Senator Stealth

How to advance radical causes when no one’s looking.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I wrote “Senator Stealth,” just over two months ago, it still seemed realistic to expect that its revelations might stimulate press follow-up. After all, the Wright affair had occasioned significant media interest. Since “Senator Stealth” established that Barack Obama had intimate and long-standing ties to yet another organization with Wright-like anti-American views, the piece’s news value seemed obvious. The Wright affair was no fluke, but part of a systematic pattern. Unfortunately, as Obama moved closer to nominee status, the press circled the wagons and began its own systematic pattern of refusing to question or report on his past.

Beyond its revelation that Obama’s original community organizer home-base is pervaded by anti-Americanism, “Senator Stealth” foreshadows today’s debates over redistributionism, and shows that concerns over Obama’s radical “associations” cannot be separated from the most significant policy disputes of the campaign.

“Senator Stealth” also lays out a way of resolving the contradiction between Obama’s radical past and his apparently moderate present. After learning that incrementalism, rhetorical disguise, and ideological stealth are second nature to Obama’s community organizer compatriots, it’s tougher to take his current self-presentation at face value. More than two months later, the same issues play out in the latest flap over Obama’s ties to the NEW PARTY.

Finally, I couldn’t have guessed, more than two months ago, that the Obama campaign, abetted by the press, would have taken refuge in near-total denial of his unsavory associations, from the question of his New Party membership, to the relationship to Bill Ayers, to the links to ACORN. Obama has downplayed or denied these many ties to an extent that is shockingly at odds with the public record, while the press has played along.

As the race tightens, let us hope that, however belatedly, the sheer weight of questions and revelations are beginning to take their toll. — Stanley Kurtz

[quite long - Highly Recommended > ]

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Obama says his election would change the world

CHICAGO (AP) _ Barack Obama said his election would help change the country and the world, as the Democratic presidential nominee personally delivered his party's radio address for the final weekend of the campaign.

"If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election — together, we will change this country and change the world," Obama said.

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'SHARE THE WEALTH' WITH THE WORLD?

Barack Obama doesn't simply want to "spread the wealth around" here in America: He's on record as favoring redistribution on a global scale.

As the Democrat explained last year in Foreign Affairs, he thinks we need to be "sharing more of our riches to help those in need" around the world and promised to double American foreign assistance, and proposed an additional multibillion-dollar Global Education Fund to eliminate what he calls the "global education deficit." [snip]

Obama has already acted on these beliefs. In the Senate, he co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act, which calls on the US to allocate $845 billion more than we're now set to spend over the next 13 years... [snip]

In a statement on the Global Poverty Act, Obama explained we need to transfer massive amounts of money to the developing world and get "beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere."

Profits, in Obama's view, don't help people - they hurt them. Whereas redistribution can fix all kinds of problems. Perhaps this is why so many in the world hope Obama wins -

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How Low Can It Go? Richardson Pegs Middle Class as Those Making Under $120,000

For the second time in a week, a prominent Democrat has downgraded Barack Obama's definition of the middle class -- leading Republicans to question whether he'll stick to his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000.

The latest hiccup in the campaign message apparently came Friday morning on KOA-AM, when New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson pegged the middle class as those making $120,000 and under...

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Barack Obama 'could worsen crisis': Rupert Murdoch

NEWS Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has warned that Barack Obama could worsen the world financial crisis if he is elected US president next week and implements protectionist policies. In an interview with The Weekend Australian before delivering the first of six Boyer lectures on ABC radio tomorrow afternoon, Mr Murdoch said the Democrats'

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Stocks Pay Price Of Coming Tax Increases

Some Americans are concerned that if Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, his plans for higher taxes on personal income, capital gains, dividends and corporations will damage the economy. It is a little late to be worrying about this. We are already in the midst of the Obama recession.

But to be fair, we should give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at least equal billing. Why has the stock market collapsed?

Why wouldn't it?

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Closer look at Obama reveals he's wrong choice

Early on in this political season, I, too, looked closely at Barack Obama. I was initially enamored with the possibility that he would become our president, and I supported him in the primary election.

I was excited that he represented change and hope for a brighter tomorrow. He is easily the most charismatic and compelling political figure of my lifetime, and I remember John F. Kennedy.

But, with a second and deeper look, I have decided not to vote for Obama. I will vote for John McCain for president on Tuesday. Three things made my decision...

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Obama and "The Left"

Thomas Sowell

Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with-- allied, not merely "associated" with... [snip]

That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.

People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama's track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does.

We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States...

[Recommended > ]

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Obama's vision is far from that of Founding Fathers

Pushing back on accusations from John McCain that he's a socialist, Barack Obama said, "I don't know what's next. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret Communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Once again, we get the Obama oratorical fog. The problem isn't what he does with his toys or sandwich, it's what he sees as legitimate to do, under authority of government, with mine and yours...

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The Europeanization of America

So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:

• The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.
• Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.
• Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes.
• Federal government spending will substantially increase. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).
• Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.
• The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.
• Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.

These policy changes will be the beginning of the Europeanization of America.

There will be many more public policy changes with similar goals—nationalized health care, Kyoto-like global-warming policies, and increased education regulation and spending.

More important, all but the clean car credit would be "refundable," meaning people will get a check for them if they owe no taxes, which is simply a transfer of income from the government to individuals.

In reality this is the beginning of a new series of entitlements for middle-class families, the longer-term effect of which will be to make those families more dependant on (and so more supportive of) larger government...

[Highly Recommended > ]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122504438328069963.html

Obama’s 2007 Senate Floor

Senator Barack Obama is committed for America to be an “egalitarian society.” What? Obama hasn’t told Americans about that commitment on the campaign trail to the White House but it’s true. And this time Obama cannot attack Joe the plumber for exposing his socialist plans for America. [snip]

March 7, 2007:

“Let’s stop sending mixed messages.

Let’s work together and set immigration fees at a level that are fair and consistent with our commitment to being an open, democratic, and egalitarian society.”

Obama’s “egalitarian society” commitment is a clear statement that defines his intentions for “change” if he is elected President of the United States.

Where to begin?

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If we elect an admitted socialist president, we'll deserve what we get

[when] asked why Obama would raise capital-gains taxes even if the result were decreased collections for the government, he replied, "What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness."

Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, questioned Obama's tax plans got this reply: "It's not that I want to punish your success ... I think that when you spread the wealth around, it is good for everyone."

Obama's answers to those questions made it crystal-clear that he sees taxation as a tool not only to pay for government, but as a tool to reassign the wealth of individual Americans directly to other individual Americans as government sees fit. If he doesn't believe in trickle-down economics, fine. But having government decide precisely how full each American's glass should be - and then making the necessary adjustments - would be a whole new ballgame. [snip]

... Obama's election "would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation - the first being FDR's New Deal, the second LBJ's Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. . . . All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it."

After 70-plus years of ascendant socialism, this country today would be recognizable to Thomas Jefferson only as the realization of his worst fears. That Obama wants to make a final and irreversible hard-left turn is apparent not only from his few unguarded utterances this year, but from much of what he said and wrote before his presidential campaign. Now consider the likely possibility of an Obama presidency, a filibuster-proof Senate and two or three openings on the Supreme Court that he can fill with fellow redistributionists.

Forget birth certificate technicalities. Obama should lose this election because Americans wake from their trance, look over the precipice to which he has ushered them, and recoil. If Americans take the monumental risk Obama poses, they will deserve the government they get.

More to the point, they will have proved undeserving of the government left to them by far greater, far wiser men.

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Another view: McCain the better candidate

[snip]

10) No elected official in American life has contributed more to the security of the nation than John McCain. Latterly, McCain was the most senior and most forceful advocate of the strategy that has saved the day in Iraq. For that reason alone, he deserves your vote.

9) Over a quarter-century in public life, John McCain has defended the interests of the taxpayer, not only speaking for lower taxes (that’s easy) but fighting for the essential precondition of lower taxes, less government spending.

8) McCain’s healthcare plan is the first and essential step toward a market-based approach. If competition is to work, individuals must buy their own care. Barack Obama praises the employer-based system. But Obama knows full well that the employer-based system is dying – he’s just propping up its carcass until the time is ripe to insert full government control in its place.

7) As a man, McCain is more pragmatic and more open to compromise in substance (and not just in verbal formulas) than Barack Obama. It’s a bad reflection on the McCain campaign that it has allowed the less ideological candidate to be depicted as the hot-head – and the more ideological Obama to position himself as the moderate. But the failures of the campaign are reasons to punish the campaign managers, not the country.

6) The combination of a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and federal control of the nation’s financial system is dangerous to prosperity and freedom. Even if I weren’t a conservative, I’d believe that this government bailout makes balanced government indispensable.

5) To borrow an argument from Mona Charen: The best thing about a president with a military background is that he has learned not to show too much deference to generals. Let’s not forget: The brass hats were against the surge!

4) This country hungers for moderate answers on social questions from abortion to stem cells to same-sex marriage. McCain’s split-the-difference instincts offer the hope of social peace. Obama’s 100% down-the-line social liberalism will provoke reactions that will aggravate and sustain these social controveries, when we need to find compromises that can allay them.

3) McCain’s victory would be the most surprising come-from-behind victory in American political history. It would prove that money and endorsements are not everything. That is healthy for American democracy.

2) McCain has never compromised on free trade. Never. Not to win a primary, not to win a vote. Never.

1) John McCain is white, the son and grandson of admirals, married to a wealthy heiress – and yet he has experienced degrees of suffering, despair, and defeat that not one in a million of us can imagine. Barack Obama wears a black skin and carries an exotic name. In the United States, people of darker color have faced oppression and discrimination for centuries. But in Barack Obama's own life, he has known nothing but an easy and welcoming path to success since he was 18 years old. Privileged John McCain has known more absolute degradation than any man ever to contest the presidency. Obama was born in adversity, but he has smoothly risen to a place where he is most comfortable with those for whom things are most easy.

I do not fear Barack Obama. I even rather like him. I certainly feel I have much more in common with him than I do with John McCain. To lead this country, though, I prefer the man who has seen more and suffered more and felt more. For all his faults, it is John McCain who is the more universal man.

I vote for John McCain.

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Thirty Reasons to Vote for [or against] John McCain

[yeah it's written to promote McCain, but at 30 points is among the larger groupings I've found and can still serve as a check list: print & place a check at left for points for Obama, at right for McCain, and see how they tally {hey, it's more scientific than infomercials}]

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1) John McCain doesn't believe we should raise taxes on anybody during a recession. Obama does and that will prolong our economic woes.

2) John McCain has been endorsed by the NRA. Barack Obama once supported a complete ban on the manufacture and ownership of handguns in America.

3) John McCain co-sponsored a bill to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2005. Had it passed, we wouldn't have had a bailout crisis. Obama took in the 2nd largest amount of money from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. In other words, McCain tried to fix the problem while Obama was in the back pocket of the shady operators who cost the American people over 700 billion dollars.

4) Barney Frank has promised a 25% cut in defense spending if Barack Obama gets into office. John McCain would not support that policy.

5) Both Barack Obama and John McCain publicly pledged to take public financing for their campaigns. McCain kept his word. Obama lied. If he will lie to the American people about that, what else is he lying about?

6) Barack Obama has received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, including a million dollar earmark for his wife's hospital. John McCain has never taken an earmark.

7) John McCain's health care plan will make health care more affordable, cover more people, and will keep the market in control. Barack Obama's plan for socialized medicine will put government bureaucrats in charge, will lead to long wait times for operations and lead to a poorer quality of health care. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see how much it costs under Barack Obama when it's "free."

8) Barack Obama says he doesn't want his daughters "punished" with a baby and that abortion is "above my pay grade." Do you think a baby is punishment? Do you think abortion is above Sarah Palin's pay grade?

9) Sarah Palin is a conservative reformer who has taken on oil companies and her own party as a mayor and a governor. Joe Biden is a career Washington insider with no executive experience who's most famous for gaffes, making things up, and being on the wrong side of almost every foreign policy issue from Vietnam to the surge.

10) Barack Obama spent twenty years going to an anti-white, anti-American church run by Jeremiah Wright. He didn't go to that church for so long because he disagreed with the message.

11) John McCain once fought for our country in Vietnam. Barack Obama has never fought for anything but his own career.

12) John McCain has literally had to decide whether to go home from a POW camp or stay and be tortured. He made the right decision. Barack Obama's first tough decision will be made in the White House.

13) John McCain pals around with Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, Sarah Palin, and Phil Gramm. Barack Obama has "pal'd" around with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, Frank Davis, and Tony Rezko. What does that say about each man's character?

14) John McCain always holds his hand over his heart for the national anthem and has never refused to wear a flag pin after calling it a "substitute for, I think, true patriotism." Do we really want to have the first President in our history who doesn't love his country?

15) For good or ill, John McCain is a moderate, but Barack Obama was the most liberal senator in America in 2007. Do you trust someone that liberal to run the country?

16) When there's an international crisis at 3 A.M. and the phone rings, you can't vote "present."

17) This is what Barack Obama thinks of Americans who live in small towns,

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

How can someone, who thinks so little of people who don't live in big cities, truly represent all Americans in the White House?

18) Do you really want to spend the next four years listening to Barack Obama's supporters cry "racism" every time somebody criticizes or disagrees with him?

19) The mainstream media has been more biased than at any time in our lifetimes for Obama and they've launched an absolutely unprecedented smear campaign against Sarah Palin -- and worse yet, Sarah Palin's family. Do you want to reward and encourage more of that kind of behavior in the future by putting Barack Obama in the White House?

20) Barack Obama is a socialist who wants to "spread the wealth around." John McCain wants to spread the opportunity around instead of making people dependent on government.

21) John McCain has promised no more bailouts. Barack Obama has not.

22) John McCain favors judges who will stick to the Constitution. Barack Obama says he wants judges with "empathy." Would you want an umpire of a baseball game who sticks to the rules or one who has "empathy?"

23) McCain has promised to balance the budget in four years and whether he makes it or not, he will undoubtedly cut spending. Obama will run trillion dollar deficits. You do the math.

24) We have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and it is driving our companies overseas. John McCain wants to cut the tax to keep businesses in the U.S. and create jobs. Barack Obama does not.

25) Barack Obama will sign the Union Card Check Bill that will end the right to secret ballots for union members, thereby crippling more American industries via unionization. The unions are destroying the Big 3 automakers and the airline industry -- and under Obama, they'll be a further drag on the American economy. Furthermore, since when do we give up the right to have a secret ballot in America? John McCain opposes the Union Card Check Bill.

26) Barack Obama will sign the Fairness Doctrine into law, which is solely designed to drive conservative radio hosts off the air. When did we start trying to win political contests in this country by preventing our political opponents from being heard? John McCain opposes the Fairness Doctrine.

27) Barack Obama wants to force gay marriage on the whole country via the court system, which is why he favors overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. John McCain thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman, which is why he supports leaving DOMA in place.

28) John McCain favored the surge. Barack Obama did not. So, if Barack Obama had been President over the last four years, we would have already lost the war in Iraq.

29) Barack Obama wants to leave Iraq in 16 months, whether we win or not. John McCain doesn't want to risk seeing the victory our troops have bled and died for thrown away for politics' sake.

30) It would literally be dangerous to the future of our country to have a large Democratic majority in the House, a large majority in the Senate, and Obama in the White House.





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Well I think that's it - show time.

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