konane's Blog

TigerAngel had an absolutely brilliant post this morning "

"Hidden Hypnosis Techniques Of Obama" 

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?o=k&i=25044

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His article has a PDF link explaining mechanisms of hypnosis which I've excerpted below, linked to PDF .... these did not copy in correct paragraph format.

As I commented on TigerAngel's blog I've been hypnotized many times by a licensed professional highly respected hypnotherapist so have a working background over several years as to how hypnosis is ethically brought about with consent of the person being hypnotized.     

Hypnosis like meditation has 4 stages beginning with light trance/meditation such as daydreaming all the way down to a "deep sleep" level while maintaining full awareness of everything taking place.  Going through those stages is like gently turning a dial where you do deeper and deeper within yourself. 

Before every session any ethical hypnotherapist will tell you that you will not accept any suggestion which doesn't ring true within yourself and that you can bring yourself out of hypnosis any time you desire by simply waking up because you are in complete control.  That's the ethical way.

What is described in this PDF is more sinister, it is criminal because it is being done without specific consent.   

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http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama%27s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf 

"An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis

Techniques in His Speeches

Barack Obama’s speeches contain the hypnosis techniques of Dr. Milton Erickson, M.D. who developed a

form of “conversational” hypnosis that could be hidden in seemingly normal speech and used on patients

without their knowledge for therapy purposes. Obama’s speeches intentionally contain:

- Trance Inductions

- Hypnotic Anchoring

- Pacing and Leading

- Pacing, Distraction and Utilization

- Critical Factor Bypass

- Stacking Language Patterns

- Preprogrammed Response Adaptation

- Linking Statements/ Causality Bridges

- Secondary Hidden Meanings/Imbedded Suggestions

- Emotion Transfer

- Non-Dominant Hemisphere Programming

Real “hypnosis” explained
Most people are hypnotized and fall into trance every day of their lives.2  It is a common, every day
occurrence, whether for a brief second, or minutes or longer.  A very basic example is when you are driving
a car while in deep thought, and you suddenly realize you are much further along with no memory of
driving the whole distance.  Another example, is when you are on an elevator watching the numbers change
and go into trance, and when everyone else gets off, you take that as a nonverbal suggestion to get off,
before you “wake up” and realize it is not your floor.  This elevator example is an example of mass
hypnosis, where the close rapport with the hypnotist is not necessary, because many people are both
hypnotized partly by whatever is causing the trance, and partly by the fact that you are being “paced” or also
hypnotized by everyone else in the elevator doing the exact same thing as you.  The reason you cry from
reading sad book simply by reading ink on paper is because of the mind’s interaction with that information,
which is also a hypnotic process.3 

Two separate definitions of “hypnosis”:
1.  First, hypnosis, is “a particular altered state of hyper-suggestibility brought about in an individual by a
combination of relaxation, fixation of attention, and suggestion.”4
2.  Second, hypnosis is also “bypassing the ‘critical factor’ and setting up acceptable selective thinking.5” 
The “critical factor” is the conscious part of the brain that you think with that has the ability to make rational logical judgments about what information is received.6  The critical factor acts as a filter, determining what can pass into the subconscious mind which is a non-rational computer-like system which accepts everything
in it as absolute truth.7  That is why sidelining it is so dangerous.
Milton Erickson, had a broader definition of the unconscious mind, described as, “both the functioning of
the dominant hemisphere of the brain that occurs below the level of awareness, as well as the functioning of
the non-dominant hemisphere.” 8   
Ericksonian trance induction has three dimensions which we will return to often and compare to Obama’s
language patterns.  They are:9
1.  Pacing and distraction of the dominant (language) hemisphere;
2.  Utilization of the dominant hemisphere, language processing which occurs below the level of
awareness;
3.  Accessing of the non-dominant hemisphere; 
This above three part process is extremely important to later analysis.  Essentially, hypnosis is an altered
and common state of mind involving intense focus, sidelining or disassociation of the rational critical
thinking, and the state of hyper-suggestibility brought about while the subconscious mind is the dominant
player.10  It happens while reading, listening to music, and even while hearing a great speaker.11
However, the power of such methods is what is difficult to grasp.  What we are talking about is
“transformational linguistics” – language that literally changes who you are at your deepest levels, your
deepest passions, drives, and emotions while you are completely unaware.   
Under Freud, there is the conscious mind that you think with, called the “ego.”  You also have a conscience,
called the “super-ego.”  Then, there is the largest part of the psyche, the id, which is the back-end of all our
memory, our most basic instincts and drives, emotions, and suppressed desires.12   “The unconscious mind is
the source of our energy, and no amount of conscious reasoning can override it.  The unconscious mind is
un-critical, it accepts as absolute truth any idea that is allowed to enter its computer-like system”13  The
messages of hypnosis, including mass hypnosis, can be far more powerful than just someone’s conscious
thoughts, as it affects their most basic biological drives and instincts.14  That is why many of Obama’s
followers are so passionate for him, why they are fainting in his presence, comparing him to Jesus, and
supporting him like no other candidate before.
 Bypassing the dominant hemisphere’s rational judgment (“critical factor”)
The critical factor is the part of the mind that logically analyzes and scrutinizes all information like a filter,
and decides what information is allowed to pass into your subconscious mind and become part of what your
mind accepts as unquestionably true, like your deepest and most powerful emotions, drives, and instincts.21 
It is the primary cognitive defense that usually stops all information and rationally analyzes it, whether
consciously or unconsciously.  It keeps your computer-like subconscious mind from literally believing that
you are a chicken when someone calls you a “chicken”, and keeps you from literally believing that you are a
square (box) when somebody calls you a “square”, and keeps you from literally believing you are a (snow
or cereal) flake when somebody calls you a “flake.”  you don’t consciously ponder it when someone calls
you a chicken, your critical fator stops that information below the level of awareness.     
The critical factor is the cognitive function best analogized to a security guard (critical factor) who searches
every person (information) entering into a nightclub looking for weapons. (and stops all information that is
questionable)22  The critical factor stops all information and allows your thinking and rationality to
determine whether it is acceptable to the subconscious mind or not.   
Hypnosis uses language patterns, visual tricks, body language, voice, tone, an Hypnosis uses language patterns, visual tricks, body language, voice, tone, and other aspects of
communication to get “suggestions” past the critical factor part of the brain and directly into the listener’s
subconscious.23  This is wonderful if the command is to be free of a phobia, or quit smoking.  The reason
hypnosis is used for such psychological change, is that the critical factor allows in only what it accepts as
true.  Without bypassing the smoker’s critical factor, a smoker has a difficult time quitting because they
have a difficult time accepting as absolutely true the information that they are a nonsmoker, because their
critical factor and conscious mind knows differently and doesn’t let the information through.
How one might simplify this point, is, in normal everyday life, calling someone a “chicken” will not cause
them to literally believe they are a chicken and act like one.  This is because the critical factor stops this
information from passing into the subconscious.  So how can a hypnotist get a subject to cluck like a
chicken believing they are one?  The hypnotist knows how to get the hypnotic suggestion that the subject is
a chicken past the critical factor part of the consciousness, and get the subconscious mind to accept it as
unquestionably true. Obama’s actions are far more deceptive than simply lying
If used by a politician and discovered, such hypnosis technique, if understood as it should be, to be the
height of manipulation and deception, would destroy a politician’s career.24  There is no other way to view
such a politician other than disturbingly and disqualifyingly deceptive, someone whom we apparently know
very little about, and cannot trust, who has been continually hiding something from us and manipulating us. 
To see a politician continue to perform a multitude of hundreds of deceptive acts, which he knows about but
we are meant not to know about, that affect our judgment and mental processes, and that manipulate us in
ways we are not even aware of, all the while thinking he is clever enough to get away with it until he finally
gets caught, is the height of immoral deception.  It is perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American
history.     
Most of our beliefs come to us from our own rational judgment and conscious analysis of the world.  For
example, we know it good to wake up in the morning and do something because we rationally know the
consequences of staying in bed all day.  When we like people, it is usually due to a combination of our
rational judgment and how that person naturally makes us feel about them.  We try to make people like us
more by following social norms, making people feel good, smiling, and so on.
However, a very small percentage of the population actually study subconscious manipulation of not only
how people feel about them, but how to manipulate and alter the beliefs we usually come to by our rational
judgment, reason, and experience.  These people study specifically how to sideline this rational judgment,
reason, and experience, and natural feelings, and bend people’s feelings and will through the application of
this branch of psychiatry to their interactions.   
Obama is an expert at this type of artificial manipulation.  His ability to convince rationally and any natural
“charm” is only part of how a person feels about Obama.  The rest is deceptive subconscious manipulation.   
His tactics are deceptive because he has mastered the science and art of lowering the effects of the rational
scrutiny parts of the mind through his speaking, actions, and presentation.  He gets you to believe not by
convincing you rationally until you decide to believe it, but by knowing how to say to your subconscious
mind literally the words that “you believe” in a way that your subconscious mind will simply accept the
message and believe without having rationally decided to believe.  He knows how to say to your
subconscious mind that it “chose” (Obama) even when it hasn’t, in a way that you will believe that you have
chosen.  He understands subconscious manipulation enough to know how to talk about families, and your
children, and John F. Kennedy, and conjure up feelings within you from speaking in certain rhythmic and
unnaturally slow tempos,  and then subconsciously transfer the emotions he conjures up onto him, such as
with hand gestures or hidden content in language.  You genuinely walk away from him feeling warm, and
viewing him as a JFK, except it is artificial.  He knows how to say one thing, but have your subconscious
mind ultra-powerfully receive a different message and feeling than you are aware of.  He is actually
implanting feelings and emotions into your subconscious.  They feel like your own.  Rationally he is an
unaccomplished man with shady connections, but you are tricked into feelings about him that overpower those, that feel like your genuine feelings about him because they come from inside you, implanted into the
deepest parts of your psyche.     
Obama’s deception here is not simply a few subliminal messages like those used in some advertisements. 
Obama is employing with art and skill a complex hidden system applying a multitude of the most advanced
techniques in subconscious manipulation known to psychology.  This entire system is designed to do one
thing - to make us feel like the decision to support Obama is our own when it is really, at least for many,
implanted artificially through hypnosis.   
What Obama is doing is in effect the same as if he dangled a silver watch in front of us and said “you are
getting sleepy and going into trance....you have an unstoppable urge that you cannot resist.....you must vote
for Barack.”  In fact, as discussed below, Obama was actually caught at least once saying something very
similar with his own lips.  Yes, Obama was caught giving an overt hypnotic command to vote for him.25 
People even made fun of it, but nobody realized it was actual intentional hypnosis until it is now explained. 
(see below)
Hypnotizing someone without their knowledge is the height of immorality.  The level of deception involved
here, in Obama’s use of covert hypnosis, and his presumption that he has the right to use hypnosis on us to
gain votes is just unconscionable.  If a stranger came up to you in a restaurant and tried to hypnotize you to
get you to do anything, even so much as buy them a cup of coffee, and you figured out that they were trying
to use actual hypnosis on you, you would run.   
If Obama simply lied, we voters would be able to use our rational judgment to make a logical decision about
what is the truth, and what we should believe, and what we shouldn’t.  However, because he is implanting
subconscious commands we are not aware of consciously, into the deepest parts of our emotional and
subconscious psyches, he is actually taking away our ability to make those rational judgments.  He is
making the decision to and taking away even our ability to question the commands he is hypnotizing us
with.  We never even know the commands are being implanted (until now with this document), and we are
tricked into believing that our feelings are coming from deep inside us.  Obama’s concealment of his
hypnotic techniques can only be looked at as deception.26   

The study of the effects of mass hypnosis
A widely held view among psychologists and experts is that conversational hypnosis is literally a form of
mind control.  One author says:
“Essentially conversational hypnosis allow users to gain control of their subjects mind through
spoken word, and literally get them to do as they wish - within reason of course. Essentially the
English language has various emotional triggers and tone's which can be utilised to induce people
into a trance. When people are in such a trance it is possible to alter their views and control their
actions.”28

Some video examples of the power of hypnosis are included in the footnotes.29  However, this particular one
at this footnote at the end of this sentence of hypnotist Derren Brown is amazing, and very exemplary of
how conversational hypnosis works, and is highly recommended for a quick understanding.30  To give you
an idea of the power of hypnosis in the wrong hands, hypnosis can be used to get a complete stranger to
hand over a wallet in seconds.31  MSNBC32 and BBC33 reports a man stealing from stores and banks using
hypnosis.   

One book that studied mass hypnosis called Rape of the Mind was written by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.,
Instructor in Psychiatry, Columbia University Lecturer in Social Psychology, New School for Social
Research, Former Chief, Psychological Department, Netherlands Forces.  It examines the dangers of mass
hypnosis.34
An except of the book discusses what a hypnotist could get a subject to do through hypnotic commands,

Chapter 3 – Hypnotism and Mental Coercion: There are many quacks who practice hypnosis, not to cure their victims but to force them into
submission, using the victim's unconscious ties and dependency needs in a criminal, profitable way.
One of the most absorbing aspects of this whole problem of hypnosis is the question of whether
people can be forced to commit crimes, such as murder or treason, while under a hypnotic spell.
Many psychologists would deny that such a thing could happen and would insist that no person can
be compelled to do under hypnosis what he would refuse to do in a state of alert consciousness. But
actually what a person can be compelled to do depends on the degree of dependency that hypnosis
causes and the frequency of repetition of the so-called posthypnotic suggestions.35

Rape of the Mind discusses psychological conditioning from World War II Nazi tactics, to Soviet Cold-War
theoreticians, to our own democracy.  (See Chapter 2 – Mass Conditioning Through Speech, and Political
Conditioning.36  The Book also discusses the dangers of the real phenomenon of mass hypnosis:

Illegality of Obama’s use of hypnosis

Hypnosis-type mental pressure has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States to be so unduly
influential as to deprive someone of their fundamental rights.  The US Supreme court case was Leyra v.
Denno, 347 U.S. 556 (1954), Leyra v. Denno, No. 635, Argued April 28, 1954, Decided June 1, 1954, 347
U.S. 556.  After police questioned a suspect day and night unable to obtain a confession, a hypnotist tried,
and did successfully get the suspect to confess.  The legal battles over whether the confession was voluntary
or not, undue influence or not, went all the way to the Supreme court of the United States, which decided
that his confession could not be used as evidence against him in court.  In discussing what the New York Court of Appeals held, that “were so clearly the product of ‘mental coercion’ that their use as evidence was
inconsistent with due process of law”, the United States Supreme Court said “exhausted suspect's ability to
resist interrogation was broken to almost trance-like submission by use of the arts of a highly skilled
psychiatrist.”  It violated the most fundamental rights of the suspect to have this confession used, because it
was not of his own free will. 

Hypnosis on a non-consenting person may arguably constitute fraud38, undue influence, and/or potentially
other violations of the law, depending on the jurisdiction.39  Undue influence is “persuasion that overcomes
the will without convincing the judgment.”40  Hypnosis works on mental and emotional weaknesses fitting
the legal definition precisely.  For example, with hypnotizing someone to get access to that person’s bank
account – even the hypnotist makes the person believe they want to do it, they are using techniques which
create an undue influence on the person. 

The Executive Committee of the American Psychological Association Division of Psychological Hypnosis
has said, “clinical hypnosis should be used only by properly trained and credentialed health care
professionals (e.g. licensed clinical psychologists), who have also been trained in the clinical use of
hypnosis and are working within the areas of their professional expertise.”  The Appellate Division of the
Los Angeles County Superior Court has held that practice of hypnotism as curative measure or mode of
procedure by one not licensed to practice medicine amounts to unlawful practice of medicine.41   

What Obama is doing is making some people’s support of him in this election not of our own free will.  He
us using hidden techniques so we cannot even question the commands he is slipping into our subconscious. 
Many genuinely want to support him like smokers want a cigarette, and as smokers, we find the logic to
justify how we feel.

 The hypnosis technique of “pacing and leading” to sideline rational judgment ..............."

http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama's_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf

"Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Source American Thinker

"America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. 

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org) 

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth. 

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention. 

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse. 

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.   

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely. 

• 1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
• 2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
• 3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards. 

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state. 

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation. 

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

 

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department. 

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.) 

Stanley Kurtz has been digging deep in Obama's past he'd rather have buried.  Several live links within this well written article

_____________________

"Something New Here
Radical? Check. Tied to ACORN? Check. Redistributionist? Check.

By Stanley Kurtz

Source National Review

"During his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995-96, Barack Obama was a member of, and was endorsed by, the far-left New Party. Obama’s New Party ties give the lie to his claim to be a post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist. Particularly in Chicago, the New Party functioned as the electoral arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). So despite repeated attempts to distance himself from ACORN, Obama’s New Party ties raise disturbing questions about his links to those proudly militant leftists. The media’s near-total silence on this critical element of Obama’s past is deeply irresponsible.

SOCIALIST?
While a small group of bloggers have productively explored Obama’s New Party ties, discussion has often turned on the New Party’s alleged socialism. Was the New Party actually established by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)? Was the New Party’s platform effectively socialist in content? Although these debates are both interesting and important, we needn’t resolve them to conclude that the New Party was far to the left of the American mainstream. Whether formally socialist or not, the New Party and its ACORN backers favored policies of economic redistribution. As Obama would say, they wanted to spread the wealth around. Bracketing the socialism question and simply taking the New Party on its own terms is sufficient to raise serious questions about Obama’s political commitments — questions that cry out for attention from a responsible press.

In 2002, Micah L. Sifry, a former writer and editor with The Nation magazine, published Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America, a book that contains what is probably our best account of the rise and fall of the New Party. Although Sifry leaves us hanging on the socialism question, his chapter on the New Party is more than enough to raise disturbing questions about Obama’s radicalism, and about his ties to ACORN.

Sifry reports a quip by New Party co-founder, Daniel Cantor: “The shorthand strategy for accomplishing all this is to get the Bruce Springsteen, Lauryn Hill, and Pete Seeger vote united in one party.” The Peter Seeger vote does sound like shorthand for the old-time socialist Left — but also for far-left-leaning baby boomers in general. Bruce Springsteen and Lauryn Hill point to young blacks and whites on the left, perhaps including, but not restricted to, openly socialist sympathizers. In short, the New Party was a mid-1990s effort to build a “progressive” coalition to the left of the Democratic party, uniting left-leaning baby boomers with minorities, relatively militant unionists, and “idealistic” young people.

PARTY WITHIN A PARTY
In contrast to Ralph Nader’s recent third-party campaigns, the New Party’s strategy was to work through “fusion.” Fusion parties were popular in the 19th century. Although these small parties had a separate line on the ballot, they often endorsed one of the major-party candidates. That meant these third parties didn’t have to act as “spoilers” in close elections. Yet by constituting themselves as separate entities and offering their endorsement as bait, fusion parties tended to push the major parties further to the right or the left. We see remnants of the old fusion-party pattern in New York State, where separate Liberal and Conservative parties sometimes shift elections by endorsing one or another major party candidate.

As the New Party’s founders put it, they were looking for a cross between the “party within the party” strategy favored by leftist Democrats and the “plague on both your houses” stance later adopted by the Naderites. That means Obama’s New Party ties place him on the far left end of the Democratic party, arguably with one foot outside and to the left of the party itself.

Does this make Obama “socialist?” Maybe so, but according to Sifry, the vague “New Party” name was chosen precisely to avoid such ideological pigeonholing. Maybe that vagueness was designed to avoid exposing the party as the socialist sympathizer it was. Or maybe the name was a way of avoiding complex internal struggles between competing ideological factions, some socialist and some not. (The answer is “both of the above,” I tend to think.) In any case, the New Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up of committed “progressives,” rather than conventional “liberals.” That is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a world-view well “beyond” his mother’s conventional liberalism.

To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace; Steve Cobble, political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion; prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven, coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN; economist Juliet Schor; black historian Manning Marable; historian Howard Zinn; linguist Noam Chomsky; Todd Gitlin; and writers like Gloria Steinem and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party’s goals as “social democratic.” In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.

ACORN CONNECTION
Unquestionably, ACORN was one of the most important forces behind the creation of the New Party. According to Sifry: “Wade Rathke, ACORN’s lead national organizer, was in on the founding discussions that led to the New Party, and the group’s political director, Zach Polett, also came to play a big role in guiding New Party field organizing for the party [in Chicago and Little Rock].” In fact, Sifry portrays ACORN’s leading role in the New Party as the result of a conscious decision by the organization to move into electoral politics in a more substantial way than they had been able to solely through their political action committee. In addition to Rathke and Polett, a key early supporter of the New Party was Obama’s closest ACORN contact, Madeline Talbott.

While ACORN played an important founding role for the New Party nationally, ACORN was clearly the main force behind the New Party chapter in Chicago. In general, New Party chapters built around an ACORN nucleus were the most disciplined and successful party outposts. Nationally, the New Party’s biggest wins were in Chicago, very much including Obama’s victory in his 1996 run for the Illinois state senate. Chicago’s New Party was actually formed around two core elements, ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 880. Yet, as Sifry notes, SEIU 880 was itself an ACORN offshoot.

Together ACORN and SEIU 880 were the dominant forces in Chicago’s New Party. True, there was also participation by open socialists, but these were not a majority of New Party organizers. You can certainly argue, as libertarian blogger Trevor Louden has, that whether openly or not, the New Party in Chicago and beyond was effectively socialist. It’s a powerful argument and worthy of consideration. After all, according to Rutgers University political scientist Heidi J. Swarts, ACORN’s leaders see themselves as “a solitary vanguard of principled leftists.” So a party outpost built around ACORN would be a party built around “principled vanguard leftists.” Sounds pretty socialist to me. Yet, as I’ve emphasized, we needn’t resolve the “socialism” question to conclude that the New Party, and particularly its Chicago branch, was far to the left of the Democratic party, and largely under the control of ACORN.

Consider “The People Shall Rule,” a look at some of Chicago ACORN’s electoral efforts co-authored by Madeline Talbott, Obama’s closest ACORN contact and a key New Party supporter. In describing former Chicago ACORN leader Ted Thomas’s successful run for alderman, Talbott stresses that, even after election, Thomas retained his ACORN ties. Thomas was invited to retain his seat on ACORN’s Chicago board, ACORN members continued to treat him as a leader, and Thomas continued to brainstorm and strategize with ACORN’s other organizers. Talbott is so busy detailing Thomas’s continued links to ACORN that she doesn’t even bother to mention that Thomas actually ran on behalf of the New Party. (See “NP Chair elected to Chicago City Council.”)

As so often with ACORN, technically separate organizations are often relatively meaningless designations for different branches of ACORN itself. And in Chicago, the New Party was very much an ACORN-dominated operation. Ted Thomas was a city alderman, de facto ACORN leader, and New Party chair all at once. So Obama’s ties to the New Party represent yet another important, and still unacknowledged, link between Obama and ACORN.

We already know that Obama’s ties to ACORN’s Madeline Talbott ran deep. Less known is that Obama’s links to Chicago ACORN/New Party leader Ted Thomas were also strong. Thomas was one of a handful of aldermen who stood with Obama in his unsuccessful 2000 race for Congress against Bobby Rush. Obama is also had long-standing ties to SEIU Local 880, an ACORN union spin-off and a bulwark of Chicago’s New Party. In his 2004 race for the Democratic Senate nomination, SEIU Local 880 strongly endorsed Obama, citing his long history of support for the group.

REVEALING TIE
So the fact that Obama received the New Party’s endorsement in his first run for office in 1995-96 cannot be dismissed as insignificant. On the contrary, Obama’s ties to the New Party, and the New Party’s backers at ACORN (often the very same people), are long-standing, substantial, and reveal a great deal about his personal political allegiances. Because it was a fusion party, the New Party did not require that all the candidates it endorsed be members. Yet the New Party’s endorsements were carefully targeted. There was no attempt to endorse candidates in every race, or even to set up nationwide chapters. Carefully selected races in carefully targeted cities were seized upon — and only when the candidate fit the profile of a decidedly left-leaning progressive Democrat. In this way, the New Party set out to form a hard-left “party within a party” among the Democrats.

More than this, we now have substantial evidence that Obama himself was in fact a New Party member. We even have a photograph of Obama appearing with other successful New Party candidates. Clearly, then, it is more than fair to identify Obama with the hard-left stance of the New Party and its ACORN backers. In her recent study of ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation, the two groups of community organizers to which Obama was closest, Heidi Swarts describes their core ideology as “redistributionist.” Joe the Plumber take note. Whether formally socialist or not, Obama ties with ACORN and its New Party political arm show that spreading your wealth around has long been his ultimate goal.

All this means that Barack Obama is far from the post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist he pretends to be. On the contrary, Obama’s ideological home is substantially to the left of the Democratic-party mainstream, so far to the left that he has one foot planted outside the party itself. And since the New Party Chicago was essentially an electoral arm of ACORN, Obama’s New Party tie, is yet another example of his deep links to the far-left militant organizers of that group. Obama’s account of his limited ties to ACORN in the third debate was clearly not truthful. Likewise, his earlier denials of ties to ACORN have fallen apart.

At what point will the press force Obama to own up to the full extent of his ties to ACORN? At what point will the press demand a full accounting of Obama’s ties to the New Party? At what point will the depth of Obama’s redistributionist economic stance be acknowledged? Barack Obama is hiding the truth about his political past, and the press is playing along. "

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTc3NzZkZDYxODZiZjE2OTg5YWRmNDkzM2U0YTIwZGQ=&w=MA==

"JUST WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?

"Sounds like an odd question, doesn't it? But have you ever actually thought for a moment about who has ownership rights to you? This is no silly or meaningless exercise here. You exist. You have value. That value belongs to someone. The question is who? This is an important question in this election because there are quite a lot of people out there who earnestly believe that you belong not to yourself, but to the government. For the first time in my memory we have a presidential candidate who wants to raise taxes on a few not so much to cover the costs of the essential functions of government, but to bring about some sense of what he calls "fairness" in the distribution of wealth. This would mean that in the eyes of this particular presidential candidate (I would mention his name, but that would be racist.) the government owns a portion of you; a portion to be used by the government to enrich the lives of others in the quest for economic "fairness."

Let me know how this works out for you.  "

http://boortz.com/nuze/200810/10232008.html#belong

"AP presidential poll: Race tightens in final weeks

Oct 22, 5:16 PM (ET)

Source My Way News

"WASHINGTON (AP) - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.  ...."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081022/D93VPI9O0.html

"The Obama Witch Project

Michelle Malkin Michelle Malkin – Fri Oct 10, 3:00 am ET
Source Yahoo news.

"Creators Syndicate – Republicans don't need to dress up for Halloween this year. They're scaring the pants off Barack Obama's followers by their mere presence. Anything they say, wear or do provokes instant cries of "RAAAAACISM!" Wink, blink or think critical thoughts about Obama? You're a bigot!

How many racial bogeymen have Obama operatives and sympathetic journalists discovered lurking in "coded language" and attire? Let us count the ways:

— During Tuesday's presidential debate, John McCain referred to Obama as "that one." Official Obama press agitator Bill Burton sent off an e-mail blast to reporters: "Did John McCain just refer to Obama as 'that one'?" Horrors.

Taking their cue from Burton, spooked Obama supporters hyperventilated like teenagers on the film set of "The Blair Witch Project." "The racial undertones were subtle but unmistakable," declared Maya Wiley of the leftist Center for Social Inclusion. "McCain was tapping into a current of superiority among white voters. It was an attempt to 'otherize' Obama."

"Otherize"? Sounds like something you do to your car tires to prepare for winter.

UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff was also haunted by "That One": "The phrase was meant to say, 'You and I are in the same area, but he's the outsider.'"

Memo to McCain: Next time, call him "The One."

— Obama supporters on the heavily trafficked Democratic Underground website (where such mainstream Democrats as Elizabeth Edwards hang out) saw the ghost of the Ku Klux Klan in Sarah Palin's white suit jacket. Yes, white clothes equal racism.

"Palin is wearing white again, inciting the racist crowds. She should just drop all pretense and put on her white hood and light up a cross. She is a despicable human being," fumed a DU poster. "Grand Princess of the KKK," proclaimed another. They're "trying to send subtle signals to their rabid base," declared yet another member of Obama's rabid base.

My racial decoder ring must be on the fritz. I'm not getting the signal. If she wears white stockings, drinks a vanilla milkshake and refers to budgetary black holes, are those incitements, too? And what about her gorgeous white teeth? Perhaps she should drink more coffee — hold the white cream! — to avoid emitting further racial radiation.

— Such paranoia is not limited to the fever swamps of the Internet. Earlier this week, the Associated Press disseminated an "analysis" accusing Palin of injecting a "racial tinge" into the campaign because she criticized Obama for his longtime relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Palin's comments were completely unobjectionable: "This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America."

I saw a vice presidential candidate drawing stark philosophical differences between two tickets. The AP saw Freddy Krueger with lipstick and a noose.

"Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as 'not like us' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American," the AP piece frothed.

Obama is half-black. Ayers is white. One of the Weather Underground's victims was black police officer Waverly Brown of Nyack, N.Y. Where do I buy a pair of the super X-ray glasses that can detect the racism in Palin's remarks about the Obama-Ayers alliance?

— I'll have to borrow those hysterical-colored spectacles from Time's Karen Tumulty, who spotted racist goblins in the recent McCain ad criticizing Obama for seeking advice from Fannie Mae corruptocrat Franklin Raines. "Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman," Tumulty balked in a blog post titled "McCain plays the race card."

Um, "sinister"? The ad's photos of Obama and Raines were standard shots — some with dour expressions, others smiling. The fact that Tumulty perceived them as "sinister" suggests that she should perform a self-racism exam before diagnosing anyone else.

— A parade of congressional witch hunters for Obama also detects the specter of George Wallace behind every policy bush. Democratic New York Gov. David Paterson says conservative criticism of Obama's community organizing days is code for "black." Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks complained to the New York Observer: "They are trying to throw out these codes." In the same piece, Democratic Rep. Yvette Clark divined segregationist intent in Palin's references to Joe Six-Pack and hockey moms. "It leaves a lot of people out."

And Democratic Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid echoed Time's Tumulty on the McCain camp's Obama/Raines broadsides: "The only connection that people could bring up about Raines and Barack Obama is that they both are African-American, other than that there is nothing."

The Washington Post reported that Obama's office phoned Raines for housing advice and has stood by its reporting. Is the newspaper part of the McCain/Palin hooded racists' coven, too?

Obama's witch hunters better beware. When there's racism in every hiccup, nobody's air supply is safe. "

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20081010/cm_uc_crmmax/op_197693

"Rock the Vote

Source Powerlineblog.com 

October 22, 2008 Posted by John at 7:16 PM

"We've heard a lot about young people, especially college students, who are devoted to Barack Obama. A lot of ink has been spilled speculating on how many young people will actually turn out to vote. But if this IBD/TIPP  http://www.ibdeditorials.com/Polls.aspx?id=309546869309178   poll is correct, Republicans had better hope the kids turn out in droves:

That's right: voters aged 18-24 are John McCain's best age demographic. That was true of Ronald Reagan, too; young people were his biggest fans. Obama's best cohort is the baby boomers--one more black mark, I guess, against our generation! Cultural stereotypes aside, though, it does seem odd that people in their peak earning years are most likely to support a tax-raiser.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021851.php

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/video/sky-news-video/Video/200810415126586?
 
"Footage Of Presidential Candidate As Prisoner Of War In Vietnam Released

10:09pm UK, Wednesday October 22, 2008

"Footage of John McCain being interviewed as a bedridden prisoner during the Vietnam War has been released by the French national archive.
Source Sky News
 
"McCain, who was filmed smoking, was emotional during the interview

The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.

In the footage an emotional and shirtless McCain passes a message to his wife saying he will get well and loves her.

He also describes being shot down over Hanoi in 1967, and parachuting into a lake.

At times, when speaking of his family, McCain's lower lip trembles and his voice breaks.

"I was on a flight over the city (Hanoi) ... and I was bombing and I was hit by a missile or anti-aircraft fire, I'm not sure which," he said, adding that his plane "when straight down."

After landing in the lake, McCain said he "was picked up and taken to the hospital, where I almost died."

In the interview, McCain said he was treated well by his Vietnamese captors. Asked about the food, he told his French interviewer, "It's not like Paris ... (but) I eat it."

French reporter Francois Chalais conducted the interview , which was first broadcast on French television program Panorama in January 1968.

The journalist's widow, Mei Chen Chalais, is seeking payment from several television broadcasters in France and the US for the unauthorised use of the footage.

Her lawyers have even written to the McCain campaign as its website features a few seconds of the footage, which Chalais said was done without her approval. "

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/US-Elections-2008/John-McCain-Footage-Of-Presidential-Candidate-As-Prisoner-Of-War-In-Vietnam-Released/Article/200810415126616

Quote from a previous article 

"You're (press) just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party"

 https://www.lotterypost.com/blogcomments.asp?i=25000

__________________

"Safety in Numbers? Poll-Driven Press Goes Out on a Limb

Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2008; Page C01

"The network maps are bathed in blue, the pundits contemplating a landslide, the conservative columnists preparing for the indignities of an Obama administration.

"With the numbers breaking Barack Obama's way, it's hardly surprising that poll-driven journalists are suggesting, insinuating or flat-out forecasting a Democratic victory. But could they affect the outcome? And what if they turn out to be wrong about John McCain being toast?

"One piece of press bias is they don't like losers," says CBS correspondent Jeff Greenfield. "When the whiff of defeat surrounds a campaign, the press picks up on it the way sharks smell blood in the water, and then it becomes a feedback loop."

NBC's political map has Obama at 264 electoral votes, just short of the required 270. Political director Chuck Todd told viewers that Obama is "one state away" and says he doesn't see how McCain can catch up.

"I think we have to be responsible," says Todd, adding that he won't hesitate to put Obama over 270 if his analysis supports it. "It'd be worse if somehow we were withholding it. That's crazy too. It looks like you're trying to create drama."

CNN projected Obama leading in states with 277 electoral votes last week, based on a new poll giving the freshman senator a 10-point lead in Virginia. "This is only a snapshot of where the individual states are," says political director Sam Feist. "We're not suggesting that Barack Obama has won this election." ABC's George Stephanopoulos says Obama would win more than 300 electoral votes if the election were held now.

But polls change, as many journalists were reminded when they wrongly predicted that Obama would beat Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. McCain accused the national media last week of having "written us off," as they did so embarrassingly last year.

"It's obvious the media have a preferred candidate in the race," says McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb. "It's obvious the media are eager to seal the fate of John McCain." At the same time, he says, "we know we have some ground to make up. We don't want our people to be demoralized looking at poll numbers that are rather erratic and that we don't think are reliable."

Obama, for his part, warned against <snip>iness last week when "the press starts getting carried away and we end up getting spanked."

"I don't think it's particularly helpful," says Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "And the people who are making these pronouncements are ignoring recent history that have shown very close results. This is a closely divided electorate, and we expect that nationally and in battleground states this race is going to go down to the wire."

News stories have hung their handicapping on partisans. McCain "failed to allay Republican concerns that the presidential race may be slipping beyond his grasp," says the Los Angeles Times. Republican leaders said "they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat," says the New York Times. "Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory," says Politico. And Newsweek has the senator from Illinois on the cover yet again today, with the headline "How a President Obama would govern a center-right country." Not much doubt there.

Opinion writers are even bolder in flouting Yogi Berra's dictum that it ain't over till it's over. "The Democrats are on the verge of a strange victory," writes National Review Editor Rich Lowry. "If Obama is elected, they will arguably have won the most left-wing government in American history."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/19/AR2008101902099.html?nav=hcmodule

"One of Barack Obama's most potent campaign claims is that he'll cut taxes for no less than 95% of "working families." He's even promising to cut taxes enough that the government's tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% -- which is lower than it is today.

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit." Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

The political left defends "refundability" on grounds that these payments help to offset the payroll tax. And that was at least plausible when the only major refundable credit was the earned-income tax credit. Taken together, however, these tax credit payments would exceed payroll levies for most low-income workers.

It is also true that John McCain proposes a refundable tax credit -- his $5,000 to help individuals buy health insurance. We've written before that we prefer a tax deduction for individual health care, rather than a credit. But the big difference with Mr. Obama is that Mr. McCain's proposal replaces the tax subsidy for employer-sponsored health insurance that individuals don't now receive if they buy on their own. It merely changes the nature of the tax subsidy; it doesn't create a new one.

There's another catch: Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year. One mystery -- among many -- of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama's 95% illusion to go unanswered.  "

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Found this link via Powerlineblog.com.

Can you say bullseye??????????????????? 

______________________

Source Meridian  http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

"Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

"An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups.  But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay?  They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here?  Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout?  Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal.  "Housing-gate," no doubt.  Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago.  So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President.  So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts.  This financial crisis was completely preventable.  The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party.  The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie.  Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What?  It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents.  Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link.  (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth.  That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans.  You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do.  Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences.  That's what honesty means .  That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one.  He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women.  Who listens to NOW anymore?  We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late.  You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city. "

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission. "

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

"Barney Frank: Plenty of rich people that we can tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

Poor John, had my doubts some time back but this just confirms everyone's suspicions.         

"Murtha Calls Western Pa. 'Redneck'
Congressman Says Western Pa. Was 'Really Redneck'

POSTED: 4:24 pm EDT October 20, 2008
UPDATED: 6:28 pm EDT October 20, 2008

CHARLEROI, Pa. -- U.S. Rep. John Murtha is calling many of the people who put him in office "rednecks."

The news comes one week after Murtha claimed the area is racist, then apologized for that comment. "

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/17764334/detail.html

"Freddie Mac Tried to Kill Republican Regulatory Bill in 2005

"WASHINGTON —  Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

"In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI's yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole," the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side.

In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel's bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote because Democrats also opposed it and the votes of some would be needed for passage. The measure died at the end of the 109th Congress.

McCain, R-Ariz., was not a target of the DCI campaign. He signed Hagel's letter and three weeks later signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill.

By the time McCain did so, however, DCI's effort had gone on for nine months and was on its way toward killing the bill.

In recent days, McCain has said Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were "one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire" of the global credit crisis. McCain has accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of taking advice from former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and failing to see that the companies were heading for a meltdown.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, or his lobbying firm has taken more than $2 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dating to 2000.

Obama has received $120,349 in political donations from employees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; McCain $21,550.

The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure.

Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed.

Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin oversaw DCI's drive, according to the three people.

"Hollis's goal was not to have any Freddie Mac fingerprints on this project and DCI became the hidden hand behind the effort," one of the three people told the AP.

Before 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democratic strongholds. After 2004, Republicans ran their political operations. McLoughlin, who joined Freddie Mac in 2004 as chief of staff, has given $32,250 to Republican candidates over the years, including $2,800 to McCain, and has given none to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

On Friday night, Hagel's chief of staff, Mike Buttry, said Hagel's legislation "was the last best chance to bring greater oversight and tighter regulation to Freddie and Fannie, and they used every means they could to defeat Sen. Hagel's legislation every step of the way."

"It is outrageous that a congressionally chartered government-sponsored enterprise would lobby against a member of Congress's bill that would strengthen the regulation and oversight of that institution," Buttry said in a statement. "America has paid an extremely high price for the reckless, and possibly criminal, actions of the leadership at Freddie and Fannie."

Nine of the 17 targeted Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter: Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Christopher "Kit" Bond and Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George Allen of Virginia. Aside from the nine, 20 other Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter.

McConnell's office said members of leadership do not sign letters to the leader. McConnell was majority whip at the time.

Eight of the targeted senators did sign it: Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Larry Craig of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, George Voinovich of Ohio and David Vitter of Louisiana. Santorum, Crapo and Bunning were on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and had voted in favor of sending the bill to the full Senate.

On Thursday, Freddie Mac acknowledged that the company "did retain DCI to provide public affairs support at the state and local level." On Friday, DCI issued a four-sentence statement saying it complied with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations in representing Freddie Mac. Neither Freddie Mac nor DCI would say how much Goodyear's consulting firm was paid.

Freddie Mac paid DCI $10,000 a month for each of the targeted states, so the more states, the more money for DCI, according to the three people familiar with the program. In addition, Freddie Mac paid DCI a group retainer of $40,000 a month plus $20,000 a month for each regional manager handling the project, the three people said.

Last month, the concerns of the 26 Republican senators who signed Hagel's bill became a reality when the government seized control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae amid their near financial collapse. Federal prosecutors are investigating accounting, disclosure and corporate governance issues at both companies, which own or guarantee more than $5 trillion in mortgages, roughly equivalent to half of the national debt.

Freddie Mac was so pleased with DCI's work that it retained the firm for other jobs, finally cutting DCI loose last month after the government takeover, according to the three people familiar with the situation.

Freddie Mac's problems began when Hagel's legislation won approval from the Senate committee.

Democrats did not like the harshest provision, which would have given a new regulator a mandate to shrink Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by forcing them to sell off part of their portfolios. That approach, the Democrats feared, would cut into the ability of low- and moderate-income families to buy houses.

The political backdrop to the debate "was like bizarre-o-world," said the second of three people familiar with the program. "The Republicans were pro-regulation and the Democrats were against it; it was upside down."

Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee chairman at the time, underscored that in a statement Wednesday, saying that with Democrats already on their side, it was not surprising that Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae went after Republicans. "Unfortunately," said Shelby, R-Ala., "efforts then to derail reform were successful."

In a sign of bad things to come, Freddie Mac was already having serious problems in 2005. Auditors had exposed massive accounting issues, so improved regulation was one obvious remedy.

Once Freddie Mac's in-house lobbyists failed to keep Hagel's bill bottled up in the committee, McLoughlin responded by secretly hiring DCI.

DCI never filed lobbying reports with Congress about what it was doing because the firm was relying on a long-recognized gap in the disclosure law.

Federal lobbying law only requires reporting and registration when there are contacts with a legislator or staff.

"To have it stealthy, not to let people know who is behind this, in my opinion is unethical," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University who long has taught courses about lobbying.

Goodyear is a longtime political consultant from Arizona who resigned from the Republican convention job this year after Newsweek magazine revealed he had lobbied for the repressive military junta of Myanmar.

McLoughlin, Freddie Mac's senior vice president for external relations, was assistant treasury secretary from 1989 through 1992 in the administration of President Bush's father. McLoughlin served as chief of staff to Sen. Nicholas Brady, R-N.J., in 1982 and to Rep. Millicent Fenwick, R-N.J., from 1975-79.

Seven of the 17 targeted Republican senators were in the midst of re-election campaigns in 2006, and according to one of the three people familiar with the program, Freddie Mac and DCI hoped those facing tough races would tell their Republican colleagues back in Washington that "we've got enough trouble; you're making it worse with Hagel's bill."

Five of the seven DCI targets who ran for re-election in 2006 lost, and Senate control switched to the Democrats.

A Freddie Mac e-mail on May 4, 2006 — the day before Hagel's letter — details the behind-the-scenes effort that Freddie Mac and DCI generated to hold down the number of Republicans signing Hagel's letter urging a full Senate vote. It said:

"What I'm asking is that DCI get a few of their key well-connected constituents from each state to call in to the DC office of their Republican senators and speak to the (legislative director) or (chief of staff) and urge them not to sign the letter. The following could be used as a short script."

The proposed script read: "We can all agree that Fannie's and Freddie's regulator should be strengthened but unfortunately, S.190 goes too far and could potentially have damaging effects on Georgia's — example — home buyers."

According to the third of the three people familiar with the program, "DCI was asked to help keep senators from signing; it was a big part of their effort that year and it was viewed as a success since many DCI targets did not sign the letter."

DCI's progress after the first four months of the campaign was spelled out in a 19-page document dated Dec. 12, 2005, and titled, "Freddie Mac Field Program State by State Summary Report."

A snippet of a senator-by-senator breakdown of the efforts says this about Maine's Snowe:

"Philip Harriman, former state senator, co-chair of Snowe's 2006 campaign, personal Snowe friend, major GOP donor and investment adviser, has written the senator a personal letter on this issue. Dick Morin, vice president Maine Association of Mortgage Brokers, has been in direct contact with Sen. Snowe's committee staff, has sent a letter to Snowe, and is pursuing a dozen(s) of letters from his members."

On Wednesday, Snowe's office issued a statement saying that she "literally gets hundreds of 'Dear Colleague' letters seeking support for their positions that she does not sign. Had this legislation come up for a vote in 2006, she certainly would have considered it on its merits — as she does every vote. Just last July, she voted for the housing bill that established a new, stronger regulator."

Rosario Marin, a staunch McCain supporter who spoke at the GOP convention in September, was among the people DCI used in carrying out the campaign.

Marin, the U.S. treasurer during the first term of the Bush administration, went to Missouri and to Montana, Burns' state, where she spoke out against Hagel's bill.

At the time, Burns, who ended up losing his re-election bid, was caught up in a Washington influence peddling scandal centering on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Marin's visit triggered a local newspaper story in which the reporter contacted Burns' staff for comment. Burns' office told the newspaper the senator was not supportive of the latest version of Hagel's bill.

On Wednesday, Marin, now state consumer services secretary in California, issued a statement confirming that her trips to Missouri and Montana were in her capacity as a DCI consultant.

The December 2005 summary listing 17 Republican targets outlines the inroads DCI was making.

"On day one" of the effort, Sen. George Allen of Virginia had not addressed Hagel's bill and his legislative aide for housing was not assigned to it, the report said.

"Today," the report added, "the senator is aware of the issue and ... at the moment he is undecided." Allen's deputy chief of staff "has said that the senator will take into consideration before he decides that Freddie Mac is located in Virginia and is one of the largest Virginia employers."

"Grasstops/opinion leaders James Todd, president, the Peterson Companies wrote to both senators," the report added. "Milt Peterson, the founder and CEO of the company is one of Allen's major donors."

In the end, Allen, who lost his bid for re-election in 2006, did not sign Hagel's letter. "

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