Archive for June, 2009
Barack Obama Is a Big Fat Liar
June 26, 2009 4:00 AM (c) NRO Jim Gerathey
E ver since Barack Obama declared his candidacy for president, it’s been easy — and great fun — to spotlight when his promises and statements come with “expiration dates.” The list is long: Public financing. Renegotiating NAFTA. His promise to support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. His inability to disown Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The release of detainee photos. Denouncing Turkey for genocide.
Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least in part: “Read my lips: No new taxes. ” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman. ” “We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages — nor will we. ” Even “I will never lie to you. ”
Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on taxing employer-provided health insurance deserves to rank among these classics. Not because it’s as laughable as Bill Clinton’s, or as emphatic as George H. W. Bush’s, but because it takes a certain moral venality to casually adopt, as president, a position that was a dominant theme of your argument for why your opponent should not be president.
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Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign spent $44 million on 16 different television ads hammering John McCain on this idea, according to research by Evan L. Tracey, founder and president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, a TNS Media Intelligence company.
“This message was a central theme and a significant percentage of the Obama campaign’s advertising in 2008,” Tracey said. His organization estimated last November that Obama’s campaign spent $250 million on television advertising, meaning that about 17 percent of all of Obama’s ads were denouncing McCain for this proposal.
The ads left no wiggle room:
Announcer: John McCain on health care.
John McCain: “I want to give every American a 5,000-dollar refundable tax credit.”
Announcer: Here’s the truth.
Barack Obama: “He says that he’s going to give you a 5,000-dollar tax credit. What he doesn’t tell you is that he is going to tax your employer-based health-care benefits for the first time ever. So what one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away.”
Announcer: John McCain. Instead of fixing health care, he wants to tax it.
Barack Obama: I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
Sometimes the ads keyed the issue to a particular swing state:
Announcer: In Nevada, we work hard, and many of us get health insurance through our jobs. John McCain’s health plan would tax our health benefits as income. Taxing health benefits for the first time ever, meaning higher taxes for us. Under McCain, insurance companies prosper. Nevadans pay. Taxing our health-care benefits. An idea we should send back to Arizona. John McCain doesn’t get Nevada. He doesn’t get us.
Barack Obama: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
Obama won Nevada, 55 percent to 43 percent, a dramatic improvement on John Kerry’s 47.9 percent four years earlier.
The back-and-forth on the proposal in the vice-presidential debate provided the visuals and audio for another ad:
[Text]: McCain’s health plan. What she said.
Sarah Palin: “He’s proposing a 5,000-dollar tax credit for families so that they can get out there, and they can purchase their own health-care coverage.”
[Text]: What she didn’t say.
Joe Biden: “Well, you know how John McCain pays for his 5,000-dollar tax credit? He taxes as income every one of you out there, every one of you listening who has a health-care plan through your employer. Taxing your health-care benefit. I call that the ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.”
[Text]: Taxing health benefits for the first time ever.
Gwen Ifill: “Thank you, Senator.”
[Text]: The McCain health tax. What they can’t explain.
Barack Obama: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
Of course, it wasn’t just ads. Obama hammered the point again and again in his stump speech. On September 12, 2008, while appearing in Dover, N.H., Obama said :
And I can make a firm pledge: under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase — not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes. My opponent can’t make that pledge, and here’s why: For the first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits. Apparently, Senator McCain doesn’t think it’s enough that your health premiums have doubled, he thinks you should have to pay taxes on them too. That’s a $3.6 trillion tax increase on middle-class families. That will eventually leave tens of millions of you paying higher taxes. That’s his idea of change.
Notice there’s no mention of income level, or certain limited circumstances in which it would be acceptable to tax health benefits. No suggestion that the proposal might be something he would accept a compromise on. No ifs, no ands, no buts.
In early October he went even further, calling McCain’s plan “so radical, so out of touch with what you’re facing, and so out of line with our basic values.”
On Capitol Hill, however, Democrats have long liked the idea as a new form of tax revenue. Obama’s relentless denunciation of the proposal would seem to preclude his signing it into law, but “would seem to” is not “does.” Back in March, White House budget director Peter Orszag said taxing employer benefits was among several ideas that “most firmly should remain on the table,” and some congressional Democrats told the Washington Post that White House officials said Obama would accept such a tax “as long as he didn’t have to propose it himself.”
Finally, during Wednesday’s p.r. push for his health-care plan, Obama refused to rule out the proposal that he once said made John McCain unfit for office.
“I don’t want to prejudge what they’re doing,” he said about Senate proposals to tax workers who get expensive insurance policies. “I have identified the ways that I think we should finance this. I think Congress should adopt them. I’m going to wait and see what ideas ultimately they come up with.”
Poof! What was once “so radical, so out of touch with what you’re facing, and so out of line with our basic values” now is not worthy of prejudgment.
Where does John McCain get his reputation back? And if Obama will do an about-face on this issue, is there any promise he’s made that is not approaching an inevitable expiration date?
— Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot for NRO.
$10K bounty for any witness to Obama birth
Posted: June 22, 2009 9:00 pm Eastern © 2009 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can prove he or she was present at the birth of Barack Obama – and he’s asking Americans to donate to the cause in hopes of raising the bounty to an irresistible amount.
"Barack Obama claims to have been born in Honolulu Aug. 4, 1961," explains Farah. "His entire constitutional claim to the presidency rests on this premise. Yet, he refuses to release a copy of his long-form birth certificate – the only document that could possibly corroborate his claim. Therefore, in the interest of truth, justice and the Constitution, I am making the extraordinary offer to entice someone to come forward with the facts of his birth – whether it took place in Hawaii or elsewhere."
Obama has steadfastly refused to release evidence of that Hawaiian birth – a valid, long-form birth certificate that would show details of the birth, such as the hospital and the attending physician. Because the short-form "certification of live birth" he released to select news organization was at least sometimes issued for foreign births on the basis of an affidavit by one parent, it proves nothing as far as constitutional eligibility – and, in fact, raises suspicions about a foreign birth.
To date, no hospital in Hawaii has come forward to claim this historic birth.
No doctor or nurse has come forward to say they were present for that historic birth.
No witness of any kind has come forward to say they have first-hand knowledge or involvement in that historic birth – at least in Hawaii.
Obama’s paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, claims to have been present for the birth in Mombassa, Kenya.
"It is clear now that Obama will never willingly release his birth certificate," said Farah. "It’s time for Americans who still value the Constitution to step up and force the issue. It’s time for us to learn the truth of where Obama was born. We may find he was born in Hawaii. We may find he was born elsewhere. I have no pre-conceived ideas. But this issue has haunted the American people long enough. It’s time for some truth and transparency."
To collect the reward, the subject must:
1. Agree to an interview with WND journalists;
2. Provide persuasive evidence, such as pictures, documents or verifiable details;
3. Agree to a polygraph test.
"I think it’s disgraceful that Americans should be forced to go to such lengths by the intransigence of public officials toward accountability," said Farah. "But that is what it has come to in 2009 with our current president. He prefers to dodge and weave, while his apologists in government and media viciously attack citizens for attempting to see that the Constitution is observed."
Farah launched a petition drive earlier this year that has accumulated nearly 400,000 signatures demanding that all controlling legal authorities pursue proof of Obama’s status as a "natural born citizen." That petition campaign is still on-going.
More recently, he launched a billboard campaign raising the simple question, "Where’s the birth certificate?" That campaign has raised $85,000 so far. Farah says there are plenty of billboards available, despite a ban on the campaign by several major outdoor advertising companies. But donations have dried up because of an apparent misperception among readers that billboards are not available due to the bans imposed by a few companies.
In addition, Farah points out those interested in backing his latest campaign can also raise visibility for the issue by purchasing magnetic bumper stickers, tea party rally signs and yard signs that raise the same simple question, "Where’s the birth certificate?"
All funds not used specifically for a reward will go toward the purchase of more billboard space.
If you would like to raise the reward, WND is accepting contributions in any amount. Donations can be made online, by phone and credit card or checks can be mailed to:
WND
PO Box 1627
Medford, Or 97501
Checks should be clearly marked as to purpose.
If you would like to arrange a credit card contribution by phone, call 1.800.4WND.COM
Here is an actual Hawaiian birth certificate from 1963 (the same era as Obama’s birth), which while redacted includes detailed information documenting a birth, including the name of the birth hospital and the attending physician.
Long-form birth certificate from state of Hawaii (Image courtesy Philip Berg)
Here is the "Certification of Live Birth" presented by Obama:
Short-form "Certification of Live Birth"
If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.
Obama May Be ‘Most Hostile President to Israel’
Monday, June 22, 2009 11:53 AM By: Ronald Kessler Newsmax
President Barack Obama’s refusal to take a stand on protests in Iran stands in sharp contrast to demands he has made on Israel, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says in a Newsmax interview.
“I think he should take a strong stand to support the protesters in Iran who want to transform that society into one that promotes democracy and human rights,” Klein says. ”But while meddling in Israel’s affairs and making specific demands, he explicitly states he refuses to meddle in Iran’s policies and has said almost nothing.”
Klein says leaders of Jewish organizations are rethinking their support of Obama in light of his attitude toward Israel.
“There are many leaders in the organized Jewish world who have privately discussed this issue with me, and say they are deeply concerned about Obama’s actions and policies toward Israel, and now they’re rethinking their support for Obama during the campaign and the election,” says Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country.
Based on the president’s speech in Cairo on June 4 and many of his foreign policy appointments, Klein thinks Obama “may become the most hostile president to Israel ever.”
Obama’s speech was “inimical to Israel and supportive of the stream of false Palestinian Arab claims concerning Israel,” Klein says. “He is relentlessly pressuring Israel while applying virtually almost no pressure on the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its written obligations.”
As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, Klein says he was particularly offended by Obama’s comparison of the suffering of Palestinians with the Nazis’ murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
“I found this to be an abominable, odious, and ridiculously false analogy,” he says.
While Klein’s parents’ survived, his father lost his eight brothers and sisters and all his aunts and uncles in Nazi concentration camps. Klein’s mother lost half her family.
In his speech, Klein says, Obama said that “the treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Israel is equivalent to the treatment of South African blacks during apartheid and of enslaved blacks before the Civil War, more than implying that Israel is an oppressor. He falsely claimed that Palestinian Arabs were displaced by Israel in 1948, when in fact, if six Arab nations hadn’t invaded Israel to destroy it, there wouldn’t be a single Palestinian Arab who left that area.”
Klein disputes Obama’s reference to Palestinian Arabs trying to establish a state for 60 years.
“They could have had a state in 1937,” he says. “They turned it down. They could have had a state in 1948. From 1948 to 1967, when they controlled all of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, they never attempted to establish a state. In 2000, they were offered a state on almost all the disputed territories. They turned it down. So this is a completely false claim that they’ve been trying to establish a state for 60 years.”
By claiming that America has 7 million Muslims, Obama showed a willingness to use phony figures to support a tilt toward Muslims, Klein says.
“Every major survey shows there’s between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Muslims in America,” Klein says. “Where does he get the number 7 million? This is the number that the Arab propagandists promote. There’s no legitimate survey that shows a number of that nature.”
Klein says it is premature to focus on the establishment of a Palestinian state as long as Palestinians promote violence and hatred against Israel.
“To promote a Palestinian state at a time when Hamas, the terrorist group, controls Gaza, and Fatah, which also promotes terror, controls the West Bank, is absurd,” Klein observes. The Palestinians “continue to promote hatred and violence against Jews and Americans in their schools, media and speeches,” Klein notes. “They refuse to arrest a single anti-Israel terrorist, zero. They refuse to outlaw terrorist groups, which is required under the agreements they’ve signed. They continue to name schools, streets, and sports teams after terrorists, glorifying murder.”
Moreover, Klein says, “control of the Palestinian territories is split between Hamas and Fatah, so there is no one regime to negotiate with.”
If the Palestinians “fulfilled all their written obligations for a significant period of time, clearly an overwhelming majority of Israelis, Americans, and the world would support a Palestinian state,” Klein says.
As Klein sees it, while Obama is “ignoring the anti-peace, pro-terror actions of the Hamas-Fatah regime,” he is “rushing headlong into establishing yet another terrorist state in the Middle East, as opposed to working to ensure that we end the existence of terrorist states in general,” Klein says.
Some of the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Obama’s minister, friend, and mentor, are apparent in Obama’s remarks, Klein says.
“If you look at Rev. Wright’s speeches and sermons as I have, many of the themes, like comparing the Palestinian Arabs to the South Africans and the illegality of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, show up in Obama’s talks and actions,” he says.
During the 2008 election campaign, “I would give speeches and write articles expressing concern about his close friendship with Rev. Wright,” Klein says. “I was repeatedly told that’s not fair; those are Wright’s views, not necessarily his, and that it’s guilt by association.”
In response, Klein would say, “If a Jew was a member of a synagogue where the rabbi preached hatred of blacks, it would be clear that that Jew would be comfortable with anti-black racism. I couldn’t remain for a week at a synagogue where a rabbi made a hateful speech toward blacks. I’d quit immediately.”
Yet, he says, Jews “didn’t apply that normal, appropriate standard to Barack Obama,” Klein says. “Obama gave $27,500 in 2005 and 2006 to Rev. Wright’s church. He called Rev. Wright a great man and his mentor. You can’t be so close to someone you call a great man and a mentor if you don’t agree with what he has to say.”
Al-Qaida: We Would Use Pakistani Nukes On America
Monday, June 22, 2009 9:08 AM (c) Newsmax
DUBAI — If al-Qaida were in a position to do so, it would use Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.
Pakistan has been battling al-Qaida Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 60 miles northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.
"God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al-Qaida’s in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.
Abu al-Yazid was responding to a question about U.S. safeguards to seize control over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case Islamist fighters came close to doing so.
"We expect that the Pakistani army would be defeated (in Swat) . . . and that would be its end everywhere, God willing."
Asked about the group’s plans, the Egyptian militant leader said: "The strategy of the (al-Qaida ) organization in the coming period is the same as in the previous period: to hit the head of the snake, the head of tyranny: the United States.
"That can be achieved through continued work on the open fronts and also by opening new fronts in a manner that achieves the interests of Islam and Muslims and by increasing military operations that drain the enemy financially."
The militant leader suggested that naming a new leader for the group’s unit in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir al-Wahayshi, could revive its campaign in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.
"Our goals have been the Americans . . . and the oil targets which they are stealing to gain power to strike the mujahideen and Muslims."
"There was a setback in work there for reasons that there is no room to state now, but as of late, efforts have been united and there is unity around a single leader."
Abu al-Yazid, also known as Abu Saeed al-Masri, said al-Qaida will continue "with large scale operations against the enemy" — by which he meant the United States.
"We have demanded and we demand that all branches of al-Qaida carry out such operations," he said, referring to attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The militant leader said al-Qaida would be willing to accept a truce of about 10 years’ duration with the United States if Washington agreed to withdraw its troops from Muslim countries and stopped backing Israel and the pro-Western governments of Muslim nations.
Asked about the whereabouts of al-Qaida’s top leaders, he said: "Praise God, sheikh Osama (bin Laden) and sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri are safe from the reach of the enemies, but we would not say where they are; moreover, we do not know where they are, but we’re in continuous contact with them."
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
Polls: ‘Strong Disapproval’ of Obama Growing
Monday, June 22, 2009 1:00 PM By: Jim Meyers Newsmax
More Americans now "strongly disapprove" of Barack Obama’s performance as president than "strongly approve," according to the most recent Rasmussen poll.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33 percent of respondents "strongly approve" of Obama’s performance on the job so far, but 34 percent "strongly disapprove."
Overall, 45 percent of voters disapprove, while 54 percent say they at least somewhat approve.
Obama fares better in the latest Gallup poll, which found that 33 percent of respondents disapprove of his job performance and 58 percent approve. But 58 percent is a new low — since taking office in January, his approval rating has averaged 63 percent, according to Gallup.
Gallup speculates that several factors could be behind Obama’s plunging ratings: the administration’s deficit spending; public concerns about the cost of Obama’s healthcare reform plan; and his cautious response to the election protests in Iran.
In the Rasmussen poll, the percentage of voters who blame George Bush for the country’s economic ills is down eight points from a month ago, to 54 percent, while 39 percent say the country’s economic problems are a result of Obama’s policies. "A growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now," Rasmussen observed.
Other Rasmussen poll findings include:
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Democrats: Drenched in blood of slavery
Posted: June 21, 2009 6:37 pm Eastern © 2009 Roger Hedgecock
The U.S. Senate voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, lead sponsor of the resolution, said, "You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago. It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice."
Only after decades of public education ignoring and distorting U.S. history can such a huge lie be said with a straight face.
Senator, you didn’t do it 100 years ago because 100 years ago you Democrats were enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, poll taxes to keep blacks from voting, and riding around in sheets and pointy hats just in case blacks didn’t get the message.
You say "It’s important to have a collective response" because you want to bury the origins, purposes, and historical practices of your own party.
The worst part is, Republicans in the Senate let you get away with it.
Principled Republicans knowing their history would have authored a resolution reciting the facts that the Republican Party was formed, among other reasons, to oppose slavery and that the Republican Party and its first President Abraham Lincoln responded to Southern, Democrat-led secession with a successful war that preserved the union and freed the slaves.
After Lincoln’s assassination (by a Democrat), the Republican-led Congress (over the objections of the Democratic Party minority) amended the Constitution to confirm the liberation of the slaves (13th Amendment: slavery abolished), and the 14th Amendment (freed slaves are citizens equal to all citizens) and the 15th Amendment (right to vote guaranteed to freed slaves).
Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party.
In fact, the Democratic Party was formed in the first place to defend and expand slavery.
In 1840, the very first national nominating convention of the Democratic Party adopted a platform which read in part:
Resolved, That Congress has no power … to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states … that all efforts by abolitionists … made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery … are calculated … to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.
Got that, Sen. Harkin? Your party was born defending slavery as necessary for the happiness of the people and threatening secession and war if slavery were challenged.
The same party platform language was used in 1844, 1848, 1852 and 1856. In 1860, the Democrat commitment to slavery took a harsher tone.
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850. This monstrous law provided that, since slaves were the personal property of their masters, runaway slaves must be returned to their owners. The law required all law enforcement officers to assist in the recapture of runaway slaves or risk a fine of $1,000 (about $100,000 in today’s dollars)!
The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s in part as a political reaction to this unjust law.
In their national convention of 1860, Democrats harshly responded to certain Northern (Republican) states that were passing state laws to evade the Fugitive Slave Law by adopting a plank in the Democratic Party Platform which read:
Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.
Senator, your Democratic Party has much to be apologetic about on the slavery issue.
During the civil war, the Southern Democrats led the Confederacy out of the Union; Northern Democrats formed a separate party which opposed the war. The 1864 (Northern) Democratic Party platform adopted a "peace" plank which read in part:
… after four years of failure to restore the union by the experiment of war … justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand … a cessation of hostilities … to the end that … peace may be restored …
Here is the origin of today’s Democratic Party "Peace at any Price, Better Red than Dead, Why Can’t we all just get Along" foreign policy.
The war was started by Democrat secessionists, and just as President Lincoln was on the verge of victory, the Northern Democrats wanted to save the South and slavery with "peace talks"! Voters knew better in 1864 and re-elected Lincoln.
But the Democrats weren’t through. In 1868, Sen. Harkin’s party condemned the Republican Party in its party platform as the "Radical Party," and condemned Reconstruction in these unforgettable words:
Instead of restoring the Union, it (the Radical Party) has dissolved it, and subjected ten states (the former Confederate states) … to military despotism and negro supremacy.
And, senator, don’t tell me this is all ancient history in a lame attempt to evade the true origins of your party.
As recently as 1964, when the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats (including Al Gore’s father) voted no. While Northern Democrats voted yes, their votes were not enough. The deciding votes to pass this landmark bill were provided by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and the Republicans.
Republicans should be proud of their heritage of liberation of the slaves and civil rights voting record.
It’s Harkin and the Democrats who should apologize and pay reparations.
Gerald Celante On Obama’s Latest Move With The Fed
“It’s like putting new brakes on a car that’s already crashed.” Gerald Celante elaborates on Obama’s latest power grab, handing massive new regulatory powers to the Federal Reserve. More control in the hands of the Fed…not a “capital” idea.
The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear
(c) Michelle Malkin - Syndicated Columnist - 6/19/2009 7:20:00 AM
The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading healthcare sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there’s one healthcare policy nightmare you won’t hear the Obamas hyping. It’s a tale of poor minority patient-dumping in Chicago — with first lady Michelle Obama’s fingerprints all over it.
Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois have raised red flags about the outsourcing program run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has nonprofit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care.
Yet, in fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor — 1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.
Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: "Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds."
Don’t expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an "Urban Health Initiative," Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to "dramatically improve healthcare for thousands of South Side residents."
In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming "RAAAAAAAAACISM!" at the top of their lungs.
Joe Stephens of The Washington Post wrote, "To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Axelrod’s firm (ASK Public Strategies) recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign — appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party ‘validators.’ They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications."
Some healthcare experts saw through Mrs. Obama and PR man Axelrod — yes, the same Axelrod who is now President Obama’s senior adviser. But the University of Chicago Medical Center hired ASK Public Strategies to promote Mrs. Obama’s initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett — now a White House senior adviser.
Axelrod’s great contribution: re-branding! His firm recommended renaming the initiative after "internal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word ‘urban’ is code for ‘black’ or ‘black and poor.’ …Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative." Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.
In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas’ community exploded upon learning that a young boy covered by Medicaid had been turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams’ mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama’s hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics and Tylenol, and shoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.
I’ll guarantee you this: You’ll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the first lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the healthcare system.
Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Axelrod’s grand plan. The group released a statement expressing "grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)" — signed by President Reagan, by the way — "and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor."
Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC
Iranians Betrayed by Obama Administration
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:34 AM By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Newsmax.com
More than 1.5 million protesters took to the streets of Tehran on Monday, marking the largest anti-regime demonstration Iran has seen since the final days of the shah in early 1979.
Seven people were killed by anti-riot police and roving bands of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supporters. Many of those supporters shielded their faces from surveillance videos that plainclothes police were shooting.
The protesters included some unlikely participants: 16 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers pledged to join the people’s movement, according to initial reports from Tehran. That signaled that the once-solid support of the guard corps for Ahmadinejad is beginning to crack.
The 16 officers were arrested after meeting secretly with top regular army officers on Monday night.
Many of the older men and women who took to the streets also demonstrated to bring down the shah 30 years ago, wrote Kaveh Mohseni, who publishes the French-language Web site, Iran-Resist.
Now, “people are waiting for international support,” Mohseni wrote.
That support wasn’t coming — at least not from President Barack Obama’s administration in Washington.
"It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran," Obama said during the weekend.
He reiterated his long-held position that his administration wants to pursue a "tough, direct" dialogue with Tehran.
For many Iranians, Obama’s words were reminiscent of President Bill Clinton, who washed his hands when reporters asked him on July 9, 1999, whether the United States would come to the aid of Iranian students who were revolting in 18 cities across Iran.
America could do nothing, Clinton said — echoing almost exactly the taunt Ayatollah Khomeini had used repeatedly during the revolution.
The Obama administration’s quandary comes after it covertly threw its support behind the election campaign of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Mousavi made his first appearance since the election at Monday’s rally.
Many in the crowd wore red scarves, a color favored by supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah.
In two messages in Persian, widely circulated through the Internet during the weekend, Pahlavi called for nationwide nonviolent resistance to the regime — the first time he has called for an open revolt since leaving Iran in 1979.
“I stand united with my fellow Iranians and call for the end of the Islamic Republic, or any other prefix in front of the name of my beloved Iran that indicates theocracy or any other form of disregard for democratic and human rights,” he said in one of the messages.
To some, this latest protest — and similar demonstrations in Shiraz, Kerman, Isfahan, Mashad, Tabriz, Rasht, and other major Iranian cities — shows that the regime finally has awakened Iran’s silent majority.
In Tabriz, there were reports that the city’s business district had shut down on Sunday as a sign of joining the anti-regime protests. Many of the protesters shouted, “Death to the dictator,” a slogan not heard in large crowds of demonstrators for decades.
“The protests are a natural expression of the frustration and insult that have been dealt by the regime,” said Roozbeh Farahanipour, a leader of the 1999 student revolt who now is the spokesman for the nationalist Marze por Gohar (Glorious Frontiers Party). “Iranians will tolerate a lot, as the last 30 years attest to, but being treated as stooges is where they draw the line.”
In Tehran on Monday, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that former President Mohammad Khatami traveled to Cairo during Obama’s trip there and met with a “senior administration official” to discuss the upcoming Iranian election.
Although Ahmadinejad controls the news agency, Iranian observers believed the report was accurate, because it is hard to openly slander such a public person as a former president even in Iran.
Newsmax asked spokesmen for Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to comment on the allegation but received no reply.
Earlier, there were reports that a senior administration official met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai two weeks before the election to offer support.
In the days before the election, editors at the Voice of America’s Persian Service apologized to anti-regime Iranians they normally invite to their shows, saying they no longer could appear on the air because the editors were under orders to invite only guests who supported “reformist” candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi.
On Tuesday morning, the Guardians Council in Tehran announced it would engage in only a “limited recount” of individual ballot boxes whose results had been disputed by one of Ahmadinejad’s three opponents, erasing earlier hopes that they might annul the disputed election because of fraud.
Getting the Guardians to examine the election results at all took a great deal of pressure.
When Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei first announced Ahmadinejad’s victory, he defiantly called the election a “divine assessment” and certified the results immediately.
But pressure from within the ruling clerical elite gave him pause.
The next day, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani announced with great fanfare that he was traveling to Qom, 80 miles south of Tehran, to convene the Assembly of Experts, a council of 86 top clerics who have the authority to name the supreme leader, or depose him.
Rafsanjani chairs the Assembly of Experts and said he wanted them to examine Khamenei’s decision to certify the election, giving rise to rumors that he was hoping to depose Khamenei as leader.
Monday’s massive demonstration also suggests that the Iranian people have loosened the shackles of fear, Kaveh Mohseni said.
In a third message to Iranians, Reza Pahlavi called on the police and security forces to “never forget that these demonstrators confronting you in the streets are your brothers and sisters who are fighting for your rights.”
Joining him was his mother, who spoke to the security forces “as a mother and as an Iranian” to encourage them “not to use violence against their brothers and sisters.”
Iranian political activists have long criticized Reza Pahlavi for his inaction, and U.S. government analysts say they doubt that he has many supporters inside Iran.
But the protests inside Iran go way beyond one person, one faction, or one party. They have become a national grass-roots movement, a budding revolt that could soon reach a tipping point. And a regime change could spark reform in other areas.
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer said, “Our only hope of changing the nuclear issue with Iran is not in the negotiations. It would be in the change of regime.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Why Obama wants to hide birth certificate
Posted: June 16, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 Joseph Farah
Since I began my quixotic campaign to uncover Barack Obama’s birth certificate, many have asked me about the president’s possible motives for hiding it with such tenacity and diligence.
I think there are many plausible motives:
* Perhaps something in that birth certificate, if it indeed exists, would contradict assertions Obama has made about his life’s story. These might even involve his true parental heritage. Without a real birth certificate, no one really knows who his parents
were. So it is ridiculous even to speculate about whether citizenship could be conferred upon him by his mother, when we don’t know for sure who his mother is.
* Perhaps it reveals a foreign birth, as Hawaii allowed for in 1961 while still issuing the "certification of live birth" we have seen posted on his website.
* Or perhaps it will show just what Obama has claimed all along – a birth in Hawaii to two officially non-citizen parents, for the purpose of establishing "natural born citizenship" under the Constitution.
What do I mean by that last possibility?
Well, as you know, in 2008, the Senate of the United States held hearings to determine if one of the presidential candidates fulfilled the requirement of being a "natural born citizen." It wasn’t Barack Obama. It was John McCain, who was born on a U.S. military base overseas to two U.S. citizens.
Start your own elibibility billboard campaign in your neighborhood with WND’s new yard signs, asking: "Where’s the Birth Certificate?"
On April 10 of last year, two senators, both Democrats, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, introduced a resolution into upper house expressing a sense of the Senate that McCain was indeed a "natural born citizen."
It’s interesting what Leahy had to say on the subject: "Because he was born to American citizens (emphasis added), there is no doubt in my mind that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen. I expect that this will be a unanimous resolution of the U.S. Senate."
And, indeed it was. It was also, interestingly, the only such hearing held by the Congress on the subject of "natural born citizenship" and its application to the 2008 presidential race. Why was that interesting? Because everyone involved in this process knew – or should have known – that the life story told by Barack Obama would raise far more doubts about his eligibility than McCain’s.
Notice Leahy did not say one parent citizen would qualify a child for "natural born citizenship." He indicted it would take two to tango.
He did so again at a Judiciary Committee hearing April 3, when he asked then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge, if he had any doubts about McCain’s eligibility to serve as president.
"My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen," Chertoff responded – again underlining the fact that both parents would need to be citizens.
And what did Leahy say to that? "That is mine, too."
By the way, Obama voted for this resolution, so he obviously agrees with the definition of what constitutes a "natural born citizen" – the offspring of two U.S. citizens.
Now, I don’t know who Barack Obama’s parents are, because I have never seen his birth certificate. All I’ve seen is a facsimile of a "certification of live birth" on the Internet. That document, even if genuine, proves nothing about Obama’s birth in Hawaii or who his parents were. Hawaii had a very slipshod practice in 1961 of issuing these documents to babies born outside the country and listing parents who may not have been the parents at all.
But I do know who Barack Obama claims his parents were. According to him, neither one of them was an American citizen able to confer natural born citizenship on a child. One, Barack Obama Sr., was a foreign national from Kenya, and the other, Stanley Ann Dunham, was too young to have qualified under the law for bestowing that privilege on her son, even if the father had been a citizen and even in the unlikely event Obama was actually born in Hawaii!
So, if we are to take Obama at his word, he is not a natural born citizen and not eligible to serve as president.
If he is to be judged by the same standard as his opponent in the race, there is no way he qualifies. That’s what Leahy said. That’s what Chertoff said. That’s what the law says.
A logical question naturally follows: Why didn’t the Congress of the United States hold hearings on Obama’s eligibility when they did so on McCain’s eligibility?
I’m still trying to figure that one out. Maybe the answer is this simple: Because there’s no way Obama would have qualified.
Another logical question follows: Why is this man still serving in the White House and turning the country upside down when he is not even constitutionally eligible?
That’s the heart and soul of the campaign I’ve been running.
By the way, further establishing that it was impossible for Obama to have been a "natural born citizen" are some astonishing words found on his own campaign website. They indicate that Obama was "at birth" a citizen of Kenya and a subject of Great Britain. Why did the founders insist upon a "natural born citizen" clause in the Constitution? To avoid questions of divided loyalties. (Just scroll down the webpage and read the FactCheck.org excerpt to see this amazing admission for yourself.)
So, again, I ask: Why doesn’t Obama want to reveal his real birth certificate? Because he wants this discussion of eligibility to go away – once and for all. It is a vulnerability he cannot explain away. So he would rather not discuss it at all.
But let me remind you all, in case you hadn’t considered this: Obama plans to run for re-election in 2012. And that’s why we can never, ever let this matter rest.
Obama fires watchdog who barked at his crony
Posted: June 13, 2009 7:25 pm Eastern By Drew Zahn © 2009 WorldNetDaily
Former Inspector General Gerald Walpin filed two reports exposing gross misappropriation of federal AmeriCorps funds by a prominent Barack Obama supporter and was shortly thereafter fired by the White House, circumstances he told WND are likely linked and others have called an outright illegal action by the administration.
"I think you have to look at the facts and the circumstances and reach your conclusions," Walpin said in a WND interview. "I will tell you that [my firing] came only after we had issued those two reports to Congress, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence."
Further, Walpin said, "I am convinced that I and my office are not guilty of any impropriety. In essence, I was fired for doing my job."
Independent, federal inspectors general are supposed to be granted special protection from political interference – thanks in part to a law co-sponsored by the then-Senator Barack Obama – to ensure that they are free to investigate waste and fraud uninfluenced by political cronyism.
But after Walpin dared to push for action against the St. HOPE Academy program – run by Obama supporter and former NBA star Kevin Johnson – which had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal AmeriCorps funds, he nonetheless found himself fired by the White House under circumstances that have led some to wonder if Obama has violated his own co-sponsored law in retaliation.
"There are two big questions about the president’s actions," writes Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner. "One, why did he decide to fire Walpin? And two, did he abide by the law that he himself co-sponsored?"
Discover how government is grinding away Americans’ individual liberties in "Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws."
Radio talk host Rush Limbaugh fired off an answer to York’s questions on his program yesterday:
"Firing an inspector general is a big deal. If you’ll remember, Alberto Gonzales as attorney general fired a couple of U.S. attorneys. He took hell for it. This is bigger. Inspectors general are supposed to be completely above politics," Limbaugh commented. "This is big. This is political cronyism, power and so forth. … I’m telling you, firing an I.G., because they’re not political, it is a much bigger deal than replacing United States attorneys."
Furthermore, Limbaugh stated, the unusual circumstances surrounding the night before Walpin’s dismissal constitutes a clear violation of the very law Obama helped to pass as a senator.
"The Obama administration did it overnight," Limbaugh stated. "[It] broke the law firing the AmeriCorps I.G."
According to the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, co-sponsored by Obama, inspectors general do not serve at the president’s pleasure and therefore cannot be fired without 30 days notice and written cause for the decision sent to Congress.
The firing of Walpin, however, took on a very different form.
Walpin confirmed to WND that on Wednesday evening earlier this week, he received a sudden and unexpected ultimatum from White House counsel Norman L. Eisen: Resign with the hour or suffer being fired.
Walpin refused to resign, replying in an email, "It would do a disservice to the independent scheme that Congress has mandated – and could potentially raise questions about my own integrity – if I were to render what would seem to many a very hasty response to your request."
The next day the administration nonetheless fired Walpin and sent a letter to Congress citing as its only reason for the dismissal, "It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general. That is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who also co-sponsored the Inspector General Reform Act, immediately protested the White House’s action.
"I was troubled to learn that last night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated," Grassley stated in a letter to the president. "Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure. This independence is the hallmark of all inspectors general and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny."
Grassley’s letter reminded Obama of the statute requiring the president to submit 30-days notice to Congress of an inspector general’s dismissal and stated, "No such notice was provided to Congress in this instance."
"We cannot afford to have inspector general independence threatened," Grassley concluded. "In light of the massive increases in federal spending of late, it is more critical than ever that we have an inspector general community that is vigorous, independent and active in rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. I urge you to review the Inspector General Reform Act you co-sponsored and to follow the letter of the law should you have cause to remove any inspector general."
The White House then clarified two issues, explaining that Walpin was not immediately fired, but suspended for 30 days of paid leave as a countdown to his official release, and that his dismissal, indeed, was related to the Johnson investigation.
In a written response to Sen. Grassley, White House counsel Gregory Craig cited an ethics complaint filed against Walpin by the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento, Lawrence Brown.
Brown had had declined to file criminal charges against Johnson, who was elected in November as mayor of Sacramento, or the St. HOPE Academy, but did reach a settlement requiring the organization to pay back over $400,000 of $850,000 in grants it was given through the AmeriCorps program.
Both Grassley’s letter and Walpin, however, pointed out that the inspector general has not been found guilty of any misconduct, and the charges are disputed.
"I have been performing – and my office has been performing – its work with the highest integrity, in the spirit of an independent office, calling the shots as it sees them," Walpin told WND. "The integrity committee will decide the merits of the complaint, but what troubles me is that the White House is apparently relying on the complaint. At this point, it is before an adjudicatory body, and if the White House felt it couldn’t wait for that decision, it should have at least waited for me to come in and provide my factual response, so it could consider it. It did not."
And while Walpin has been guarded in responses to the media, refraining from commenting on his future plans or even accusing the president of firing him for political reasons, he did share with WND that he believes Obama has compromised the independent integrity of the office of inspector general.
"I am sorry for what I believe to be clear interference with the institution of the inspector general," Walpin said. "And I am sorry for the people in my office, who I respect. I took the position because I believed when the president called upon me, it was a great opportunity to give something back to this country. I have done what I believe is right, and I will go on."
Obama: Where have all his records gone?
Posted: June 09, 2009 8:34 pm Eastern By Chelsea Schilling © 2009 WorldNetDaily
While nearly 400,000 concerned citizens demand President Obama present his elusive "long-form" birth certificate, more than a dozen other documents remain unreleased or otherwise blocked from the public eye.
Numerous documents which have yet to be surrendered include the following.
Obama kindergarten records
The Maui News reported that Obama attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School on Oahu during the school year 1966-67. It released a photo of two teachers, Katherine Nakamoto and Aimee Yatsushiro, with five students. The teachers claim one of the children is Barack Obama.
According to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register. Parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country.
So far, no records have been released by the school. Noelani Elementary School officials have not responded to WND’s request for comment.
Punahou School records
Punahou’s alleged 1979 yearbook photo of Obama playing basketball
Though from a modest background, Obama began attending the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu, one of Hawaii’s top private institutions. He reportedly received a scholarship and attended the school from the fifth grade until he finished high school, though no financial records have been released.
The Boston Globe reported, "In 1979, the year Obama graduated, tuition for high school students at Punahou was $1,990, a sizable expense compared with Hawaii’s median family income of $22,750 that year.
Obama, reportedly a "B" student, studied among the island’s richest and most accomplished students. According to the school’s website, he also played forward on Punahou’s 1979 state championship basketball team.
Occidental College records
Obama arrived at Occidental College, a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles, Calif., in the fall of 1979. He only briefly mentions the school in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
Obama attended the school on a scholarship. Some question whether the financial aid he received was reserved for foreign students. Financial records have not been released.
In a legal action, handled largely by Gary Kreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, officials at Occidental College were served with a demand to produce records concerning Barack Obama’s attendance there during the 1980s because they could document whether he was attending as a foreign national.
Kreep petitioned the college with a demand for its records concerning Obama.
Occidental College library
"The gravamen of the petition is the question as to whether United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama, of Illinois, is eligible to serve as president of the United States pursuant to the requirements for that office in the United States Constitution," he wrote. "The records sought may provide documentary evidence, and/or admissions by said defendant, as to said eligibility or lack thereof."
College officials then contacted Obama’s lawyers, who argued to the court that the election was over and that future concerns should be addressed to Congress.
The motion stated that the records, which could reveal on what name Obama attended classes at Occidental and whether he attended on scholarship money intended for foreign students, "are of no relevance to this moot litigation."
The motion also claimed the petitioners failed to serve the subpoena properly.
"The subpoena directed to Occidental College should therefore be quashed. Alternatively, this court should issue an order directing that the deposition of the custodian of records of Occidental College not take place," the firm working on Obama’s behalf stated.
"The central issue in this lawsuit … is whether any Respondent had a legal duty to demand proof of natural born citizenship from Democratic Party’s nominee," the motion said. "None of the documents sought by petitioners could possibly assist in answering this question."
A judge granted a motion to quash the subpoena.
"Obama’s attorneys bent over backward to block us," Kreep told WND. "Obama doesn’t want anyone to see those records. He’s trying to hide them."
His efforts resulted in a threat from Obama’s attorneys to seek financial sanctions against the plaintiff’s lawyers.
Kreep said a notice of appeal will be filed next week.
A notice posted on the Occidental College website states, "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations protect the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students’ classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information."
Columbia University records
Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981, at the age of 20.
According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and ’stopped getting high,’ which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life."
In a 2005 profile in a Columbia alumni magazine, Obama called his time at the school "an intense period of study."
"I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk," he said.
Obama claimed to be a part of the Black Student Organization and anti-apartheid activities. But according to the New York Times, several well-known student leaders did not recall his involvement.
Fox News made contact with 400 of Obama’s classmates. No one remembered him.
The Columbia University chapter in Obama’s life remains blank, according to the New York Sun.
"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago," the Sun reported in September 2008. "The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrasts with that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released information about their college performance or seen it leaked to the public."
When the newspaper inquired, the Obama campaign did not offer an explanation for why the transcript had not been released.
According to the New York Sun, a program from Columbia’s 1983 commencement ceremony lists Obama as a graduate. University spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated with a major in political science but without honors. Nonetheless, he was later admitted to Harvard Law School.
Columbia thesis "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Before applying to Harvard, Obama is said to have written a major thesis in his senior year. It has not been released.
An Oct 30, 2007, a New York Times article stated, "[Obama] barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament."
Former Columbia professor, Michael Baron, told NBC News Obama excelled in his year-long honors seminar called American Foreign Policy.
He also said Obama spent a whole year writing a "thesis" or "senior thesis" on the topic of nuclear negotiations with the former Soviet Union.
"My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States," Baron told reporters in an e-mail. "At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A."
Baron said he saved Obama’s paper and recently searched through boxes hoping to find it, but he told reporters he may have thrown it away during a move several years ago.
Baron wrote a letter of recommendation when Obama applied to Harvard Law School. According to Federal Election Commission records, he also donated at least $1,250 to Obama’s presidential campaign.
On July 24, 2008, the Obama administration told NBC News Obama was unable to release copies of his thesis paper.
"We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
According to MSNBC, Columbia University officials claim they do not have a copy available in the college’s archives.
Harvard Law School records
With less than steller marks upon his graduation from Columbia, Obama was accepted into Harvard Law School.
WND columnist Jack Cashill wrote, "If Obama’s LSAT scores merited admission (to Harvard), we would know about them. We don’t. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets."
He continued, "We know enough about Obama’s Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard."
Cashill wrote, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama’s behalf. Al-Mansour reportedly mentored founders of the Black Panther party in the early 1960s.
Cashill suggests Obama’s "shyness" about his Harvard experience may stem from his reluctance to broadcast his connections.
According to Politico, Obama’s name does not appear on any legal scholarships during his time at Harvard. His campaign reportedly said his Harvard education was a product of hard work and student loans. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.
Harvard Law Review articles
In 1990, Obama beat out 18 other contenders to become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, where he spent at least 50 hours a week editing submissions from judges, scholars and authors.
According to Politico, there were "eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there – 2,083 pages in all."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Politico Obama didn’t write any articles for the Review, but he did leave behind numerous case analyses and unsigned "notes" from Harvard students.
As Matthew Franck noted in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Susan Estrich, the first female president of the Review who served 14 years earlier, said Obama must have had something published that year, even if his campaign denied it.
"They probably don’t want [to] have you [reporters] going back" to examine the Review, she said.
However, Politico later reported it had unearthed a 1990 article that "offers a glimpse at Obama’s views on abortion policy and the law during his student days."
His six-page summary answers a legal question about whether fetuses should be allowed to file lawsuits against their mothers.
"Obama’s answer, like most courts’: No," Politico reported. "He wrote approvingly of an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the unborn cannot sue their mothers for negligence, and he suggested that allowing fetuses to sue would violate the mother’s rights and could, perversely, cause her to take more risks with her pregnancy."
The report continued, "His article acknowledged a public interest in the health of the fetus, but also seemed to demonstrate his continuing commitment to abortion rights, and suggested that the government may have more important concerns than ‘ensuring that any particular fetus is born.’"
Despite its earlier statement, the Obama campaign later confirmed Obama’s authorship of the article and claimed it was the only piece he had written for the Review.
University of Chicago scholarly articles
Obama lectured at the University of Chicago Law School, a top school where the faculty is known for voluminous scholarly publishing, from 1992 until 2004.
The university offered Obama a full-time tenure-track position, an honor typically reserved for published instructors. However, reporters have been unable to find scholarly articles authored by him. The university reports that Obama declined the tenure offer.
Sarah Galer, news editor at the Law School and Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, told WND, "President Obama wrote ‘Dreams from My Father’ while at the law school but did not produce any scholarly articles as far as I know."
Passport
According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized search of Obama’s passport files during the recent presidential campaign. CNN reported that three different contract workers accessed his information on separate occasions – Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14 – without authorization. Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama’s files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographical information, records of passport renewal and possibly citizenship information.
The Obama campaign demanded a thorough investigation to determine which employees looked at the file and why.
"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN in a statement. "Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."
Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal investigators was later found fatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car.
At the time, investigators said they didn’t have any information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have been no arrests.
The passport has not been released.
Medical records
During his first presidential campaign in 1999, Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of medical and psychiatric records collected by the Navy. In 2008, McCain allowed reporters to spend three hours sifting through 1,200 pages of health records.
In 1999, former Vice President Al Gore released medical records revealing "mildly elevated" cholesterol levels and removal of a common form of skin cancer from his forehead in 1997. The documents disclosed his weight, resting heart rate, resting blood pressure, cardiovascular fitness and a variety of other health details. Gore’s records were compiled after a complete physical examination by several military physicians.
Likewise, President George W. Bush allowed the media to view about 400 pages of personal medical information in 2000 and 2004.
After initial reluctance, Sen. John Kerry allowed the Navy to release his full medical records in 2004.
While not all have done so, it has been common practice for presidential candidates to release medical records.
However, Barack Obama, a relatively young candidate who was said to have been in "excellent health," refused to release medical records. Instead, he simply provided a six-paragraph note from his physician briefly summarizing 21 years of doctor visits and health information.
The letter contained no supporting documentation.
Other documents
According to additional records listed at the Obama File Report, other documents that remain unreleased include:
* Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
* Obama’s client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
* Illinois State Bar Association records
* Baptism records
* Obama/Dunham marriage license
* Obama/Dunham divorce documents
* Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
* Adoption records
Birth certificate
WND has been reporting since before the election on questions – and lawsuits – raised over Obama’s birth and eligibility. He reported in his book he was born in Hawaii and his half-sister agrees. But the woman the president says is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, claimed to have been present at her grandson’s birth in Mombasa, Kenya.
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Where’s the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 380,000 others and sign up now!
Barack Obama
Complicating the issue are Obama’s move to Indonesia as a child, where he reportedly attended that nation’s public schools, and his later travels to Pakistan, raising questions about on what nation’s passport was that travel accomplished. Then there are the multiple law firms hired to make certain Obama’s long-form birth certificate information, and other documentation such as college records, remain sealed from public view.
Obama’s presidential campaign released to select news organizations only what is known as a "certification of live birth," a document obtainable in Hawaii in 1961 by Americans actually born outside the country. However, Joseph Farah, WND editor and chief executive officer, has been calling for the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate showing the hospital of his birth, attending physician and other details to confirm his citizenship status.
Farah launched a national billboard campaign last month in an effort to keep the issue before the American people. The billboards, being leased around the country, ask the simple question, "Where’s the birth certificate?" Farah is asking the public to support his campaign with donations. So far, more than $75,000 has been collected.
The billboard campaign followed one launched months earlier to collect the names on an electronic petition demanding accountability and transparency on the issue. So far, that petition has gathered nearly 400,000 names.
The campaign got a boost recently when WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, why the president wouldn’t release his birth certificate. Gibbs’ response was covered live on C-SPAN and by Fox News Channel and others – excluding CBS.
It was the first time any member of the press corps has publicly asked a member of the administration a question directly related to Obama’s constitutional eligibility for office as a "natural born citizen."
Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," but no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Both the petition and the billboard campaign are part of what Farah calls an independent "truth and transparency campaign."
The first sign to be posted under the campaign, a digital, electronic one, is up and online on Highway 165 in Ball, La.. In addition, based on the heavy volume of financial donations in the first days of the campaign, WND was able to commit to leasing three more standard billboards – one in Los Angeles, another in Orange County, Calif. and a third in Pennsylvania.
Birth certificate question being raised in Ball, La
Farah said the campaign was born of frustration with timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama’s background – especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land.
"As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a ‘natural born citizen’ as the Constitution requires," Farah said. "Obama’s promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records."
Welcome back Carter/Obama/Carter, etc. It’s so confusing.
(c) 2009 Ann Coulter 6/10/9 (title courtesy of site admin, ray holt)
Well, I’m glad that’s over! Now that our silver-tongued president has gone to Cairo to soothe Muslims’ hurt feelings, they love us again! Muslims in Pakistan expressed their appreciation for President Barack Obama’s speech by bombing a fancy hotel in Peshawar this week.
Operating on the liberal premise that what Arabs really respect is weakness, Obama listed, incorrectly, Muslims’ historical contributions to mankind, such as algebra (actually that was the ancient Babylonians), the compass (that was the Chinese), pens (the Chinese again) and medical discoveries (huh?).
But why be picky? All these inventions came in mighty handy on Sept. 11, 2001! Thanks, Muslims!!
Obama bravely told the Cairo audience that 9/11 was a very nasty thing for Muslims to do to us, but on the other hand, they are victims of colonization.
Except we didn’t colonize them. The French and the British did. So why are Arabs flying planes into our buildings and not the Arc de Triomphe? (And gosh, haven’t the Arabs done a lot with the Middle East since the French and the British left!)
In another sharks-to-kittens comparison, Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life."
So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don’t have enough female firefighters here in America.
Delusionally, Obama bragged about his multiculti worldview, saying, "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal." In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, women "choose" to cover their heads on pain of losing them.
Obama rolled out the crucial liberal talking point against America’s invasion of Iraq, saying Iraq was a "war of convenience," while Afghanistan was a "war of necessity." Liberals cling to this nonsense doggerel as a shield against their hypocrisy on Iraq. Either both wars were wars of necessity or both wars were wars of choice.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan — nor any country — attacked us on 9/11. Both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as many other Muslim countries, were sheltering those associated with the terrorists who did attack us on 9/11 — and who hoped to attack us again.
The truth is, all wars are wars of choice, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Gulf War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. OK, maybe the war on teen obesity is a war of convenience, but that’s the only one I can think of.
The modern Democrat Party chooses — really chooses, not like Saudi women "choosing" to wear hijabs — to fight no wars. But the Democrats couldn’t say that immediately after 9/11, so they pretended to support the war in Afghanistan and then had to spend the next 7 1/2 years trying to come up with a distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq.
Maybe next they can tell us why fighting Hitler — who never invaded the U.S. and had no plans to do so — was a "necessity" in a way that fighting Saddam wasn’t. (Obama on Hitler: "Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale." Whereas Saddam Hussein was just messing with the Kuwaitis, Kurds and Shiites.)
Meanwhile, Muslims throughout the Middle East are yearning for their own Saddam Husseins to be taken out by U.S. invaders so they can be liberated, too. (Then we’ll see how many women — outside of an American college campus — "choose" to wear hijabs.) The war-of-choice/war-of-necessity point must be as mystifying to a Muslim audience as a discussion of gay marriage.
Arabs aren’t afraid of us; they’re afraid of Iran. But our aspiring Jimmy Carter had no tough words for Iran. To the contrary, in Cairo, Obama endorsed Iran’s quest for nuclear "power," while attacking — brace yourself — America for helping remove Iranian loon Mohammad Mossadegh.
The CIA’s taking out Mossadegh was probably the greatest thing that agency ever did. This was back in 1953, before it became a collection of lawyers and paper-pushers.
Mossadegh was as crazy as a March hare (which is really saying something when your competition is Moammar Gadhafi, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein). He gave interviews lying in bed in pink pajamas. He wept, he fainted, and he set his nation on a path of permanent impoverishment by "nationalizing" the oil wells, where they sat idle after the British companies that knew how to operate them pulled out.
But he was earthy and hated the British, so left-wing academics adored Mossadegh. The New York Times compared him to Thomas Jefferson.
True, Mossadegh had been "elected" by the Iranian parliament — but only in the chaos following the assassination of the sitting prime minister.
In short order, the shah dismissed this clown, but Mossadegh refused to step down, so the CIA forcibly removed him and allowed the shah’s choice to assume the office. This "coup," as liberal academics term it, was approved by liberals’ favorite Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, and supported by such ponderous liberal blowhards as John Foster Dulles.
For Obama to be apologizing for one of the CIA’s greatest accomplishments isn’t just crazy, it’s Ramsey Clark crazy.
Obama also said that it was unfair that "some countries have weapons that others do not" and proclaimed that "any nation — including Iran — should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
Wait — how about us? If a fanatical holocaust denier with messianic delusions can have nuclear power, can’t the U.S. at least build one nuclear power plant every 30 years?
I’m sure Iran’s compliance will be policed as well as North Korea’s was. Clinton struck a much-heralded "peace deal" with North Korea in 1994, giving them $4 billion to construct nuclear facilities and 500,000 tons of fuel oil in return for a promise that they wouldn’t build nuclear weapons. The ink wasn’t dry before the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes.
But back to Iran, what precisely do Iranians need nuclear power for, again? They’re not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse. Iran is a primitive nation in the middle of a desert that happens to sit on top of a large percentage of the world’s oil and gas reserves. That’s not enough oil and gas to run household fans?
Obama’s "I’m OK, You’re OK" speech would be hilarious, if it weren’t so terrifying.
‘bama lies to Ameria. He thinks you are stupid.
… and other Obama idiot actions.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Tuesday June 9th entitled, The Media Fall for Phony ‘Jobs’ Claims: The Obama Numbers Are Pure Fiction.
Obama has the unmitigated gall to claim that he has saved 150,000 jobs and that spending more money will "save or create" another 600,000 jobs. There is absolutely no way to measure such numbers. Never mind that we don’t even have the money to spend in the first place to "save or create" another 600,000 imaginary jobs.
Tony Fratto, senior member of the White House communications shop under Bush stated, "We would never have used a formula like ’save or create,’"… "To begin with, the number is pure fiction — the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being ’saved.’ And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."
The President must think Americans are stupid and that we will buy everything this self-proclaimed "Messiah’s" teleprompter tells him to say. Of course, he knows that the Government-run media will never expose these fallacious claims for what they are—Lies. After all, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas recently declared on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." And we know that the real God doesn’t lie.
AND …
In a recent interview with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh claimed that Obama was doing such a good job of destroying the country that: "If al-Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama is beating them to it." Limbaugh prefaced those remarks by saying that he had thought carefully about that statement in anticipation of his interview with Hannity.
AND …
Yes folks, we have a President who thinks he can stimulate the economy by printing more "money," raising your taxes, and spending our grand children’s inheritance to win the votes of illegal immigrants, dead people, and Democrats. Furthermore, he can’t prove he was born in America. We know he lived in Kenya, so it’s quite possible that this is his home country. Therefore, somewhere in Kenya, a village must be missing its idiot!
Obama speaks streams of vomit
This is a special report to the people and governments of the world. Obama DOES NOT represent the people of the United States. He is part of a small elite group of politicians and money mongers that are trying to control the world. He is a liar and a fraud. He has hidden his past and refuses to reveal who he really is. Do not believe anything he says. He will lie to make it convenient for himself and his groupees.
If you are Muslim and like his recent speech then please make him a citizen of your country and keep him there. He is one of you. He is not one of us. He has only one goal and that is to take over the world as a one world government. He will do it by lying and saying whatever is necessary.
He is like a 3 year old child that has no ability except to lie. His wife is the same way. No not believe either one of them. His ability to run the government of the United States is non-existent. He has no idea what he is going and neither does his buddies from Harvard. They are just playing games with the American people. His entire cabinet and officials are made up of criminals and crooks.
The American people are fed up with his life, attitude, and record. If he is allowed to continue on the path he is on then he will intentionally destroy the United States. Osama bin Laden will be proud of him. The American people will remove him from office and he will be remembered as a bad taste from a bad hangover.
(c) copyright 2009 Ray Holt
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