorum.    

John McCain has put out television ads that say that he is “the true conservative” in the Republican primary. The facts make it clear that not only is John McCain not conservative, he has lead the charge for bills that most of the Republican base has rigorously opposed and he has ran the most dishonest Republican primary campaign in my lifetime.    

What are the bills that McCain has championed in recent years that most any Republican would actively oppose? The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law was supposed to take the big money out of politics. In fact what it did was take the ability of constituent groups from running television ads within 60 days of an election. The last time I checked the First Amendment is designed to protect political speech above all isn’t it? The only groups that may run ads are what are called section 527 groups, which have allowed multi-billionaires like George Soros to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on groups that buy political ads. The net result is more money in politics than ever before and an assault on the freedom of speech of groups like Wisconsin Right to Life where McCain had filed an amicus brief to deny the group freedom of political speech. Yet John McCain says he is pro-life. The James Madison Center said that the law is “The most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo. http://jamesmadisoncenter.org/WI/McCainACBrief.pdf

McCain co-wrote the McCain-Kenney amnesty bill for illegal aliens that the overwhelming amount of Republican and Democrat voters opposed and was defeated after numerous attempts to sneak it through. The Heritage Foundation said it was “the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.” http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/upload/wm_1521.pdf

McCain co-wrote the McCain-Kennedy-Edwards bill that would have created a new lawsuit industry against the medical profession. Reason Magazine described the bill as “the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.” http://www.reason.com/news/show/32758.html

The list is simply too long to include in this publication. McCain stopped the Republicans from changing Senate rules to stop the illegal filibuster of judicial nominees. McCain, while on the campaign. says that he would appoint justices like Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court, but famed Washington reporter Bob Novak and the Wall Street Journal have reported that McCain has said that he would not support judges like Alito “who wore his conservatism on his sleeve”.    

McCain voted against oil drilling at ANWR and other places while China and Mexico are building oil rigs off our shores. He voted against the popular 2001 and 2003 tax cut bills that passed and became law… and now he has sent out advertisements criticizing Mitt Romney for not endorsing the tax cuts that McCain voted against shhh don’t tell the voters. MSCBC points out that McCain said he would not engage in negative campaigning and asks “and this is the straight talk express?” 

McCain wants to close our military facility in Cuba and bring enemy combatants into the United States and give them access to civilian courts. Can anyone please name me a country that allowed enemy combatants access to civilian courts and lawyers in World War II? Enemy Combatants are prisoners of war that we hold for security and intelligence reasons – we don’t hold them there because they robbed a gas station and await prosecution.    

The final straw that motivated me to write this column is when McCain was asked about having Dr. Juan Hernandez as the head of his Hispanic Outreach Campaign. Hernandez is THE open borders advocate who is famous for saying that illegal aliens  need (as in have a right to) fraudulent social security numbers because America is at fault because we won’t issue a legal social security number to illegal aliens. McCain said, “I don’t know what his previous positions are…but he supports mine I have nothing to do with his…. And I will check into this information you have given me.” 

This was a bold faced lie. Juan Hernandez is a senior fellow at McCain’s think tank, the Reform Institute http://www.reforminstitute.org/about/AboutHernandez.aspx. Their history together is easily documented by anyone with access to a search engine. The Reform Institute even sponsored an art contest that was designed to compare a border fence to the Berlin Wall. Here is the web site for the contest. http://www.brickfish.com/politics/BorderFence?tab= .   

Ed Morrissey also points out that the donor list for the Reform Institute is made up of the cream of the far left and open borders advocacy. This list includes the Tides Foundation, the Proteus Fund, the Open Society Institute (George Soros), and the David Geffen Foundation. “I promise you I will secure our borders” John McCain is heard to say in the video linked above. There is no reason to believe him.     Ann Coulter has stated very publicly that is McCain is the Republican nominee she will campaign for Hillary Clinton because “either way it’s going to be a Democrat so I will just be going for the more conservative Democrat if I go for Hillary over John McCain.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erMa0F_DCJE&eurl    

Joe Scarborough made a passionate monologue on MSNBC stating about McCain, “A conservative is not a man who…” and than gave a devastating summary of John McCain’s record. This video says it better than I ever could so have a look –  

Chuck  Norton