Political Digest September 18, 2009

Obama Associate Implicated in Murder Plot
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obama-associate-implicated-in-murder-plot/
Excerpt: The sub-headline over the article says it all: "The investigation into a cop killing in the '70s leads to a law professor who helped launch Barack Obama's political career." The law professor is former Communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, a leader of the Weather Underground known for praising mass murderer Charles Manson. Writer Peter Jamison, who is based in San Francisco, where the cop killing occurred, spent months working on the story and developed many different sources of information. Jamison, who can't be dismissed as a right-winger pursuing a partisan agenda designed to make Obama look bad, examined the evidence in the 1970 Park Police Station bombing case. He finds that it goes straight to Dohrn and other members of the Weather Underground, including her husband, fellow terrorist Bill Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois. His article is being syndicated by Village Voice Media, a source of news and information for newsweeklies in several major U.S. cities. The outlets include the SF Weekly in San Francisco, the Miami New Times, and the St. Louis Riverfront Times. The story is actually an old one, and Accuracy in Media had publicized some of the evidence in the case before the 2008 presidential election, when the media were repeating the lie that the Weather Underground had never killed anyone with their campaign of violence.

OJ Out
Heard on the radio Thursday that OJ was getting out of jail. Suppose, as Skip Gates woul say, This is what happens to a black man in America.” They said he’s had a girlfriend for 13 years, was 19 when she got involved with him, right after the jury acquitted hi, What’s up with her?

Morning Fix: ACORN -- How Much Danger for Democrats?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/morning-fix-3.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: …but it's clear from the reaction of the White House that leading Democrats understand that being seen as defenders of the community group is political suicide. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called the tapes "completely unacceptable" during his daily briefing on Wednesday, adding "the administration takes accountability extremely seriously." Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, said the ACORN controversy poses a "huge risk" to the Democratic party. "Swing voters are almost certainly going to put off by the constant barrage of stories about their abuses, the videos, and their unrepentant approach to the way they operate," he added. (ACORN may now be the best-funded criminal organization in the country. Except Congress, of course.)

Acorn: Creature of the CRA
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36330
Excerpt: Acorn found its way into the mortgage business through the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 legislation that community groups have used as a cudgel to force lenders to lower their mortgage underwriting standards in order to make more loans in low-income communities. Often the groups, after making protests under CRA, were then rewarded by banks with contracts to act as mortgage counselors in low-income areas in return for dropping their protests against the banks. In one particularly lucrative deal, 14 major banks eager to put CRA protests behind them in 1993 signed an agreement to have Acorn administer a $55 million, 11-city lending program. It was precisely such agreements that helped turn Acorn from a network of small local groups into a national player. And Acorn hasn't been alone. A U.S. senate subcommittee once estimated that CRA-related deals between banks and community groups have pumped nearly $10 billion into the nonprofit sector. Given the economic fallout from the long efforts by advocacy groups to water down mortgage lending standards, as well as the controversy surrounding Acorn's mortgage counseling methods, you would imagine that politicians in Washington would be eager to narrow the scope of the CRA and reduce the leverage that community groups wield under it. But to the contrary, Washington is actually looking to expand the CRA once again. On Capitol Hill today the House Committee on Financial Services under Chairman Barney Frank is holding hearings on legislation supported by the Obama administration that would bring insurance companies and credit unions under the umbrella of CRA, placing new lending demands on these groups and opening them up to protests and pressure tactics by organizations like Acorn. As proof that Washington is a looking-glass world where basic values and logic get perverted, proponents of the new legislation claim we need more CRA to rein in the bad practices of the housing bubble, which is sort of like arguing that the cure for alcoholism is another martini. Any review of the history of the affordable mortgage movement in America demonstrates the power that CRA had in helping to shred mortgage underwriting standards throughout the industry and exposing us to the kind of market meltdown we've experienced.

Tangled Web of Corruption: Obama, TIDES and ACORN
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/09/obamas-white-house-acorn-crime-covered-up-by-tides.html
Excerpt: "Keep your yaps shut." That's what people working for two left-wing groups were told when word started to filter out that the head of another benefactor of "progressive" causes was going to bail out one of the groups stung by an embezzlement scandal. Drummond Pike, the founder and CEO of the Tides Foundation, agreed to buy a nearly $1 million promissory note from the family of Wade Rathke, founder and recent leader of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, reports The New York Times. Wade Rathke sits on the Tides Foundation board. (And Pittsburgh's Heinz Endowments, chaired by ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, funded Tides with more than $8 million between 1994 and 2005.)

Jon Stewart on ACORN
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-15-2009/the-audacity-of-hos
Too funny. A must watch.

See my blog last night on racism
Scroll down.

Former President calls Barack Obama a “black boy,” says Obama not qualified.
http://goodtimepolitics.com/
Or:
http://www.nmatv.com/video/3390/Archives:-Jimmy-Carter-Calls-Obama-a-
Guess racism still alive with some folks.

Jimmy Carter's Ill-Advised Effort to Atone
http://townhall.com/columnists/MattTowery/2009/09/17/jimmy_carters_ill-advised_effort_to_atone
Excerpt: There isn't a living political expert from that bygone era who doesn't know that gubernatorial candidate Carter -- running against the progressive Carl Sanders -- said many times in public appearances that he was a Lester Maddox Democrat. That doesn't mean Carter was spewing racial epithets. It does mean that he "played the race card" himself to get elected. What's unfortunate is that Carter now has chosen to flip that race card over and play it for the opposite effect he sought a generation ago. Though no racist himself, Carter now perhaps is seeking atonement for his campaign rhetoric of years past.

Jimmy Carter's racist campaign of 1970
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Jimmy-Carters-racist-campaign-of-1970-59499482.html
Excerpt: Readers should refer to Stephen Hayward's The Real Jimmy Carter if they want a taste of the out-and-out racism that Carter employed in order to defeat moderate former Gov. Carl Sanders for the Democratic nomination that year. As Hayward's book points out:
· Carter's top campaign staffers were spotted distributing grainy photographs of Sanders arm-in-arm celebrating with two black men. Sanders was a part-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and in the photograph he was celebrating a victory with two players who were pouring champagne over his head. Carter's leaflet was intended to depress Sanders's white vote.
· "The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr."
· Carter criticized Sanders, a former governor, for preventing Alabama Gov. and notorious segregationist George Wallace from speaking on Georgia state property. "I don't think it was right for Governor Sanders to try to please a group of ultra-liberals, particularly those in Washington, when it means stifling communication with another state," said Carter.
· "'I have no trouble pitching for Wallace votes and black votes at the same time,' Carter told a reporter. Carter also said to another reporter, 'I can win this election without a single black vote.'"
· Upon receiving the endorsement of former Democratic Gov. Lester Maddox, Carter responded by praising the life-long segregationist: "He has brought a standard of forthright expression and personal honesty to the governor's office, and I hope to live up to his standard." Maddox had not only refused to serve blacks in the restaurant he once owned, but he had also greeted civil rights protestors with a gun, and made sticks available to his white customers with which to intimidate them.

Democrats Jumping the Race-Card Shark
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/democrats_jumping_the_racecard_1.html
Excerpt: Tuesday, a Congressman from my home state of Georgia, Rep. Hank Johnson said that if the House didn't censure Joe Wilson, then folks would "put on the white hoods and roam the countryside." Congressman Johnson seems to have forgotten that most of the KKK men, to whom he is referring, were Democrats, the architects and masters of real Southern Apartheid, Jim Crow. Heck, Senator Byrd is still there and he was one. A rather inconvenient fact, however, is that the only reported act of racial violence so far happened on Tuesday on a public school bus in St. Louis and the offenders were black, the victim white. An apparently unprovoked attack on a high school student took place over - get this - a seat on the bus. The irony is downright nerve-wrenching. A black student beat the white student to the cheers of his black classmates and the bus driver supposedly did nothing to intervene. KKK in reverse? That's a lot more violence than Rosa Parks got over her seat on the bus. In fact, Rosa Parks wasn't on the receiving end of anything more than arrogant stares. Police suspect race was the motivating factor in the St. Louis school-bus attack. Now, it's pretty darned hard to polarize the entire white-conservative citizenry in pure Alinsky fashion. Evidently, though, this is going to be the line of attack. What's obvious, however, is that this is the most desperate move yet to shore up the failing grades of a president in over his head. And it certainly does appear orchestrated. DNC, anyone?

The Clinton Tapes
http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/gqeditors/2009/09/secret-history.html
Excerpt: Meeting late at night and sometimes through the night, Clinton and Branch embarked on a series of seventy-nine conversations about politics, the presidents, the Whitewater investigation, and yes, even Monica—recording every word for posterity. Acutely aware that their tapes could be subpoenaed at any moment and desperate to avoid making them public, Clinton squirreled away the cassettes in his sock drawer and has never spoken of them nor made them public. But this month, Branch releases a 670-page mammoth tome, The Clinton Tapes, that mines those conversations and delves into Clinton’s presidency and state of mind through a tumultuous and historic eight years. (Ah, yes, the transparent Democrats. And another book by a Clinton sycophant. Ho hum.)

DeMint Calls for an End to Murtha Airport Waste
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/09/demint_calls_for_an_end_to_mur.html?wprss=capitol-briefing
Excerpt: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said the John P. Murtha Airport in the congressman's hometown of Johnstown, Pa., rivaled the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska for the amount of federal dollars it had wasted, and offered an amendment to stop an annual $1.4 million subsidy for airport traffic there. The airport has received $200 million in federal funds in the last 15 years. Most of those funds were steered there by Murtha, including more than $25 million for stronger runways to handle heavy military planes, which don't fly there; $8 million for a radar system, which isn't used; and $800,000 in new stimulus funds to repave an alternate runway. (Meantime, I can’t figure out why there’s a deficit, with both parties against deficits. Weird, huh?)

Obama Scraps European Missile Shield Plan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091700639.html
Obama caves to Putin, throws allies out of the boat. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Maybe ACORN will stop Iran’s missiles, if we give them a few billion dollars more of tax money.

Obama lied and the Congress cried
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/09/16/barack-obama-did-lie-in-his-speech-he-got-the-facts-wrong-in-his-tear-jerker-story/

Washington Two Step
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/09/16/harry-reid-plays-washington-two-step-and-gets-caught/
Reid tries to have it both ways.

Obama and the politics of demonization
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2009/09/16/obama-and-politics-of-demonization/
Excerpt: There have been three salient features thus far of the Obama Administration. The first is its secretive nature, elevating to the status of quasi state secrets information that has been readily available in previous Administrations. The second is a Carteresque level of incompetence which spans the gamut from economic to foreign policy. The third is simple nastiness when confronted with opposition.

Good aerial view of the 9/12 DC Protest
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/capitol-view-lo-res.jpg

Public strongly supports tort reform
http://www.philipkhoward.com/images/uploads/CommonGood_PPT_Clarus-poll-sept10-09_ppt.pdf
But Congress is run by the League of Leftwing lawyers

Spreading terror
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275886.html#moreChavez
Excerpt: Two related items that should give the Obama administration pause as it seeks ways to engage Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and other countries in Venezuela's sphere of influence (Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador primarily). The first is the new Memorandum of Understanding signed between the militaries of Venezuela and Iran. According to the official FARS News Agency, Iran's defense minister, in a visit to Caracas, "underlined Tehran's all-out efforts to help Venezuela promote its defense capabilities and bolster its power of deterrence through bilateral Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) on military cooperation." Chávez, for his part, stated that "The Bolivarian and the Islamic Revolutions have a lot in common and these commonalities have consolidated the two countries' bonds."... At the same time, 17 people were arrested in the small Caribbean island (and Dutch territory) of Curacao on charges of transporting several tons of cocaine and sending some of the money to Hezbollah. "We have been able to establish that this group has relations with international criminal organizations that have connections with the Hezbollah," prosecutor Ludmila Vicento said.

The need for medical liability reform (Sen. John Cornyn)
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/58771--the-need-for-medical-liability-reform-sen-john-cornyn
Excerpt: The CBO estimated that the federal government would directly save about $5.6 billion dollars from the types of reforms enacted in Texas, and that total health care spending could be reduced further if these reforms reduced the practice of defensive medicine. Other academic studies have concluded liability reform could save between 5 and 9 percent of health care costs. These reforms will also increase access to health care, especially to high-risk medical specialties. (Hummmm. Help taxpayers, reduce the cost of health care, but hurt lawyers. What will Congress do? Hummm.)

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/15/taking_liberties/entry5314040.shtml
“If (Barack Obama) is elected president, families making under $250,000 a year won’t pay a penny more in taxes.” (We’ll gouge the lower and middle classes through health care reform, cap and trade and deficit-driven inflation. No need to tax them. Except smokers.)

Public Option Lite
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574416930475823324.html
Excerpt: The centerpiece of the Obama-Baucus plan is a decree that everyone purchase heavily regulated insurance policies or else pay a penalty. This government mandate would require huge subsidies as well as brute force to get anywhere near the goal of universal coverage. The inevitable result would be a vast increase in the government's share of U.S. health spending, forcing doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and other health providers to serve politics as well as or even over and above patients.

Medical-Device Makers Scramble to Avert New Fees in Health Bill
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125297599091410349.html
Excerpt: A draft of a broad health-overhaul bill in the Finance Committee calls for device makers to pay $40 billion in fees over 10 years, with the specific amount based on each company's market share. The relatively high fees resulted from a lobbying move that some senior congressional aides and industry officials say represented a strategic error on the device industry's part. Device makers were among the health-related industries that went to the White House this spring to volunteer financial concessions as part of an overhaul. They were then asked to offer a dollar amount in savings, representatives of the device industry and congressional aides said. Instead, the companies suggested that the government levy a tax on their adversaries: hospital-purchasing groups that negotiate for lower prices on medical supplies and some devices. Some senators, including Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), were troubled that the device makers were "offering up other people's money," said a person close to the negotiations. This person cited a line that has come to represent the maneuvering among health-care industries, the White House and Congress: "You either come to the table early, or you end up part of the dinner." (And the manufacturers will pass the taxes on to the patients, who will pay more for health care.)

Failure to Implement U.S.-Korea and U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreements
http://www.uschamber.com/international/trade_study_agreements.htm
I’ll say it again. Free trade improves the economies of the countries involved, trade barriers—popular with unions, protected industries and economically-ignorant voters—hurts the economy. India used to have huge trade barriers. It greatly reduced them in the 1990s—and took off as a new economic powerhouse. But as long as the voters are stupid, folks like Obama can win votes by promising to call up the presidents of Mexico and Canada (sic) to renegotiate NAFTA.

Lower Your Taxes: Move to Switzerland
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_38/b4147062134006.htm
Excerpts: "There is a lot of interest from companies looking to shift their taxable profit to countries with lower rates," says Andreas Müller, an international corporate tax partner at KPMG in Zurich. Meanwhile, Britain and Ireland are increasing personal income tax rates for top earners. In the U.S., tax hikes seem inevitable. Switzerland has no such plans, says Stéphane Garelli, professor of competitiveness at IMD Business School in Lausanne. (Tax the rich & big business, lose the jobs. Duh.)

Obama’s retreat in Afghanistan
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2009/09/16/obamas-retreat-in-afghanistan/
Excerpt: My analysis was flawed because I failed to take into consideration the chutzpah required to break out of this binary scenario. We are on the cusp of a campaign by the White House to convince us that Afghanistan simply isn’t important.

Dutch court blocks "football chant" of "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/09/dutch-court-blocks-football-chant-of-hamas-hamas-jews-to-the-gas.html
Excerpt: The Dutch High Court ruled on Tuesday that the chant 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas' is punishable by law because it is insulting to Jews, reports broadcaster Nos.
The case was brought before the High Court by a football supporter who had been sentenced to 80 hours community service and probation of two years by the lower court.
The man refused to accept the judgement saying the chant forms part of the culture surrounding football. 'It is not used with the intention of insulting Jews but to provoke other supporters,' he said in his defence...

America’s Imperial President
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/l_boyland/2009/09162009.htm
Paranoid. But even paranoids have enemies.

Word of the Day
Coulrophobia. Noun. Fear of Congress. Real word. Look it up.

Quotes of the day

After President Barack Obama gave a speech to a joint session of Congress last week passionately defending his national health care plan, the Democrats were agog at the brilliance of the speech. Nancy Pelosi was so thrilled, her expression almost changed. --Ann Coulter.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome. --Sir Winston Churchill; (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 London, 1899)