Category: Journalism

Spreading the Joe’s Wealth Around – Obama’s New Welfare Plan

There are quite a few things wrong with Obama’s new Tax plan, but I’m going to focus on two that are egregiously wrong. The worst thing about it is the built-in socialism, he would tax most busineses in America and pass the money on in the form a of check to the thirty percent of taxpayers who pay no taxes now. Ignore Obama’s protestations about business owner income taxation, it’s a dodge, a smokescreen –most businesses are incorporated and must file their own return and they would be Taxed. It’s welfare revisited, as outlined in this Fox and Friends segment:

On top of taxing most businesses in the US, Obama would also hit the large corporations that just lost huge chunks of net worth; which directly impacts your pension and 401 K plan during a recession. Besides the huge raid on your pension or 401K net worth, Obama’s trickle-down taxation would tax Joe the plumber, Jill the hairdresser, Bill the baker, Bob the butcher and hosts of others who you depend on day in and day out for goods and services.

Do you think you might end up paying a bit more next time you call a plumber, a furnace repairman, shop for groceries, buy gas, or get your hair done under Obama’s plan? Whatever segment of society is taxed you will pay the end. Thus has it always been, thus it will always be until death do you part from the IRS.

Obama will tax the engine of america’s productivity while we are in a recession to re-introduce welfare, make no mistake: no matter how much he talks about the middle class he’s talking about spreading your wealth around. Last point: if Obama is elected he might initially cut your tax, but it would all be washed away as a Democrat congress and a Democrat president let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 — so don’t be fooled by Obama’s shell game with your tax dollars.

This next video spells it out and is hilarious, so I expect the Obamabots to get it flagged down at Youtube pretty quickly, watch while you can:

UPDATE: This is one of those posts I look back on in horror – “Joe the plumber” turned out to be the standard christian fundamentalist zealot and RWNJ everyone was warning me about…

Barack Obama and William Ayers: Monumental Failure

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama also spoke at at educational forum together, and they were invited by Michelle Obama to participate. Barack Obama gave an endorsement blurb on Bill Ayers education book, and their key initiatives together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge were all in the education sector. Are these the sort of people Barack will look to for shaping the education policy in America if he’s elected?

New footage of Bll Ayers speaking in this Ad:

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama also spoke at at educational forum together, and they were invited by Michelle Obama to participate. Barack Obama gave an endorsement blurb on Bill Ayers education book, and their key initiatives together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge were all in the education sector. Are these the sort of people Barack will look to for shaping the education policy in America if he’s elected?

More on the AYERS OBAMA connections and past education bills here.

More on Obama’s ties to ACORN here.

More on how the Obama Campaign is trying to sweep all of this under the carpet at the Chicago Tribune

More on the Annenberg Challenge at NY Post:

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Ayers and Obama worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. “CAC translated Mr. Ayers’ radicalism into practice,” notes the Journal. “It required schools to affiliate with ‘external partners’ ” for their funding.

“Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers,” such as ACORN.

Ayers seemed to envision schools as “sites of resistance” and for teaching kids to oppose “oppression,” with a focus on America’s evil and racist past – and an eye toward “social transformation.”

This is the swamp in which Obama operated: The Journal notes that Obama was chairman of the CAC board, which handled fiscal matters.

All told, Ayers and Obama won more than $150 million to ladle out.

McCain, to be sure, has never accused Obama of sharing Ayers’ terrorist views.

He’s merely questioned the Democrat’s judgment in having worked with Ayers – and having launched his political career from the ex-terrorist’s living room.

It’s a fair point.

Incredibly, an Obama aide suggested that the senator didn’t know about Ayers’ terror past – which is a little disquieting, if true.

But he had to know what Ayers was

The biggest scandal in all of this is that the CAC was Barack Obama’s biggest executive achievement – about the only one. As Chairman he oversaw the dispersement of 150 million in grants, matching funds and donations which became a monumental failure:

The results of an August 2003 final technical report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project by the Consortium on Chicago School Research “suggest that among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior, student self-efficacy, and social competence.”

Even without the Ayers connection you can see why presidential candidate Barack Obama wanted to leave this off his thin resume.

Barack’s Acorn

Didn’t fall far from the tree.

UPDATE: Youtube has pulled the ad, I’ve found it at Liveleak and reposted:


 
You can also play the ad from the Campaign Website here.

Here’s the original Youtube link, now down if you click on it:

The Barack truth Squad is out in force, this one’s been pulled down at Youtube per commentor Aknot, he dropped off an article on Acorn and voter fraud in in Florida that’s worth reading however from 970WFLA:

Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark has notified the State Attorney and the Florida Division of Elections that her office has received 35 voter registration applications in the last two weeks from the organization Work for Progress that appear questionable and possibly fraudulent. The handwriting is virtually the same on multiple applications, and some have the same address. Some of the applications have no address or are incomplete in other ways.

One application was turned in incomplete, so elections staff sent a notice to the applicant. However, the voter responded that she has been registered to vote since 1995 and stated that she had not submitted a new registration application.

One of the bigger problems with these massive voter registration fraud efforts is how it shapes the polls and creates a false impression of reality. All pollsters weight their samples by the numbers of voters registered D or R in the states that record party affiliation. If there are 4X the numbers of Democrats registered than Republicans, they are going to sample more Democrats in their poll than Republicans, even if the state is traditionally red. This is skewing the view of the election.

UPDATE: Paul F Villarreal has a new link that works at Youtube here.

Meanwhile Barack’s Campaign is doing all they can to distance him from Acorn, but there is this quote right out of his own mouth:
“

I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

Barack Obama’s Terrorist Friend

The new McCain ad details some but not all of the connections to Bill Ayers, you can read more on them here. Below is the ad:

So the basic bullet points:

  1. Ayers and Obama Worked together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge
  2. Ayers Chose Obama to disperse millions and millions to radical “community groups”
  3. Ayers and Obama drafted the bylaws together
  4. Obama wrote a glowing book blurb for the cover of one of Ayer’s books
  5. Michelle invited Ayers to participate in a Panel that Obama was speaking on
  6. Obama’s political coming out party in Chicago was in Bill Ayers Living room
  7. Ayers and Obama served on the Woods foundation together as board members
  8. Obama and Ayers dispersed some of the foundation’s money to Reverend Wright’s Black LIberation Theology Church
  9. While they were still serving on the Woods Foundation together Ayers was pictured in Chicago Magazine standing on a US Flag in an article titled “No Regrets.”

FEC Complaint to be Entered on Obama Campaign Donations

While Obamabots like Peter like to salt the comments here crowing about how Barack Obama is supported by “small donors,” some are really large donors breaking up their vary large contributions into chunks and breaking campaign law in the process,

The RNC will be issuing complaint to the Federal Election Commission regarding Barack Obama’s small contributions. While Obamabots like Peter like to salt the comments here crowing about how Barack Obama is supported by “small donors,” some are really large donors breaking up their vary large contributions into chunks and breaking campaign law in the process, as well as some who are foreign contributors. So Barack’s funded in a large part by bundlers, large donors, and foreign donors.

From The Trail:

The RNC is alleging that the Obama campaign was so hungry for donations it “looked the other way” as contributions piled up from suspicious, and possibly even illegal foreign donors.

“We believe that the American people should know first and foremost if foreign money is pouring into a presidential election,” said RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross.

Cairncross alleged there was mounting evidence of this, and cited a report in the current issue of Newsweek magazine that documents a handful of instances where donors made repeated small donations using fake names, such as “Good Will” and “Doodad Pro.”

The Newsweek report says that earlier this year the Obama campaign returned $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T-shirts in bulk from the campaign’s online store — purchases that count as campaign contributions. The brothers had listed their address as “Ga.,” which the campaign took to mean Georgia rather than Gaza.

More at Reuters; Much more at Newsweek

No surprises there right? He did come from one of the most politically corrupt cities in the country, Chicago, where [select one: King, Boss, Mayor] Daley rules. [ I personally like “King” best because the rule seems to pass from father to son by divine right or something. ]

Anyway there’s been a mounting story on this in the blogosphere, we’ve seen Phone banks for Barack in the West Bank, we’ve seen strange donors and other things. One example is donor “Pro Doodad” who seems to have made 786 separate donations of 25 dollars that adds up to 19,500 bucks. That’s a lot of doodads folks. Once caught on that, the campaign started refunding the money, but apparently hasn’t finished.

There’s more to the complaint than that however, as the complaint will reveal, like donor “Khv Khv” listed many times in the spreadsheet. On top of that we’ve got Obama’s friend to wonder about, as his offices were raided by the FBI.

Then there is the ACORN connection:

PREVIOUSLY: Barack Obama, Democrat-Lagos

Update: Note that Drudge Report has articles on this front paged now.

Bill Ayers Weather Underground, Not Just Anti-War

In the wake of the Barack Obama association with Bill Ayers and friends, Zombie pointed out something that many people in the mainstream press conveniently forget or forgive — the Weather Underground wasn’t just anti-war. Instead like ANSWER, WCW, and UFPJ they were, and remain radical communists bent on revolution.

Bill Ayers 2001 While Still Serving With Obama on Woods Fund Board

In the wake of the Barack Obama association with Bill Ayers and friends, Zombie pointed out something that many people in the mainstream press conveniently forget or forgive — the Weather Underground wasn’t just anti-war. Instead like ANSWER, WCW, and UFPJ they were, and remain radical communists bent on revolution. Many of their activities occurred after the US had already pulled out of Viet Nam, Zombie recalls a few:

May 18, 1973 – The bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York. WUO states this is in response to the killing of 10-year-old black youth Clifford Glover by police.

September 28, 1973 – The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy are bombed. WUO states this is in response to ITT’s alleged role in the Chilean coup earlier that month. [NYT, 9/28/73]

March 6, 1974 – Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco. WUO states this is to protest alleged sterilization of poor women. In the accompanying communiqué, the Women’s Brigade argues for “the need for women to take control of daycare, healthcare, birth control and other aspects of women’s daily lives.”

May 31, 1974 – The Office of the California Attorney General is bombed. WUO states this is in response to the killing of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

July, 1974 – The WUO releases the book Prairie Fire, in which they indicate the need for a unified Communist Party. They encourage the creation of study groups to discuss their ideology, and continue to stress the need for violent acts. The book also admits WUO responsibility of several actions from previous years. The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) arises from the teachings in this book and is organized by many former WUO members.

September 11, 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation). WUO states this is in retribution for Anaconda’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup the previous year.

June 16, 1975 – Weathermen bomb a Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York, WUO states this is in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.

…etc.! 

Meanwhile the AP is calling Sarah Palin racist for mentioning this long time associate of Barack Obama’s. Notice that the article fails to mention the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Barack and Bill worked on together, or the education panel that Michelle Obama asked Bill and Barry both to speak at, or the glowing book review Barrack gave Bill’s book.

NO, they were just acquaintances according to AP, and if you bring this up then you must be racist. The Press is taking Barack Obama from Post-Racial to Most-Racial candidate whether he wants to go there or not. More at LGF

Oh, and for the leftists who think I”m going over the top by calling Ayers a communist, here’s his blog read for yourself, he’s not taking pains to hide it.

h/t Intrepid for the “Post-racial to most-racial” line.

Biden Lied

The title says it all, fourteen times, here’s one of the more egregious whoppers debunked on Tape:

h/t LGF also see “Biden’s Lies, the short list“.

Also note this from Michael Totten, who is also somewhat expert on the area:

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

Jerry Pournelle and Joel Rosenburg on Joe Biden’s historical fantasy.

The Newest Palin Smear Comes as Astroturf

Rusty over Jawa report has done a fine job of digging into the people behind the lastest supposedly “grassroots” video that smears Sarah Palin. It’s a grand opus, and Rusty’s investigation has been every bit as thorough as the ones he does against internet Jihadis. (E.G. rumor has it that Al Qaeda’s latest tape was released six days late partially due to his efforts.) I highly recommend that you read it in full, then stop back by here for some background on Joe Vogler and the AIP.

The professionally produced PR firm video attempts to tie Sarah Palin to the Alaskan Independence Party and Joe Vogler, and that was a real hoot since the ties are so weak, and since everyone in Alaska knows that the chances of AIP getting a secession vote are nil, nada, nyet, no way, not going to happen. Even the majority of AIP members (about 1% of Alaska’s miniscule population) also know that the secession is just political theater with a point.

With the exception of a few real dedicated, passionate nuballs most are just there for the humor and to vent about the Federal Bureaucracies that have locked up most Alaskan lands and thrown away the key. During the many boom and bust periods of Alaska’s economy AIP has floated many petitions, and there are very few Alaskans who haven’t signed one at one time or another. The ones I remember signing dealt with drilling in ANWR, and building a natural gas Pipeline.

I call them nutballs because some of the long term members occasionally expouse conspiracy theories where general government malaise and liberal environmental stasism are the real cause.
Some of them spout everything from the Trilateralists, to gold conspiracies, to Johnson had Kennedy shot; in other words they would fit right in at a Hollywood party, a troofer convention, or a John Birch meeting. (Few people realize how thin a barrier separates the Hollywood elite kooks from the Birchers and the deluded troofers, they are all tied together by a willingness to believe in the preposterous over reality when given the choice, witness people like Michael Moore and David Duke.)

I grew up in Alaska, and Joe Vogler as well as AIP are part of the background of some in the state, but you will find them mostly in Fairbanks Alaska. Joe’s a colorful character – ok character is too non descriptive… let’s call him a passionate nutball. However Joe’s one of the passionate nutballs who pioneered Alaska, and he was a patriot who worked and fought for his country. His beef with the US is more with the bureaucracies and the fact that they claim-jumped his mining stake, you would be hard pressed to find a more ardent defender of the US Constitution however. He just thinks modern Fed Bureaus do not follow it.

Think of Joe as an alcoholic Ron Paul without the baggage of past prejudices.  Joe Vogler was always strongly in favor of the US Constitution, I know this because I’ve had a few conversations with him on the subject; a couple of times at Tommy’s Elbow room, and a couple of times at Bob’s Saw Shop, both in Fairbanks.

What he wasn’t in favor of was the extreme Federal lock up of land and resources in Alaska. The Secessionist movement has always had some stated goals, but they are more interested in achieving the same rights that other states enjoy when it comes to their natural resources. The parts of Alaska that aren’t federal preserve, parkland, military base, or owned by the Native corporations are few and far between, and the amount of land in private citizen hands is tiny. When you see the Lower 48 blocking development in Alaska ala stopping drilling in ANWR is when you will see the AIP membership rise. The people still vote R or D when they hit the booth however.

That’s Joe’s and AIP’s beef, and to Sarah Palin they are also constituents so it’s natural that she would send a video greeting to their convention.

AIP is mostly political theater – to paint it as much else is really preposterous. To paint Joe as some kind of malevolent anti-us dingbat is also bit off the mark, to be sure he has no love of the Park service, BLM, and the other federal agencies that keep Alaska in the 19th century. However he was a true patriot who loved the US constitution, and he was one of the few people who can say they helped fight off a foreign invasion of US soil. You can hear him at link number 5 on this page describing what it was like.

You will also see some of the conspiracy theories he believed, e.g. link number one, he’s on the same page as Pat Buchanan on WWII, and it’s idiocy to be certain. In Alaska there’s a saying that goes something like “We attract a lot of real winners, but we get our share of losers”. Where’s Joe on that spectrum? You decide.

UDPATE: Please Revisit Jawa Report for Updates: The sites and vids in question have been nuked but not forgotten, Rusty was smart enough to take their cyberprints.

Update II: We have a carefully crafted confession designed to protect the PR firm and Obama. More here.

Who’s the Elitist in this Video? (hint: it’s not Lynn)

Wolf Blitzer interviews Lynn Forester De Rothschild, one of these people is a beltway elitist, can you figure out which it is?

Obama Sex Ed for Kindergartners Ad is True

Last week the McCain campaign released an ad that I also carried stating that Obama supported teaching comprehensive sex education to kindergartners. The Obama camp immediately went into high dudgeon and hysteria, calling the ad a lie, and by implication McCain a liar. The ad turns out to be true, it did miss another Obama education “accomplishment”, but more on that later.

First Byron York at National Review Online investigated the ad, and you can read the article here, below is Byron’s conclusion:

Obama’s explanation for his vote has been accepted by nearly all commentators. And perhaps that is indeed why he voted for Senate Bill 99, although we don’t know for sure. But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is. [* note that the reply is much more extensive than this, please go to the site and read the full detail]

You can also see the key provisions of the K-6 additions that bill 99 added at McCain’s campaign website in their detailed reply:

Please find the facts below:

In the Illinois State Legislature, Barack Obama voted for legislation to alter Illinois’ Sex Education standards to include instruction in any grade from Kindergarten through 12th grade. The legislation passed Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee that he chaired. As the Chicago Daily Herald stated, “the legislation included a provision to allow students from kindergarten through fifth grade to be added to the middle and high school students receiving sex education.”

Despite the Obama campaign’s claims, this bill was intended to provide children as young as Kindergarten with sex education. According to the legislation itself, “Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.” This legislation stated expressly that children in grade 12 were to be education about sexually transmitted diseases.

In 2007, Barack Obama told Planned Parenthood that he supported sex education for Kindergarteners as long as it was “age-appropriate.” Thus on two separate occasions we have Barack Obama supporting the expansion of sex education to Kindergarteners.

Defending Barack Obama’s statement, the Obama campaign cited far-reaching SIECUS curriculum as the model. The SIECUS curriculum goes far beyond appropriate touching. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) supports a comprehensive approach to sex education, beginning as early as ages 5-8. For Level 1 sex education (ages 5 through 8), the guidelines include much more than appropriate touching. The curriculum includes lines that are not appropriate for us to state here but please see the link to the guidelines here: http://www.siecus.org/_data/global/images/guidelines.pdf. This is the model provided by the Obama campaign and no one else.

You can also reference the Chicago Tribune article on the bill from that time:

Chicago Daily Herald: “At one point, the legislation included a provision to allow students from kindergarten through fifth grade to be added to the middle and high school students receiving sex education. Obama was chairman of the Senate committee that voted along party lines to move along the measure, which ultimately went nowhere.” (Eric Krol, “Obama Clarifies Sex Ed Views At Benedictiine,” Chicago Daily Herald, 10/6/04)

Will Barack Obama’s reply be that this was one of those days when he wasn’t there but voted “present?” There’s no real comeback for Barry, he either was there and wasn’t paying attention even though he was chair, or he supported teaching comprehensive sex ed to Kindergartners.

Barack Obama doesn’t have many actions due to his lack of experience, so we have to judge him by the few we can find — this is one, the only other education accomplishment I can find is his appointment of liberal cronies and leftists as principals in Chicago schools under the Annenberg Challenge with Bill Ayers.