Socialism has Arrived

In 1994 Barack Obama was one of a group of lawyers who represented Calvin Roberson in a lawsuit against Citibank Federal Savings Bank. The case alleged race discrimination in lending practices by Citibank, and has recently gained a lot of attention as an example of the courts putting pressure on banking institutions to grant loans to high-risk applicants.

Now we know that the federal government has agreed to guarantee $306 billion in risky assets held by Citigroup and to invest another $20 billion in Citigroup on top of the $25 billion the company has already received.

So let me see if I have this right. Government pressures bank to make risky loans. People who can't afford loans get them anyway. Bank goes broke. Government takes tax money from other people to bail out bank.

I think I've got it. Sounds like socialism.

Gay Agenda Runs Private Business – Frightening for Everyone

It's the American Dream. Find a need, start a business that fulfills the need, grow your business, then have gay activists dictate how you run your business. Dr. Neil Clark Warren, founder of the eHarmony online relationship site, is now living that dream.

A lawsuit, the result of a 2005 discrimination complaint filed by Eric McKinley against eHarmony for failing to provide services for same-sex couples, has been settled out of court.

Under terms of the settlement, eHarmony will launch a second online relationship site called Compatible Partners, which will "welcome all single individuals who are genuinely seeking long-term relationships," according to eHarmony Vice President of Legal Affairs Antone Johnson.

Also under terms of the settlement, Compatible Partners will give McKinley $5,000 and a complimentary one-year membership. In addition, the settlement gives the first 10,000 same-sex registrants a free six-month subscription.

So now Dr. Warren, who is an evangelical Christian, gets to live out his American dream by providing services for people who live a lifestyle that goes against his personal religious beliefs.

This should frighten and upset Christians, certainly, but Christians are not the only people who should be frightened and upset. When private business owners are told that they must run their businesses in a way that violates their own values, that should frighten and upset not only Christians, but also atheists, gays, straights, vegetarians, hunting enthusiasts: everyone who owns or hopes to someday own a business.

Today, Christians must violate their values. Who will it be tomorrow?

Filmmaker John Ziegler is working on a new documentary entitled Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected. As part of his research, Ziegler hired Zogby International to conduct a survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide, asking them 12 multiple-choice questions regarding statements linked to one of the four candidates: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. The poll found that people were woefully uninformed, especially when it came to any negative information about Obama.

In addition to the Zogby poll, twelve Obama voters were interviewed on film on election day right after they voted. Again, their answers indicate a deplorable lack of knowledge about the candidates. Granted, interviewing 12 people on camera means nothing by itself; however, when you look at those interviews within the context of the Zogby poll, it's clear that if the job of the media is to inform the public, they have failed miserably.

Here's the video:



The following is a quick summary of the Zogby poll as posted on the How Obama Got Elected website. For full poll results, click here.

Zogby Poll

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

The Veracity of the AP

Last week, Fox News reported that an anonymous source inside the McCain campaign claimed that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent. On Monday of this week, MSNBC reported that the anonymous source was McCain policy advisor Martin Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. As it turns out, however, there is no Martin Eisenstadt, nor is there a Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. The whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish. The pair made up the name Martin Eisenstadt and the name of the phony think tank, then claimed to be the source of the leak about Palin’s alleged lack of understanding of basic fourth grade geography.

Today, an AP report states that MSNBC has retracted their story that Martin Eisenstadt was the source. However, the AP report also states, “The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin — not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.”

What? How can the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony not put the veracity of the report in question? First of all, the veracity of the report was put into question by the report itself. When we hear a report that a governor of a state does not know that Africa is a continent, we should immediately question the veracity of that report. I don’t care what side of the political aisle a candidate is on, he or she is not likely to make it to the level of dog catcher without having a better understanding of the world than that. I really doubt there is a governor in this country, republican, democrat, independent, or other who cannot name all seven continents. Now add to that the fact that we know the revelation of the source of the leak was a complete hoax, and the AP doesn’t think that the veracity of the report is in question?

I think the veracity of the AP is in question.

Broken Campaign Promises - Already

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to cut federally funded programs that don’t work. During the first debate he said, “And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely. ...We've got to eliminate programs that don't work..."

In the second debate he repeated his pledge to cut spending by eliminating programs that don’t work: “I want to go line by line through every item in the federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work ..."

And just in case anyone still didn’t understand that a President Obama would not be wasting money on programs that don’t work, here’s what he said in the third debate : “We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don't work. And I want to go through the federal budget line by line, page by page, programs that don't work, we should cut.”

Sounds good to me. The only problem is that instead of eliminating programs that don’t work, he’s already talking about new funding for a program that doesn’t work. That program is embryonic stem cell research.

The key word is embryonic, the kind of stem cell research that requires the destruction of living human embryos. It also happens to be the kind of stem cell research that has hit some major scientific roadblocks.

There is, however, a kind of stem cell research that shows great promise: adult stem cell research, the kind of stem cell research that does not require the destruction of human embryos.

Adult stem cells are already being used to treat dozens of diseases including leukemias, lymphomas, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and lupus, just to name a few. How many diseases are currently being treated by embryonic stem cells? The answer is zero.

There are also currently more than 1,300 human clinical trials underway using adult stem cells. How many clinical trials are being conducted using embryonic stem cells? Again, the answer is zero. The only tests being conducted with embryonic stem cells are being conducted on laboratory animals.

The reason for the disparity between the successes of adult vs. embryonic stem cell research is not funding. There is funding for and there is research being done with embryonic stem cells. The reason for the disparity is that there are some major scientific barriers to using embryonic stem cells. One problem is that, because of rapid growth when injected, embryonic stem cells produce tumors in the patient. Another problem is that, even if the tumor problem could be overcome, embryonic stem cells tend to be rejected by the body’s immune system. Neither of these problems exists with adult stem cells.

So on one hand, we have embryonic stem cell research, with major complications that researchers have thus far not been able to overcome, and with serious ethical debate due to the required destruction of human embryos.

On the other hand, we have adult stem cell research, with no major scientific barriers to success, with already successful treatment of various diseases in humans, with over a thousand human clinical trials already underway, and with no ethical debate.

Now we have a president-elect, who pledged during the campaign not to spend money on programs that don't work, indicating that one of his first moves as president will be to increase spending on a program that appears not to work. It is a program that, at best, is many years from producing positive results. It is a program that, because of ethical concerns, does not unite Americans. Indeed, it divides us further.

It seems to me that a president who campaigned on being a uniter and who promised not to spend money wastefully would focus federal research money on the kind of stem cell research that has produced actual medical success and that is free of divisive ethical concerns.

But that's just me.

John McCain Needs to Speak Up

With anonymous McCain staffers blaming Sarah Palin for the Republican loss in Tuesday's presidential election, John McCain himself needs to speak loudly and clearly.

McCain seemed always ready to defend Barack Obama during the campaign whenever Obama was attacked by McCain supporters. So why has he not come to Palin's defense?

The fact is that Sarah Palin is in no way responsible for losing the election. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Sarah Palin is the reason John McCain was even close. His campaign was nearly dead in the water before announcing her selection as his running mate. After that announcement the Republican base became energized, and after Palin's speech in the convention, McCain began to surge in the polls. That momentum didn't fade until the banking crisis began to make headlines, and from there McCain's numbers dropped to a point from which he could not recover.

The banking crisis wasn't McCain's fault, but neither was it Sarah Palin's fault. If that crisis had not burst into the headlines, maybe McCain would have won, maybe not. But if it had not been for the energy that Sarah Palin brought to the party, McCain would have been out of serious contention long before the banking crisis reared its ugly head.

If John McCain had the conservative values and the fire in the belly that Sarah Palin had, he might have been able to overcome the unfair blame he and the Republican Party received over the banking mess, and we very well may have been looking at a president-elect John McCain right now.

He needs to put a stop to this nonsense!

What will happen now

C. Edmund Wright has an outstanding article on some of the things we can expect now that Barack Obama has won the election. It's called "Barack's Chickens Home to Roost: Lefty Buyers Remorse." I highly recommend it.

Did you support Barack Obama for President? Here is the company you keep.

If you supported Barack Obama for President, congratulations. You have joined the following list of distinguished men and women.

Mike Klonsky – former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)

Bill Fletcher, Jr. – a founding member of the Communist Party USA (Correction: this should say "a founding member of the Black Radical Congress, an organization with ties to the Communist Party USA.")

Barbara Ehrenreich - Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America

Carl Davidson – former national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society who has called Fidel Castro “a remarkable man"

Jane Fonda - "Hanoi Jane"

Tony Rezko - Chicago slumlord convicted on several counts of fraud and bribery

Louis Farrakhan - Nation of Islam leader who has said, "White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet" and that the Jews are “the greatest controllers of black minds, black intelligence”

Rashid Khalidi - a former spokesperson for the PLO

William Ayers - an unrepentant domestic terrorist

Bernardine Dohrn – Ayers’ wife who was once on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List

Jeremiah Wright – “God damn America”

Danny Glover – a strong supporter of Hugo Chavez

Tom Hayden - a principal organizer of Students for a Democratic Society who called returning American POWs "liars, hypocrites and pawns"

Harry Belafonte - in 1983 praised the Soviet Union’s “peace efforts” – in 2003 blamed America for 9-11

Cornel West - Marxist professor at Princeton University and current Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America

Franklin Raines – former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae who walked out with 1.4 million dollars per year pension payments for life

Before you start to scream that I'm just making this up, understand that all of this if verifiable.

If you don't mind the fact that you have supported the same candidate for President as what these people have supported, that's fine.

If you do mind, and if you're upset or offended by my pointing it out, I'm sorry.

It's the truth.

Obama's Policies will Bankrupt Coal Power Plants - His Words, Not Mine

If you haven't heard it yet, here is the audio tape that surfaced today from an interview that Barack Obama gave in January to the San Francisco Chronicle. In the tape, Obama says that his cap and trade proposal will bankrupt anyone who wants to build a coal power plant.

The transcript below of Obama's words is provided by NewsBusters.

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.
It's just that it will bankrupt them.

Can anyone really believe that Barack Obama cares about jobs for the middle class or about taking care of America's energy needs?

McCain Supporters - Keep the Faith

This comment has been released by pollster John Zogby:

Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama's lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. "Obama's lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama's good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.

McCain supporters need to keep the faith, keep blogging, keep sending e-mails, keep making phone calls, keep knocking on doors, and above all, keep praying.