Obama's Guilt By Agreement

From the Spectator:

An unapologetic aging domestic terrorist writes a book about "justice" and Barack Obama praises it. This isn't guilt by association but guilt by agreement. ...
...That Obama uncorked his political career at a "coffee" in the home of this fugitive from justice is a Tom Wolfe novel come to life. The radical influences on Obama are almost beyond parody: in youth, he sat at the knee of a Communist poet, Frank Marshall Davis, learned community organizing from the works of Saul Alinsky, received religious instruction from the "God damn America"-spewing Jeremiah Wright, and political tutoring from attendees at Communist Congresses like Alice Palmer. Guilt by association? In Chicago, as evident in the fact that his first state senate campaign got a boost from Palmer introducing him to Ayers' social circle, Obama sought reward by association and agreement with radicals.... (more)

Obama, Ayers, Chavez and Your Children's Education

More on his association with Ayers from the NYPost:

While denying any other meaningful link between the two, the Obama campaign says that Obama has long respected Ayers' work on education; many press accounts refer to him as a "school reformer." Problem is, those "school reforms" boil down to propagandizing for the very ideas that led Ayers to blow up buildings decades ago. ...

...But, as Stanley Kurtz and Sol Stern have pointed out, Obama helped deliver thousands of dollars to fund Ayers' education projects in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - whose purpose, says Kurtz, is to infuse students "with a radical political commitment."
Ayers makes this very clear in all his writings. K-12 teachers, he has written, must teach "for social justice and liberation" - making classrooms into centers for creating revolutionary change.
Time has only hardened Ayers' views. Consider an interview he gave two years ago to "Revolution," a magazine published by The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, a self-described "Marxist, Leninist, Maoist" group.
There, Ayers argues that education can't be separated from "the concept of politics and political change." Urban schools are now merely preparing students "for prison, for unemployment and for war."
So, to create a genuine "progressive" education for our children, teachers must work to overturn the repressive, racist and imperialist system that governs the United States; it is imperative to fight "the most reactionary cabal of ideologues" that control the federal government and the media. (more)

Over at IBD they have picked up on this as well:

...Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal's Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.
An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America's schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.
With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."
Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion." It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America....(more)

ACORN, Obama and Scandal

A compilation of stories on the fraudulent practices and corrupt network otherwise known as ACORN, an organization which has ties to Obama and is involved deeply in the whole mortgage mess. We posted a piece from Townhall which talked about these issues here:

...ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,...( on whose board he sat with the terrorist William Ayers). Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler. ...(more)

He was also their legal representative against certain banks who would not cave to their intimidation.

Over at Midwest Voices a nice summary of the most recent scandals:

It’s time to shut down ACORN, work against voter fraud

Thousands of fraudulent voter registrations have surfaced after having been submitted by ACORN. In some parts of Ohio, over half of the registrations submitted by ACORN are at least questionable. ACORN even admits that it is unable to insure there is no fraud. In the Kansas City area, one name, Monica Ray, registered 20 times....

...In Indianapolis, it was announced today that they have a total of 677,401 voter registrations. The problem is that Indianapolis only has 644,197 voter population. That means they have a registration of 105%.
In Las Vegas, the Dallas Cowboys names showed up on voter registration cards. (more)

In all about 12 states have had issues with voter fraud from this organization, many of them battleground states. Someone is trying to steal this election.

In Ohio a Federal judge had to force the Secretary of State to do something:

Federal judge rules Brunner must check voters

He specifically cited questionable activity of one group that registered thousands of new Ohio voters: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine said the ruling spoke volumes about Brunner, a Democrat.
“Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It's especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group's stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio,” he said. (more)

Over at DoctorBulldog they've got the video of McCain calling for ACORN to be investigated.

Archives confirm Barack Obama belonged to socialist party

From the October 1996 Update of the DSA 'New Party':"Three New Party members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: ... Barack Obama (State Senate) and ... New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago."

read more | digg story

Obamas "Truth Squads" and Strong Arm Tactics

McCain Ad bringing up Obama's attempts to silence opposition in Missouri can be found here.
Think this is just McCain Propaganda?
As previously reported by the Dallas Examiner here.
"...it fits all too well with the legal threats the Democratic candidate's campaign is leveling against TV stations that run NRA ads critical of Barack Obama. John Lott, a noted economist and firearms scholar, has copies of the Obama campaign's cease-and-desist letters on his Website. ..
Because of the outcry they were forced to back off but of course they aren't in power-yet....

'Fact Checking' Descends Into Opinion Journalism

Speaking of Fact Checkers apparently CNN and the CNN Truth Squad are a bit at odds over the whole Ayers question as reported over at DrBulldog

H/T to RealClearPolitics for highlighting this article from WSJ online:

The "fact check" is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news. The object is not merely to report facts but to pass a judgment. The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog ends each assessment with between one and four "Pinocchios," just like movie reviewers giving out stars.
Like movie reviewing, the "fact check" is a highly subjective process. If a politician makes a statement that is flatly false, it does not need to be "fact checked." The facts themselves are sufficient. "Fact checks" end up dealing in murkier areas of context and emphasis, making it very easy for the journalist to make up standards as he goes along, applying them more rigorously to the candidate he disfavors (which usually means the Republican).
Example: USA Today has a "reality check" of a McCain ad whose script runs as follows:

Narrator: "Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are . . .
Obama: ". . . just air-raiding villages and killing civilians."
Narrator: "How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops, increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and congressional liberals: too risky for America."
The USA Today headline reads "Quote From Obama Taken Out of Context." In a way this is a tautology, since a quotation by definition is taken out of its original context (and placed in a new one). But of course the phrase out of context usually connotes "used in a misleading way." Is that the case here? Here is a longer version of the Obama quote, per USA Today:
"We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
On the one hand, Obama was making a broader argument, which the McCain ad ignores: that America should send more troops to Afghanistan. On the other hand, Obama clearly did assert that America is "air-raiding villages and killing civilians" (the subsequent clause makes that undeniable), though one could argue about whether he was asserting or merely worrying that we are "just" doing so. (more)

The Ayers Question

More questions and less swooning. What exactly is behind the "veil of secrecy?"
From NR:
Very soon after she was picked to be McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin was attacked by Obamacampaign spokesmen and a Democratic member of Congress for once being seen wearing a Pat Buchanan button. She had an answer and the campaign offered it. Yet now we are asked to believe that it’s somehow inappropriate to inquire why Barack Obama’s political career began in the home of an admitted and unrepentant domestic terrorist of the radical left? “Who is Barack Obama?” is not an irrelevant question given the job Obama is seeking, and it’s a question he has sought mightily to avoid answering. The veil of secrecy he has thrown over his past (journalists have been denied access to his state legislative office records, documents about state earmarks he distributed in Illinois, a list of his legal clients, his state bar application, billing records related to Tony Rezko, medical records, academic records — all of which are the sort of documents candidates routinely make public) forces the question all the more. (more)

Obama awarded Illinois grants to relative's group

More of the same.
From YahooNews/AP:
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - As a state senator, Democrat Barack Obama awarded $75,000 in government grants to a Chicago social service organization led by a rabbi who is also his wife's cousin, records show. ...

...But guidelines were practically nonexistent.
At the time, Illinois legislators were handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. The money was part of a deal that legislative leaders cut with the governor to approve a major public-works program.
Each legislator could award money to favored groups and projects with basically no oversight. The grants were known as "member initiatives" and were similar to the congressional "earmarks" often criticized in Obama's presidential campaign against Republican John McCain.
Obama awarded about $6 million for everything from literacy programs and park improvements to drill team uniforms and jazz appreciation events. (more)

House Of Lies: How Congress Failed To Protect Our Economy

Chilling-
Watch the video here. Send it to your friends who are on the fence or undecided.

Text from the "Housing Enterprise Act of 2005"

Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]: Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, 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.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

Remember that many of that "Senior management" are advisors to Obama now....

Who Is To Blame?

From a NY times article (September 1999) we see the Democrats responsible for pressuring Fannie Mase to ease restrictions on mortgages:

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. .." (more here)

Then we see this article about how the Bush administration in September 2003, proposed "significant regulatory overhaul" on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. (more here)

Who opposed it? Well, it says here:

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

Here's the real kicker:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

But go ahead and put them in the White House. Obama's leading financial advisors have a history with these failed institutions and his Democrat buddies are now in charge of Congress. God help us.

Biden's Big Lie

From littlegreenfootballs.com:
In tonight’s debate, Joe Biden claimed that Barack Obama never said he would meet unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.That was a blatant, shameless lie, with the video to prove it...

read more digg story


And here are 13 more ...

Obama’s Fishy $200 Million

Previously posted here Newsmax this from the American Spectator:
FUNNY MONEYAn auditor for the Federal Election Commission is attempting to have his bosses seek a formal investigation into the collection by the Obama for President campaign of more than $200 million in potentially illegal political donations, including millions of dollars of illegal, foreign donations, and has sought a request for assistance from the Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the analyst's requests have largely been ignored. "I can't get anyone to move. I believe we are looking at a hijacking of our political system that makes the Clinton and Gore fundraising scandals pale in comparison. And no one here wants to touch it."...

..."The question has always been, if you buy a $25 t-shirt and you go back to that purchaser eight or nine times with email appeals for $200 or $500 donations, and you have people donating like that all the time, at what point does the campaign bother to check if the FEC limit has been exceeded?" says a former Clinton campaign fundraiser. "There are enough of us from the 1992 and 1996 and 2000 races around to know that many of these kinds of violations never get caught until after the election has been won or lost. In this case, there is no way the Obama campaign will be held accountable before Election Day, unless someone raises holy hell."... (more)

Time to raise some hell, folks...

EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi paid husband with PAC funds

From the Washington Times:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year.
Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history. (more)

Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign

Oh... THAT kind of change...
From NewsMax:
More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.
And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.
The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.
But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.
Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted. (more)

College Op-Ed: Obama As My Personal Jesus - A Catholic Blog: Religion, Politics, Current Events, Humor, and more.

Good stuff over at CMR as usual summed up nicely with this:

"But a country that looks to its politicians for truth, rather than policy answers is one that is barreling down the road towards dictatorship."

Welcome to Election 2008- May we get the leader we need and not the one we deserve..

Creative Minority Report: College Op-Ed: Obama As My Personal Jesus -

Obama Launches "False" Attack Ads Claiming McCain Opposes Embryo Research

From Lifesite:
...The Obama spots were denounced as false by factcheck.org, a nonpartisan, non-profit "consumer advocate" program for voters of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that "aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." Factcheck.org says that McCain has supported research using human embryos since 2001 and has not changed his position.
Factcheck.org found that while Obama's claims were false, two spots from the McCain-Palin campaign and Republican National Committee, describing McCain's support for the research are "largely accurate." The only criticism Factcheck.org made of the McCain spots was that it would tend to lead voters to believe that Sarah Palin shares her running mate's position. "That's not true," they said, "but we find that to be a minor flaw compared with the misrepresentation in Obama's ad." ... (more)

ACORN, Obama, and the Mortgage Mess

A must read over at Townhall:
...amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN.
ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and "direct action" that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members. ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn't get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes. This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we're in. ...
ACORN does many things under the umbrella of "community organizing." They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course). Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren't especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the "worst case of election fraud in our state's history."...
...ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,...
( on whose board he sat with the terrorist William Ayers).

Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler. ...(more)

Time for McCain to Name Names

There was some hint today that the McCain campaign has every intention doing just that as soon as a bail out/rescue package is passed. Playing politics with a crisis is no good but if the crisis is "solved" or at least forestalled then they can get back to the nuts and bolts..
From American Thinker:
...McCain himself eloquently and correctly pointed out problems with Fannie and Freddie back in 2005 and 2006, only to have the reforms he wanted defeated by Democrats in Congress. President Bush was with McCain on these issues. Obama meanwhile, garnering more Fannie Mae contributions in two years than all other senators not named Chris Dodd in the last nine, has been on the wrong side of these issues. This is a slam dunk waiting for McCain simply to take advantage of it.
Recently he has been out rambling on about government spending, CEO pay and earmarks. Yawn. None of this is pertinent unless you point out that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democrat earmarks and that the worst CEO pay abuse in recent memory is Franklin Raines' incentive compensation from Fannie triggered by fraudulent accounting. McCain did not bother to point any of that out of course. We must not "assign blame.'
The simple fact is this: if the Democrats do not get their deserved blame for this economic situation, Republicans will experience a bloodbath on Election Day. The way our elections work, it is up to McCain to make that happen. The fact that he seems not to understand it is why many conservatives loathed the idea of a McCain nomination to begin with...(more)

An Open Door to a Carbon Tax?

WHAT!!!???
From AmSpec Blog:
From the bailout bill (PDF):SEC. 116. CERTAIN INCOME AND GAINS RELATING TO INDUSTRIAL SOURCE CARBON DIOXIDE TREATED AS QUALIFYING INCOME FOR PUBLICLY TRADED PARTNERSHIPS....(more)

You Tube pulls a popular anti-Democrat video off the web

American Thinker:
The 9:59 video entitled "Burning Down the House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis" played four different songs under a fast moving video sequence that very clearly tied Democrats like Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson and Barack Obama to policies and corruption related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It cleverly showed how the "affordable mortgage" programs sent an economic virus through the entire economy and showed Republican efforts to intervene and regulate being blocked.
For Obama and all congressional Democrats, it was a devastating video. (more here)

But you can still see it over at DrBulldog

Beginning of the End of the Feminist Movement

Palinism’s Threat to Feminism. Excellent writing over at American Spectator:

...Why are feminists so bothered by her? Could it be that if she were to be elected, it would be the end of their movement? I mean, what would they say at their next feminist meeting: "Women aren't getting ahead"? What they should be saying at their next meeting is: "My God, do you see the way this woman is being treated? Let's do whatever we have to do, even though, yes, she thinks differently on certain issues, let's defend her." But how can they? Her very existence brings to light the waste of the life and years that they have lived on this Earth. Sarah Palin is everything they hate, because she is everything they never could be or chose not to be...

...What could be worse for a woman who has chosen a barren existence, in the name of a movement, than to see a woman get ahead who has already actually gotten so many great things out of life? If Sarah Plain gets elected it would sort of imply that their lives have had no meaning, and would leave open the question: "For what have they done any of this?" Sadly, this has to be how they see it.... (more)

Obama: 'McCain Is Absolutely Right'

Fromthe AmSpec Blog the latest ad from the debates...

A rapid-response ad from the McCain campaign

This is the theme at National Review as well:

Obama was smooth, unflappable, and just a little off balance for much of the evening. Worse for him, he seemed inexplicably eager to concede that McCain was right on issue after issue. A candidate determined to appear congenial might do that once, or even twice, but Obama did it eight times:

• “I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility…”
• “Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused…”
• “He’s also right that oftentimes lobbyists and special interests are the ones that are introducing these…requests…”
• “John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he’s absolutely right…”
• “John is right we have to make cuts…”
• “Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families…”
• “John — you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say…”
• “Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran…” read more here

Gee, if they agree this much I guess I'll just go with the guy with experience...

Arctic Sea Ice Melt Season Officially Over; Ice Up Over 9% from Last Year

From IceCap:

We have news from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). They say: The melt is over. And we’ve added 9.4% ice coverage from this time last year. Though it appears NSIDC is attempting to downplay this in their web page announcement today, one can safely say that despite irrational predictions seen earlier this year, we didn’t reach an “ice free north pole” nor a new record low for sea ice extent. Here is the current sea ice extent graph from NSIDC as of today, notice the upturn, which has been adding ice now for 5 days:

..(More)

Obama Campaign Chair Responsible For Major Bank Failure

From American Spectator:

..Which makes it all the more significant that Barack Obama has posted on his campaign website a naive and ignorant defense* of his campaign finance chair, Penny Pritzker, concerning her key leadership involvement in the largest bank failure in the 18 years between the last great banking crisis (the 1980s S&L debacle) and today's even-more-massive banking crisis. The excuses, misdirections, and spin Senator Obama offers in defense of this billionaire failed bank executive are Pritzker spin from start to finish, and expose Obama's profound inability to understand why banks fail and how to keep banks safe. ...
...Superior Bank failed because of the same problem that is bringing down all the banks now: subprime loans. Who got the bank into those loans? Obama's own finance chair, Penny Pritzker. Sworn deposition testimony puts Penny Pritzker not only on the board of the bank and its holding company, Coast, but personally leading the meeting to persuade regulators to let the bank into the subprime market. You have Enron-style accounting that hid the real asset values, two disgraced bank executives under her supervision whom the government forced out of the banking industry with official cease-and-desist orders, a Department of Justice Expert Report placing the blame squarely on the executives and owners, and the Pritzkers agreeing to pay $460 million over 15 years to escape government lawsuits and sanctions. This all happened in Illinois while Obama was an Illinois state senator. What did he know about it? According to his website, the accountants were to blame. Should a presidential candidate accept such an excuse from a failed bank owner? On 60 Minutes last Sunday (Sept. 21), Senator Obama blamed the current banking crisis on "greedy CEOs and investors taking too much risk." Well, Senator, you've got one of those "greedy CEOs and investors taking too much risk" financing your campaign, and writing your website for you, passing the buck to the accountants. Superior's failure was studied by the United States Treasury Department and by banking regulators in special Inspector General reports, and has been documented in the open files of the Court of Federal Claims, available to Obama throughout his term as a U.S. Senator. Did he ever read any of them? Apparently Senator Obama's friendship with Penny Pritzker -- and her billions of dollars -- caused him not to look into any of these reports and documents to understand why, during a period in which almost no banks of any size failed, Penny Pritzker's bank failed so massively that she and her family agreed to pay $460 million. And failed right in Senator Obama's hometown. ..(more)
But go ahead and make him President...

Couric Diminishes Gov. Palin

From American Spectator:
CBS New anchor Katie Couric ordered staff to drop all references to "Governor" or "Gov." from her interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. When a staff member pointed out that in other venues, Couric and CBS News had referred to Governor Palin's opponent, Joe Biden, using his title of "Senator" or the abbreviation, Couric, according to a CBS News editorial aide, sought approval from CBS News management to drop the "Governor" reference during her broadcast interview with Palin that began on Wednesday night."It's not true," said another CBS News source. "We treat everyone the same."But, in fact, that's not the case: as late as September 22, CBS News and Couric -- even on the CBS website -- used Biden's honorific. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a Couric interview with "Sen." Biden:
Katie Couric: How is it preparing for the debates?
Sen. Joe Biden: Well, it's kind of hard to prepare because I don't know what she thinks. There's been no -- I don't know a lot about her, so I have to assume for purposes of the debate that she agrees with John on everything.
Now compare that the transcript of the "Palin" interview:
Couric: Why do you say that? Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama?Palin: He's got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that's needed at a crisis time like this.
In fact, at no point during the broadcast interview does Couric refer to the GOP vice presidential nominee as "Governor." (more)

Hide The Ball

From Townhall:
Why does Barack Obama play hide the ball with his personal resume, concealing his extreme leftist ideology and denying his damning associations? Question kind of answers itself, wouldn't you say? Be concerned, very concerned. ...

...Obama will only come clean about his liberalism when he thinks he is in safe territory, as he did at the San Francisco fundraiser where he trashed small-town Americans, thinking his words wouldn't reach those he was belittling. Nor is Obama upfront about the liberal nature of his policy proposals, choosing instead to mask their liberalism and even disguise them as conservative.
How else do you explain his whopper that he is recommending a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans when we know that the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay very little income tax at all? His plan calls for giving many of these people tax credits, even though they are paying no tax or are paying a small enough amount that the credit would result in them netting money from the government. As others have pointed out, this is welfare, not a tax cut. "Tax cut" resonates well among center-right voters; "welfare" does not. ... (more)

Putin says ties with Latin America a top priority

From My Way News:
NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (AP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to make relations with Latin America a top foreign policy priority, a pledge backed by the first Russian naval deployment to the Caribbean since the Cold War.
Putin greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on his second trip to Russia in just over two months, with offers to discuss further arms sales to Venezuela and possibly helping it to develop nuclear energy.
Chavez's visit takes place as a Russian naval squadron sails to Venezuela, across the Caribbean Sea from the United States, in a pointed response to what the Kremlin has cast as threatening U.S. encroachment near its own borders.
Both men suggested their countries are working to decrease U.S. global influence.... (more)

Obama funded through Harvard by radical Black Muslim activist with ties to Saudis?

Remember when the mainstream media were our watchdogs and would have been looking into the background of our potential leaders?
A fine piece of work of true journalism by Melanie Phillips over at The Spectator:

There are two American election campaigns currently running. The first, in the mainstream media, accepts Barack Obama at face value, no questions asked, while it viciously turns over Sarah Palin and her family whom it subjects to lies, smears and character assassination. The second, being conducted in the blogosphere and (with one or two notable exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal) not alluded to at all by the mainstream media, is the site of verbal warfare between Camp Obama and bloggers who are practising journalism as it used to be practised – going behind the propaganda to dig out information and asking questions about it. The blogosphere is not only rebutting the Palin lies but also piling up the most disturbing revelations about Obama’s background and associations -- compounded by the troubling manner in which Camp Obama responds to these discoveries.
A few months ago, a claim was made by former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton that Obama had been funded through Harvard law school by Khalid Al-Mansour, a ‘mentor’ to the founders of the Black Panther party and advisor to ‘one of the world’s richest men,’ Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. It was Prince Alwaleed whose $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan after 9/11 was refused by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks.
According to this story by Kenneth Timmerman, Camp Obama denied this claim -- and referred to a story on Politico.com in which reporter Ben Smith wrote that ‘a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally’ said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments. But when contacted, Sutton’s family not only denied that Sutton had misspoken but also said they had never even heard of Kevin Wardally – who appears to work for a Harlem political consulting firm.
So the claim that Obama was funded through Harvard by a radical Black Muslim activist with ties to the Saudis remains on the table. (more)

Why I Can't Vote for Obama

...or watch network news...
Good commentary over at Rasmussen...
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.
While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)
And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.
Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."

The Obama-Ayers connection: Chicago Annenberg Challenge

Over at HotAir some good reading on the Ayers connection. Once again, if Obama just admitted to it and was done it would probably go away. But he denies and lies and attacks-hard. Which makes me wonder, what is he trying to hide and what else is there?

...However, Kurtz’ report provides a very interesting look at the early political life of Barack Obama. He had already entered politics at the time he joined the CAC, and even at that stage had allied himself with ACORN, which has found itself at the center of more than a dozen voter-fraud investigations. Obama also allied himself with Ayers and helped the former Weather Underground fugitive push forward with his plans to radicalize an entire generation of schoolchildren in the area through the CAC. Note well the parallels to community organizing that play out in the activities of the CAC, and recall again how Obama claims that activity as a major qualification for the presidency.... (more)