Kokomo - The Center of Attention

Kokomo High School's Memorial Gymnasium is one of many Indiana high school gyms that can hold over 6,000 basketball faithful. Countless Friday and Saturday nights have seen the place packed to the rafters with devoted fans who had come to witness the writing of yet another chapter of "Hoosier Hysteria."

How far we have fallen.

Last Friday evening, those in attendance at Memorial Gym saw no jump shots, no great passes, no thrilling overtime victory. There was only one man at the center of attention: Barak Obama.

As much as I would have liked to have attended this event, I had to take my wife and niece out to eat.

Tonight, Hillary Clinton, not to be outdone by Obama, makes her Kokomo appearance, also at Memorial Gym. I would love to go to this event as well, but once again, I'm sure I'll be busy. I'm not sure what I'll be busy doing, but I'll find something.

I can't wait for basketball season to start.

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Obama's Empathy Rings Hollow

In 2006, Barack Obama gave a commencement speech to Northwestern University graduates. One of the themes he developed in his speech was that of cultivating empathy.

I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care.

Jill Stanek was a registered nurse who worked in the Labor and Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and who testified before the U.S. House committee in 2000 and 2001 for the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which required medical attention for babies who survived a procedure known as "induced labor abortion." On March 27, 2001, she also testified before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Barack Obama was a member.

Stanek has written an article for Citizen Link telling how Obama, as an Illinois State Senator, blocked the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act. In her article, Stanek talks about her testomony in the Illinois Senate:

My testimony included my description of holding a premature aborted baby until he died:

One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down’s syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about ½ pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end, he was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken.

After listening to Stanek’s testimony, Obama voted “no” on Senate Bill 1095, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, in the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 28. He then argued against the bill on the Senate floor on March 30, and voted “present” when the bill was up for a vote that day. The name of the bill is self-explanatory, but Barack Obama couldn't find it within himself to vote for it. There was no one forcing him to care.

The following year a similar Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Senate Bill 1662, was proposed in the Illinois Senate. Again Obama voted “no” in the Senate Judiciary Committee; again he argued against the bill on the Senate floor, and this time he also voted “no” when the bill was before the full Senate. Once again, Barack Obama demonstrated his own “empathy deficit.”

In 2003, Obama chaired the Health and Human Services Committee to which the 2003 version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Senate Bill 1082, was referred. As chair, Obama killed the bill in committee by not allowing it to come up for a vote.

Somehow, Obama’s talk of empathy rings hollow coming from a man who is willing to allow babies, not fetuses, but babies, born alive and living outside their mother’s womb, to die because they are not wanted, and because recognizing them as people would fly in the face of his pro-abortion views.

Quick Quiz: Who made each of the following statements?

Answers can be found below, but don't cheat; see how you do.

1. “The war, now entering its sixth year, has aggravated every economic imbalance of U.S. capitalism while draining the country of resources that could have gone for jobs and domestic reconstruction.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

2. “I want to talk about another cost of this war - the toll it has taken on our economy. Because at a time when we're on the brink of recession - when neighborhoods have For Sale signs outside every home, and working families are struggling to keep up with rising costs - ordinary Americans are paying a price for this war.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

3. “People want change and not any kind of change, but change that puts people’s needs before war-making, division, sleaze and corporate profits.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

4. “We're not here to talk about change for change's sake, but because our families, our communities, and our country desperately need it.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

5. “This election is still our best chance to solve the problems we've been talking about for decades – as one nation; as one people.
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

6. “The next nine months are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We have to act on that basis and convey that same message to everyone we meet.
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

7. “As in recent elections, the working class and labor movement are digging in for the election fight... the level of unity in labor is high, resting on a fierce determination to defeat McCain in November, to enlarge the Democratic majorities in Congress...”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

8. “At time of such insecurity and vulnerability, there has never been a greater need for a strong labor movement to stand up for American workers.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

9. “Make no mistake about it; this administration and its counterparts in Congress don’t comfortably fit within the parameters of the American political tradition. If anybody is un-American, they are. Their domestic agenda is the political equivalent of a neutron bomb in that it destroys people’s living standards and rights while protecting—indeed filling to overflow—the bank accounts of the super rich.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

10. “Over the last seven years, we've had an administration that serves the interests of the wealthy and the well-connected, no matter what the cost to working families, and to our economy. It's an administration that didn't lift a finger while our economy rolled toward recession until the pain folks were feeling on Main Street trickled up to their friends on Wall Street.

“It's an administration that's been handing out tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and aren't even asking for them.”
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

11. "More people without health care since George Bush took office; more children in poverty since George Bush took office; it is true that the economy grew while George Bush was in office, but here's the catch, this is the first time in at least, since WWII that average family incomes actually went down during an economic expansion. People actually on average had a $1,000 less per family when you adjust it for inflation."
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

12. “Are we going to allow him (George Bush) to steal from the mouths of children in order to feed the leeches at Halliburton and the Pentagon? Are we going to allow Bush to tell Detroit, Gary, Youngstown, and Bridgeport, cities already reeling from plant closings and mass layoffs, to drop dead while the government builds ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction? Are we going to allow Bush to turn his back on the young men and women returning from Iraq, while he empties the federal treasury into the bank accounts of the wealthy, whose sons and daughters are safe from the horror of war?
A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA


Answers:

1. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

2. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

3. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

4. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

5. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

6. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

7. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

8. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

9. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

10. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

11. A. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate

12. B. Sam Webb, National Chair – Communist Party USA

How many did you get correct? It's a little difficult to tell, isn't it, whether the quote comes from the leading Democrat candidate for President of the United States or from the National Chair of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

While the CPUSA will not officially endorse any candidate who is not a member of their party, it is obvious when you read the article entitled "New Times, New Opportunities" from the CPUSA website that Sam Webb is doing all he can to help get Barack Obama elected and is encouraging other CPUSA Party members to do the same.

Why would the National Chair of the Communist Party USA be so interested in Barack Obama becoming President of the United States? Webb himself answers that question in the article.

The objective of this election is not to elect a candidate of the left (Communist Party) or a Congress that is left in outlook. It isn’t doable at this moment. We wish it were, but in the spirit of Marxism, objectives should be grounded in concrete reality, not in wishes, not in flights of fancy that may momentarily soothe but come back to bite you in the end.

The reality of this moment is the following: the right wing has dominated political life for three decades and the task of the people’s movement is to dislodge them from power and create a more favorable political terrain on which tens of millions can fight and win going forward. In present circumstances the only way to do that is for this surging coalition to elect a Democratic Party
president and increase the Democratic Party majorities in the Congress.

If that happens, it would not only constitute a tremendous victory for the Democratic Party, but also for tens of millions of people in this country and worldwide. It would bring closer that day when the movement (Communist) fights for a more advanced (Socialist) political and economic program. There is no other way to get there from here.

Does it tell us anything that the National Chair of the Communist Party USA hopes to advance the Communist/Socialist movement in the United States through the election of Barack Obama?

Hanoi Jane voting for Barack

Jane Fonda says she's voting for Barack Obama for president. What a surprise!

Hanoi Jane, as she's known to many, is infamous for cozying up to the communist North Vietnamese at a time when American soldiers were giving their lives in a war for freedom against North Vietnam.

How appropriate that she supports Obama, who is probably the closest thing this country has ever seen to a communist running for president on a major party ticket.