The Increasingly Erratic, Super-Gaffetastic Joe Biden

By Michelle Malkin

October 22, 2008

If the prospect of Joe Biden sitting a heartbeat away from the presidency doesn't give you palpitations, you are not paying attention.

Hysterical Sarah Palin-bashers on the unhinged left and elitist right have dominated campaign press coverage and pop culture. They've ridiculed her family, her appearance and her speech patterns. They've derided her character, her parenting skills, her readiness and her intellect.

Meanwhile, the increasingly erratic, super-gaffetastic Joe Biden gets a pass. What does the guy have to do to earn the relentless scrutiny and merciless mockery he deserves? Answer: wear high heels, shoot caribou and change the "D" next to his name to an "R."

Team Obama is hammering John McCain as "erratic" in the closing days of the election campaign. There are now 615,000 Google hits and counting using the search terms "erratic McCain." Last week, The New York Times devoted an entire article to the Obama-Biden line of attack, titled "In Friendly Region, Biden Cites McCain as Erratic."

Who's erratic? Throughout the primary and general election cycles, Biden has lurched from attacking Obama as not ready for prime time ("The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." -- September 2007) to ready to lead ("Barack Obama is ready. This is his time." -- August 2008) and back again.

This week, Biden warned America that an Obama victory would invite a dangerous global showdown between tyrants and the naif Obama. "Mark my words," Biden said Sunday at a Democratic fundraiser. "It will not be six months [after the inauguration] before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy." In a follow-up appearance, he told supporters to brace for the worst and "gird your loins."

Out of Biden's mouth, this is called candor. Out of anyone else's mouth, it would be "fear-mongering," "negative campaigning" and a "distraction."

Tooting his own horn while vandalizing his running mate's, Biden bragged: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know." Yeah. Colleagues like that guy who had a mere 143 days of Senate experience before launching his presidential bid and choosing you to shore up his meager credibility, Joe.

In fact, Biden has spent the entire campaign questioning his running mate's judgment. Last month, he mused out loud: "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. ... She is easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me." Biden assailed the campaign's position on clean coal, openly criticized the campaign's idiotic ad attacking McCain for not using e-mail and warned the pro-gun control Obama that "if he tries to fool with my Beretta, he's got a problem."

Dan Quayle will have "POTATOE" etched on his gravestone. But how many times have late-night comedians and cable shows replayed the video of senior statesman and six-term Sen. Biden's own spelling mishap last week while attacking McCain's economic plan?

"Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the No. 1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S."

No, Joe. "D'-O-H" is a three-letter word.

Nightly news shows still haven't tired of replaying Palin's infamous interview with Katie Couric. But how many times have they replayed Biden's botched interview with Couric last month -- in which he cluelessly claimed: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Er, here's what really happened: Roosevelt wasn't president when the market crashed in 1929. As for appearing on TV, it was still in its infant stages and wasn't available to the general public until at least 10 years later.

During the lone VP debate earlier this month, the increasingly erratic, super-gaffetastic Biden demonstrated more historical ignorance that Palin would never be allowed to get away with: "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history," he said. "He has the idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the executive -- he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that."

Article 1 of the Constitution defines the role of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. You would think someone who has served 36 years in government -- the same someone who is quick to remind others of his high IQ and longtime Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship -- would know better.

Biden's erratic and gaffetastic behavior is the least of America's worries. He's worse than a blunderbuss. He's an incurable narcissist with chronic diarrhea of the mouth. He's a phony and a pretender who fashions himself a foreign policy expert, constitutional scholar and worldly wise man. He's a man who can't control his impulses.

And he could be a heartbeat away.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled Palin-says-"You Betcha" skit.

Radical Loon When Obama Was Only 47

by Ann Coulter (more by this author)

Posted 10/22/2008 ET

Updated 10/22/2008 ET

The media are acting as if they completely and fully vetted Obama during the Democratic primaries and that's why they are entitled to send teams of researchers into Alaska to analyze Sarah Palin's every expense report.

In fact, the mainstream media did no vetting. They seem to have all agreed, "OK, none of us will get into this business with Jeremiah Wright, 'Tony' Rezko, Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers and everyone's impression of an angry Michelle Obama on 'The Jerry Springer Show.'"

During one of the Democratic primary debates, Hillary Clinton was hissed for mentioning Syrian national Rezko, and during another, ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos nearly lost his career for asking Obama one question about William Ayers.

In the past week, TV anchors have taken to claiming that Obama "refuted" John McCain's statement that Obama launched his political career at the home of former Weather Underground leader Ayers.

No, Obama "denied" it; he didn't "refute" it. If "denying" something is the same as "refuting" it, then maybe the establishment media can quit harping on Palin's supposed lack of qualifications to be president, since she too "refuted" that by denying it.

Back before the media realized it needed to lie about Obama launching his political career at Ayers' house, the Los Angeles Times provided an eyewitness account from a liberal who attended the event.

"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him -- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."

The Times has now stripped this item from its Web page, but the great blogger Patterico has preserved it for posterity on his Web page.

Obama's glib remark that "Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago; 40 years ago when I was 8 years old he engaged in despicable acts with a domestic group. I have roundly denounced those attacks" -- doesn't answer anything.

First of all, the fact that Ayers is a professor of education proves only one thing: He is dumber than any person without an education degree.

Ayers is such an imbecile, we ought to be amazed that he's teaching at a university -- even when you consider that it's an ed school -- except all former violent radicals end up teaching. Roughly 80 percent of former Weathermen are full college professors -- 99 percent if you don't include the ones killed in shoot-outs with the police or in prison -- i.e., not yet pardoned by a Democratic president.

Any other profession would have banned a person like Ayers. Universities not only accept former domestic terrorists, but also move them to the front of the line. In addition to Ayers, among those once on the FBI's most-wanted list who ended up in cushy college teaching positions are Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University), Mark Rudd (a junior college in New Mexico) and Angela Davis (History of Consciousness Department, University of California at Santa Cruz).

While others were hard at work on Ph.D.s, Susan Rosenberg was conspiring to kill cops and blow up buildings, and was assembling massive caches of explosives. This put her on the fast track for a teaching position at Hamilton College!

Despite having absolutely no qualifications to teach, having earned only a master's degree in "writing" through a correspondence course, Rosenberg was offered a position at Hamilton within a few years of President Clinton pardoning her in 2001, releasing her from a 58-year prison sentence for participating in the murder of cops and possessing more than 700 pounds of explosives.

But Obama thinks it's a selling point to say that Ayers is a college professor.

Hundreds of college professors have signed a letter vouching for Ayers, which would be like Lester Maddox producing a letter from George Wallace assuring us that Maddox is a respected member of the community. No, really, I've got the letter right here!

The media keep citing the fact that the money Obama and Ayers distributed to idiotic left-wing causes came -- as The New York Times put it -- "from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to the United Kingdom."

Great Republican though he was, Walter Annenberg died in 2002. The money came from the Annenberg Foundation, which, like all foundations, distributes money to projects that its founder would despise. John Kerry ran for president on the late John Heinz's money. That didn't mean Republican Heinz was endorsing Kerry.

As John O'Sullivan says, any foundation that is not explicitly right-wing will become a radical left-wing organization within a few years. It could be the Association of University Women, the American Association of Retired People, the American Rose Growers, the Foundation for the Study of Railroad Engineers or the Choral Society of Newport Beach.

Left-wing radicals swarm to free foundation money, where they can give gigantic grants to one another and they will never have to do a day's work. That's exactly what Obama and Ayers did with Annenberg's money.

None of the Annenberg money went to schoolchildren. It went to Ayers' left-wing crank friends to write moronic papers that we hope no one ever reads.

Instead of teaching students reading and writing, Ayers thinks they should be taught to rebel against America's "imperialist" social structure. In 2006, Ayers was in Venezuela praising communist dictator Hugo Chavez, saying, "We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution."

He has backed a line of schoolbooks such as one titled "Teaching Science for Social Justice."

Forget about Ayers' domestic terrorism when Obama "was 8 years old." Does he agree with Ayers' idiot ideas right now?

Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:01 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?

All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.

The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “gift” cards, industry analysts and a confidential informant tell Newsmax.

An ongoing Newsmax investigation into the Obama campaign’s finance reports has exposed multiple instances of campaign finance violations and has been cited in a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission filed by the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6.

Though many of the known violations include donations in excess of the $2,300 per election limit on individual contributions and contributions from foreign nationals, the extent of the amount of fraud is hidden because of a loophole in federal election law.

Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.

The Obama campaign has turned a blind eye to the possibility of donor fraud. Reportedly, during the heated primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign “turned off” many of the security features on its online donor page, allowing any person with a valid credit card number to donate using any name or address.

Typically, card merchants require a cardholder’s name to match critical personal details, such as an address or, at the least, a ZIP code.

Though in recent months the Obama campaign has tightened up security and restored some of the security features used by merchants to weed out fraud, it still has left open easy ways for potential credit card fraud, including techniques similar to those employed by terrorists and drug traffickers to launder illicit funds.

For example, on Oct. 14, an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in Obama’s latest small-donor fundraising drive, making a $5 donation through the campaign’s Web site.

Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” credit card to make the donation.

The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution, and gave him the name of another donor who had agreed to “match” his contribution.

Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same credit card.

The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle.

Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This credit card donation raised no alarm bells in the Obama campaign.

A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”

But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same credit card.

Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign. They were:

• Bart Simpson, of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.
  
• Family Guy, of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, GA.
  
• King Kong, of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.
  

Newsmax learned of these contributions, which were all made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.

Calling himself “Bart Simpson,” the tipster said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest,” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”

[Editor's Note: See "Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules ."]

“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made in the names of Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Raela Odinga, and Family Guy.

“What this means is that the Obama campaign does no verification of the name of the contributor. With a normal credit card, this wouldn’t wor[k], but with these disposable debit cards, no problem!

“This needs to be exposed,” he said.

The tipster attached the confirmation pages from the Obama Web site showing the names of the donors, and in some cases, the names of other Obama donors who had agreed to “match” their contributions.

None of the matching donors’ names appears in the Obama campaign’s public disclosures to the FEC.

Other donors with clearly fictitious names revealed previously by Newsmax, The Los Angeles Times, and blogger Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) include “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”

Five major companies process the bulk of all credit card transactions made in the United States, industry insiders tell Newsmax. The Obama campaign paid one of them, Chase Paymentech, just over $2 million to process its online transactions.

“We never discuss our relationships with any of our merchants, or customers we work with,” James Wester, a spokesman for Chase Paymentech, told Newsmax.

Newsmax asked whether Chase Paymentech had any security feature that would allow it to identify individuals making contributions using gift cards, but Wester declined to comment.

But other industry analysts, who asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the issue, told Newsmax that processors could track gift cards and debit cards “only by the numbers on the cards.”

“There are no names associated with these cards, so as a processor, you have no way of knowing who made the transaction,” one industry analyst said.

Anyone can go into a supermarket or a Rite-Aid and buy a batch of these cards with cash, so there is no trace of the transaction, he added.

“It’s like walk-around money. They could be handing these things out as perks” to newly registered voters or others, “and there’s no way of tracing who is using them.”

Ken Boehm, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in campaign finance law, said that such contributions were clearly illegal.

“Making a contribution in the name of another person is the only part of federal election law that actually carries a criminal penalty,” he told Newsmax. Boehm is the CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

The Obama campaign has paid Synetech Group Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., close to $2 million to compile all of the campaign contribution data from online contributors, bundlers, telemarketers, campaign events, and direct-mail campaigns, and process it for submission to the FEC.

The sheer scope of the Obama fundraising juggernaut was “never contemplated by the FEC,” a company official told Newsmax, asking not to be quoted by name.

“It’s a lot of data. You’re talking 7 million contributions,” he said.

The campaign itself is responsible for screening out fraudulent donors, not Synetech, he said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this is as well-managed as any [campaign]. It’s just huge. When it’s this big, any little thing becomes something more than it is.”

One of the biggest problems the campaign faces is fraud, he said. “It’s a colossal problem. They’re paying the campaign with other people’s money.”

Individuals such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” who made hundreds of contributions to the campaign in excess of the legal limits were not working for the campaign, but for themselves, he insisted.

“It’s all fraud. They do it for kicks. Or they’re testing the cards. The campaign doesn’t want this. Why on earth do they want to have all these messy little transactions? It’s a colossal pain.”

However, the campaign itself has solicited these “messy little transactions” in numerous e-mails to supporters.

For instance, just days before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to supporters, asking them to “make a donation of $5 or more before midnight this Thursday, July 31st, and you could go backstage with Barack.”

Since them, the campaign has run several small donation drives, claiming to “match” donations of $5, $10, or $25 with an equal amount for a previous donor.

Newsmax put a series of questions to the Obama campaign more than a week ago in preparation for this article, such as whether its Internet contribution system automatically matches donors' names and addresses to their credit card numbers, as is common industry practice with online stores.

Newsmax also asked if the campaign uses a similar security screen to match a donor’s name and address to the card number when the donor uses a debit card or a gift card.

Despite multiple requests from Newsmax, the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Sweat Equity

aka I'm Joe the Plumber

Socialism - Part 1

Socialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society. Modern socialism originated in the late nineteenth-century working class political movement. Karl Marx posited that socialism would be achieved via class struggle and a proletarian revolution which represents the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.

Socialism is not a discrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalization, sometimes opposing each other. Another dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split on how a socialist economy should be established between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs; Libertarian socialism (which includes Socialist Anarchism and Libertarian Marxism) rejects state control and ownership of the economy altogether and advocates direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, Yugoslavian, Hungarian, Polish and Chinese Communists instituted various forms of market socialism combining co-operative and State ownership models with the free market exchange. This is unlike the earlier theoretical market socialist proposal put forth by Oskar Lange in that it allows market forces, rather than central planners to guide production and exchange. Anarcho-syndicalists, Luxemburgists (such as those in the Socialist Party USA) and some elements of the United States New Left favor decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils.

Historical precedents

Socialist thought and organization predate Socialism as ideology, which emerged in the first-half of the nineteenth century. In fifth-century Persia, the Mazdak proto-socialists challenged Noble and Clerical privilege, criticized private property to achieve an egalitarian society. In sixteenth-century literature, Utopia (1519), by Thomas More, posits a socialist utopia. In the nineteenth century, as socialist thought coalesced to formal ideology and programme, William Morris denoted the priest John Ball (1331–1381) as the first socialist in England, for having been a leader of the Peasants' Revolt (1381); moreover, Ball is credited the saying: When Adam delved and Eve span, who was, then, the gentleman? In the mid-seventeenth century English Civil War, the contemporary political socialists include the Levellers, and the Diggers, advocating common tenancy of land. In eighteenth-century France, Enlightenment criticism of enforced socio-economic inequality is Jean Jacques Rousseau's gist in the Social Contract, that begins: Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. After the French Revolution, François Noël Babeuf advocated common land-ownership and politico-economic equality of Citizens.

Origins of socialism

Etymologically, the English coinage socialism (1839) derives from the French socialisme (1832), the mainstream introduction of which usage is attributed, in France, to Pierre Leroux and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud; and in Britain to Robert Owen in 1827, father of the cooperative movement.

Western European social critics were the first, modern socialists – Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, and Saint-Simon, who criticised the excessive poverty and inequality consequence of the Industrial Revolution, and advocated reform via the egalitarian (Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people)distribution of wealth and the transformation of society to small communities without private property. Saint-Simon delineated collectivist principles reorganizing society to so build socialism upon planned, utopian communities.

Linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents' and opponents' cultural attitude towards Religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, communism was too-culturally and -aurally close to the Papist Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.

In 1847, Frederick Engels said Socialism was respectable on the Continent, while Communism was not; the Owenites, in England, and the Fourierists, in France, were considered Socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves Communists. This, latter branch of Socialism, was "powerful enough" to produce the communisms of Étienne Cabet, in France, and Wilhelm Weitling, in Germany.

find it here

~~~~~~~~~~~

I thought few lessons on Socialism would be a good thing. The above is copied directly from the Wikipedia page on Socialism. I did remove the footnote indicators. The links provided on Wikipedia did not translate (of course), and there are a lot of them! So I elected to not spend an hour or more adding all the links. I suggest you go to Wikipedia (link provided) and read it yourself.

Obama Charging Reporters for Election Night

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 11:13 PM

If you're a reporter interested in covering Barack Obama on election night, be sure to bring your wallet.

The Obama campaign is charging news organizations for access to the best camera and reporting positions at Obama's election night rally in Chicago's Grant Park.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the price list includes:

• Access to the media file center: $935 (includes power outlet, cable TV, Internet access and food).
• Access to the main riser with a view: $935 (includes power outlet).
  
• Access to the main riser with telecommunications equipment: $1,870 (includes power outlet, two phone lines and Internet access).
  
• Satellite truck parking: $900.
  
• Access for a radio reporter: $715.

Reporters wishing to attend for free will be allowed into the general press area -- which includes access to a "bike racked press area with standing room only."

~~~~~~~~

Don't forget, he's one of us. He's anything but an elitist.

Which Party to Lead Us Out of Financial Crisis?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 10:25 AM

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

VOTER HATRED OF WALL STREET: AS EXPLAINED BY FDR

If the crash of 1929 and that of 2008 are similar, then let's study the voter anger that 1929 kindled to inform our understanding of what is going on today. In the '30s, voters turned sharply against their former Wall Street heroes and the name of big business became mud for millions who felt misled by greedy financiers and took it out on the Republican Party.

To grasp what happened then and is happening now, look at the first inaugural address remarks of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He gave voice to the angst and anger of the times and gave us a clue to understanding what is going on today.

"Plenty is at our doorstep," he began, "but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply." Then he assigned blame. "Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated.

"Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the minds and hearts of men." He continued, "true they have tried but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition."

Then, in remarks that could have been aimed squarely at the Hoover-esque bailout bill, he said, "faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence."

Then, reaching across the decades to articulate an ancient truth, he said, "They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision and when there is no vision, the people perish."

Finally, he came to his peroration. "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths." In a barb that could have been aimed at the golden parachutes that spread their bounty across Wall Street this month, he said "the measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."

While our opinion leaders debate how long the markets will remain in flux, those who follow public opinion or run for office must realize that the rupture of faith between the leaders of our capitalist system and the investors who followed them with their hard earned money is deep, bitter, and long lasting.

Those who so abused our trust as to lend money to people who could never dream of repaying it and who bought paper with our money, backed by such shady loans, have abdicated their positions of leadership.

In their drive to expand home ownership so as to placate an ever larger constituency of minorities and poor people, the Democrats have saddled us with an unbelievable burden of government insured debt. And in their desire to reap profits from these enterprises, the Republican barons of Wall Street have inveigled us all into buying their stocks based on values inflated by fraudulently obtained loans.

The natural reaction of voters is to wish for a plague on both the parties. Their animosity and hatred will not soon disappear and any who think themselves exempt are in for a rude awakening. But all of this anger is being played out against the backdrop of a presidential race entering its last month. How will it affect the vote?

In normal circumstances, it would impel a Democratic landslide. After all, the malefactors who made out like bandits were Republicans, the administration and the regulators were Republican, and for most of the time the Congress was Republican.

But voters face a choice between a Republican Party whose image has been destroyed by its Wall Street allies and a Democratic nominee whose spiritual adviser is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright . . . whose financial backer is Rezko . . . the man who provided the money for his first real job was William Ayers. And, now it appears, that the object of his financial largesse and the organization for which he was Illinois general counsel was ACORN, massively implicated in voter fraud, funded, in large part, by Obama's presidential campaign funds.

Are we to elect such a man president? Are we to trust the party of Wall Street with four more years at the till? That is the dilemma that makes this election unstable and unpredictable. May the least worst man win!

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Obama Wants 12 Million Illegals to Get Citizenship

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 1:18 PM

By: David A. Patten

A Barack Obama administration would be a “nation killer” if Democrats attain a “supermajority” in the Senate, a leading conservative figure on immigration warned Tuesday.

Obama also has said he wants to make the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. citizens as soon as he can — an amnesty program that would make them legally entitled to full government benefits, including Social Security and health care.

William Gheen, president of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), says Obama’s plan would make it politically impossible to secure America’s borders. He describes Obama and a new Democratic Congress as a “worst-case scenario” for border and immigration security.

“I would paint that scenario as a nation killer,” Gheen, a former campaign consultant and an outspoken advocate for stronger border control policies, tells Newsmax. “I would expect amnesty to pass within a year. That means in the next presidential election, you will have a new voting bloc of 15 million illegal aliens who turn into voters.

“And that voting bloc,” he says, “especially in the Southwest United States, would be enough to take full control of most city, state, and county governments, thus destroying any future hopes for immigration enforcement or border security.”

Although GOP nominee John McCain has rarely confronted Obama during the campaign over immigration — presumably to avoid alienating Hispanic voters — Obama’s record reflects a clear focus on expanding entitlements to undocumented workers.

As a state senator in Illinois, for example, Obama co-sponsored that state’s version of the DREAM Act, which allowed youngsters in the country illegally to receive in-state tuition. He later supported similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

During a September campaign swing, Obama told the North Carolina Public Radio station WUNC that the children of illegal immigrants should have an opportunity to attend community colleges.

“For us to deny them access to community college, even though they’ve never lived in Mexico, as least as far as they can tell, is to deny that this is how we’ve always built this country up,” Obama said.

According to the NewsObserver.com, the McCain campaign reacted to Obama’s remark by issuing the statement: “John McCain does not support amnesty or benefits for undocumented immigrants. He has consistently opposed giving amnesty or public benefits to undocumented immigrants.”

Obama, who tends to dismiss discussion of his pro-immigration positions as politically motivated “distractions,” has demonstrated no such reticence to expand entitlements for illegals. Specifically:

Obama’s plan for universal health care would include coverage for illegal immigrants, according to political strategist and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris. Morris has warned that covering illegals “adds dramatically” to the cost of universal health care.

In March, Obama voted to table a Senate amendment that would support the withdrawal of federal assistance “to sanctuary cities that ignore the immigration laws of the United States and create safe havens for illegal aliens and potential terrorists.” McCain did not cast a vote.

Obama supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform legislation that was defeated in 2006. Since then, McCain has taken the position that securing the borders must precede immigration reform. Obama continues to support a process to “bring people out of the shadows” and eventually obtain legal status (at which point they would be eligible for the federally mandated benefits available to anyone, such as Social Security). Obama also calls for enhanced border security.

The Democratic candidate for president supports, in principle, providing state-funded welfare benefits to legal immigrants. While a state senator, Obama supported allocating state funds to provide Medicaid coverage to some legal immigrants, according to OnTheIssues.org.

Obama has supported increasing the number of work visas issued each year, such as the H1-B visa, especially for applicants with specialized skills. According to OnTheIssues.org, Obama co-sponsored, along with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a bill that would provide federal funding to help states provide health care and education to non-U.S. citizens.

Obama strongly supports encouraging American children to become bilingual and, at one point in the campaign, appeared to suggest it should be mandatory. In June, he voted against a Senate provision that would declare English the national language of the United States. McCain voted for it.

Edward I. Nelson, the chairman of the nonprofit U.S. Border Control organization, warns that “Welfare and in-state tuition are powerful inducements to illegal immigration, as are free medical benefits.”

Nelson says his organization has awarded both Obama and McCain an “F” on their immigration and border control policies.

Gheen says Obama and McCain both would ultimately favor amnesty for illegals, albeit differently.

“Obama would give in-state tuition and driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, then make them legal,” Gheen says. “McCain would make them legal, and then give them in-state tuition and driver’s licenses.”

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He Doth Protest Too Much

Senator Biden has what Senator McCain claimed in the last debate: to not be George Bush and that if Senator Obama wanted to run against Bush, he should have run four years ago. Biden further said that McCain doth protests too much. I'm not sure I get that, I've only heard it once, although it could have been said many more times. But, it seems to me that I've heard for months from the Obama-Bush ticket that a McCain presidency would be just a third Bush term. Over and over again. Ad nauseum.

Of course, they want to tie McCain to Bush, so that voters will blame McCain for "eight years of failed economic practice." Bush has been in office for eight years and will be held responsible for the economy. McCain did vote along with Bush many times, I can't deny it. But which party has been in control of Congress for the last two years?

It seems to me that the Democrats (the answer to the above question, by the way) could have made major inroads on Bush's "failed" policies over those two years. But, what did they do? Not much. The Democrats haven't accomplished much over the last two years have they? If I'm wrong, please educate me.

We did have an economic stimulus package last spring, but the Democrats are saying it wasn't enough. So, what will it take? Well, Congress is talking about another stimulus payment at twice the rate of the last one. Personally, I like getting money, but eventually, I begin to wonder when I will have to pay it back. Will this be like a payday loan? You know, you get the money you need today, based on next week's paycheck. The problem with payday loans is that they have to be paid back. And it becomes a vicious cycle. How will the government pay for this next stimulus package?

It doesn't sound to me like the Democrats have really done much to change things.