The following items are archived
in order of discovery. Previous year items in left column
. . .
Barack Obama And The Chamber Of Secrets
David Harsanyi
asks, so
who's left to demonize? The Girl Scouts? The Rotary Clubs,
maybe?
We're running out devils to distract us. Then
again, the Obama administration's preposterous attack on the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce does nothing to help Democrats, and everything to
reinforce the moderate voter's perception that Obama's party has gone
bonkers.
A recent ad by Democrats makes the charge -- dutifully
echoed through the blogosphere and by talking heads -- that the Chamber
was part of a cabal out to "steal our democracy," accepting foreign cash
and then using the funds to campaign against candidates on the left.
Though, admittedly, they have no proof of any wrongdoing, Democrats have
threatened that investigations will soon uncover this reprehensible
criminal activity.
Inquiry to come post-election, no doubt.
"Stealing democracy," as you may know, loosely translated, means:
Holy crap, Republicans are going to win an election.
You'll also
notice that the insidious sway of outside political money always seems
to blossom into a critical threat to the future of democracy around the
time misguided conservatives start to get the upper hand on Democrats.
Yes, some critics are throwing a more nuanced accusation at the
Chamber of Commerce. They assert that all money is fungible and
thus it is irrelevant how the funding is separated within the
organization. At the end of the day, foreign money helps the
political arm of the Chamber.
This argument holds a lot of
credence. Money is fungible. So it will be interesting to
hear how Democrats defend their support of government funding for, say,
Planned Parenthood, which, one could point out, is also using fungible
government dollars to regularly fund abortions. I believe that's
illegal, as well.
But let's face it, no one is really buying the
argument. Though, a perceptive voter might ask themselves this: If
the United States Chamber of Commerce -- composed of some of the most
moderate, milquetoast, government-friendly saps in the country -- are
now on the Enemies List, who exactly does Obama think is reasonable?
If the crony capitalists aren't good enough for Barack Obama, who is?
Without these helpful attacks and the ensuing kerfuffle, most voters
would never have known about the Chamber's political activities.
Now, they may question why the Chamber of Commerce, which supports an
array of left-of-center policies -- tax hikes, health care "reforms,"
bailouts, etc. -- is so interested in seeing Democratic candidates
beaten in November? Why would the Chamber want to replace these
statesmen with nihilistic Republicans who promise to reject all federal
bailouts?
And how many average American voters believe that the
Chamber of Commerce reflects, in general, the positions of most
mainstream business? Things, they may assume, must be worse than
we thought.
Time magazine's Mark Halperin -- not exactly Glenn
Beck -- recently wrote that the general perception by most Washington
insiders was that "the White House is in over its head, isolated,
insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade
members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class
voters."
Many of us have always thought the administration
insular and arrogant but never clueless. But, you have to ask yourself,
why would Democrats run a campaign that reminds everyone that their
opponents aren't exclusively Tea Party radicals and demon-Bush acolytes,
but moderate groups of small and large businesses?
Politically
speaking, election time is when you retrofit your positions. This
stunt only proves this administration can't even feign moderation in the
face of defeat.
Dire Consequences From Eligibility Issue
Anthony Martin
says evidence is growing that the White House is so sensitive about
stories in the media concerning the issue of presidential eligibility
that reporters have been warned of dire consequences if they merely ask
questions about the subject. A White House insider has reported
that the subject is so highly sensitive that reporters must "tread
softly" and "be very careful" if they dare delve into Obama's
background.
There is also information that suggests mainstream
media sources now have all of the facts about the issue, but intend to
go on the offensive in protecting Obama at all costs. In the
insider's own words:
Can’t respond much at this time. Too
busy with all of the chaos coming at us these days. May be out
of work soon! Crazy stuff. Simply urge you to lay off
the Birther angle at this
time. Strongly urge. To proceed is at your own peril.
Please take warning seriously. This is not a small town cop
shop situation here. Let someone else try and make name on
this one.
Don’t blame you as it was me who brought up
subject last time. Since then heard repeated
rumors/confirmations of attempted "purge" coming down the pike.
WH/media going on the offensive big-time on issue. Has already
started as you probably know. Talking very specific, very
confrontational, very scary stuff here. Don’t wish to drag you
into that. Much bigger fish are circling this. They can
survive what could be coming. Not sure about me. Let the
big players handle this now. This thing will either break out
big or disappear.
However, the bombshell evidence of the willingness
of the Obama team to engage in threats and intimidation over the
eligibility issue is encapsulated in a 2009 special report documenting
outright media
manipulation by the White House. According to the report:
...extremely sensitive investigative
documents, including a stunning written admission by a nationally
known talk show host stating that he was threatened with his career
-- or worse -- should he talk about the issue of Barack Hussein
Obama’s birth records to a national audience. This document
was obtained on December 10, 2008, and provides explicit detail of a
"gag order" imposed on this host before and immediately following
the national election last November.
That, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The report also contains this stunning admission by an administrative
assistant within a major news network in New York:
From multiple interviews conducted within
the last eight months, we have obtained information from other
sources, independent of the above, who have also been instructed to
avoid any discussion of the birth certificate issue at all costs, to
wit:
The account of an administrative assistant employed in
New York City by a cable network news station who provided
significant, detailed information of a 2008 meeting between the top
network executive and four-(4) well-known news anchors. This source
confirmed that she drafted the memo to the various hosts to arrange
notify them of the date, time and location of this high-level
meeting at the request of the network’s top executive.
Present at this meeting, she verified that the network official
issued "warnings" to the personalities "to avoid any on-air
discussion of the birth place, eligibility, and news accounts of
litigation compelling [Barack Hussein] Obama to produce a legitimate
copy of his birth certificate." She stated that the network
executive had her arrange the conference immediately following a
meeting "between [the network executive] and an
attorney closely
associated with candidate Obama who was acting on his behalf."
The report goes further to indicate that not only
were news reporters and talk show hosts pressured to withhold
information under the threat of losing their jobs but that inherent in
the threats was a subtle but distinct hint that any such dissemination
of information could result in bodily harm or worse.
Fast-forward
to January of 2011. A close friend of Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie,
a veteran celebrity reporter by the name of Mike Evans,
stated in a
radio interview on January 19 that the Governor had initiated an
extensive search of records that would prove Obama's eligibility, and
that no such records could be found. But once the story of the
allegations hit the news wires yesterday, Evans retracted everything he
said by the end of the day on January 26.
Was Mike Evans
threatened by someone either close to or within the Obama team?
There are no answers to that question at this time, but given the
history of this issue, such a thing would fit a pattern established by
those who were schooled in what is known as "the Chicago way."
Political Cartoonists Are Afraid To Draw
Obama
Political cartoonists have no problem pushing
to the edge. But under Obama, the edge is verboten.
The
Left, you can be certain, will continue to label Republicans as
self-evident racists, they will continue to ignore the race barriers and
glass ceilings broken under Bush, and they will continue to dismiss as
inauthentic the Rices and Steeles of the world. They will do it
because there is no path more certain to silence and marginalize the
Right than the brandishing of the word "racist" by the left. But
political cartoonists are largely not from the right. That they
fear what may happen to them if they practice their craft with the same
pointed pen for Obama they’ve used for all others … well that is
something every citizen should worry about, not just Republicans.
The freedom of the press is being infringed through intimidation,
and that is something that every American should resist. After
all, we have a tradition to uphold.
Gil Guignat says the new media template for
explaining away Obama’s alleged fraud in his birth certificate is to say
that if there had been any truth to his deceit, it would have been
uncovered a long time ago and probably during the last presidential
campaign. Hillary Clinton would have brought it out or John McCain
would have raised the issue. Since they did not, there is no merit
to Obama’s alleged fraud. That is how the media template goes now.
A simple look at how hostile the media has been towards the raising
of the birth certificate issue over the last 24 months, explains why it
was never raised. It is that simple. We will say this over
and over again throughout this article. If you have any doubts,
simply look at the length to which the media is going to vaporize any
attempt at the truth of this issue. Would you want to be on the
receiving end of this personal destruction? Obama’s defenders
never address the issues of his flawed eligibility. They just
ridicule and dismiss. That is an admission of guilt. To this
day no official documents have been produced to prove eligibility.
Candidates who run for office simply have to swear they are eligible.
They are not required to prove it.
Any candidate who would have
raised it during the last election would have been skewered and
filleted. This is what the candidates were afraid of during the
last election and so they did not raise the issue. Anyone who has
raised the issue over the last 24 months has been vilified, ridiculed,
threatened with death, fined, had their property sabotaged, and
destroyed [don't forget imprisoned].
That is why past presidential candidates and present ones do not raise
the issue. They are afraid and to them it is more important to lie
to the voters, and to overlook potential fraud that strikes at the basic
constitutional foundation of our country. All the candidates know
that Obama has got some very serious skeletons in his closet, but they
put their own gains ahead of honesty and the welfare of the country.
When you look at these candidates realize that they all know Obama
is not eligible or has serious eligibility flaws. We already know
he is not natural born which is a black and white prerequisite to
becoming president. These candidates are kicking off fundamentally
flawed campaigns because they are telling us they want to bend the rules
at any cost as long as they get to further their careers. How can
they be believed about anything else?
There have been just a
handful of citizens who have raised the issue of Obama’s birth
certificate and eligibility all the way to the Supreme Court.
These people have not had much to gain from these activities and have
lost dearly and paid for their efforts a thousand times over. The
cruelty of the media has been breathtaking to behold surrounding such a
simple issue that could be resolved by Obama. He could have simply
released his long form birth certificate but he has not because he
probably does not have one.
Orly Taitz comes to mind as an
individual who has been unrelenting is bringing up this issue. She
is a Russian immigrant who became a dentist and a lawyer in this
country. What an accomplished person. If you want to know
what she has had to endure to point out the alleged fraud of the Obama
presidency spend some time at her web site. Lieutenant Colonel
Terry Lakin was another individual who raised the issue of Obama’s
eligibility. For his efforts he was tried in military court and
denied a defense. That is how they do it in totalitarian regimes.
The judge presiding over Lakin’s trial denied him a defense because she
did not want to "embarrass" the dictator President.
There is not
one presidential candidate who has the moral backbone like Orly or
Lieutenant Colonel Lakin who could endure the brutality of Obama’s
machine of personal destruction. No one! This is why no one
raised the issue during the last presidential election and none of these
candidates will raise it now. They are all intimidated and scared.
They know what awaits them if they dare open their mouths except Donald
Trump of course.
Obama toady, Ben Smith,
says Donald Trump's strategy of spurring interest in his
presidential campaign by flirting with discredited [by
Ben Smith] theories about Barack Obama's birthplace is
stirring a growing backlash among prominent African-Americans, who are
protective of the first black president and, in some cases, concerned
that Trump is making a coded racial appeal.
Trump's
confrontational appearances had already begun to raise questions about
whether his political flirtation was, as widely assumed, a stunt aimed
at raising his profile and ratings, and his willingness to alienate a
share of the television audience -- and to drag his cautious corporate
employers into the incendiary politics of race -- have spurred
speculation that he has either badly miscalculated or is serious about
running for president.
"There's a lot of people that I've talked
to [who] instinctively think that he's using the issue as a proxy for
race," Urban League President Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor,
told POLITICO. "I don't know if it has resonance in the Republican
Party, but I certainly think it has resonance in certain far right
elements of the American public."
"It's like a modern day Salem
witch trial -- because there's no merit to it," he said.
Morial's
comment follows escalating criticism from black colleagues of Trump's in
the entertainment industry.
"He needs to stop saying that racist
bullshit -- Birther shit," Grammy Award-winning singer John Legend told
The Root last week. "Quote me, please. He should be ashamed
of himself. It's awful, really."
Bill Cosby has also
engaged in a public spat with Trump, who is only running, Cosby said,
"his mouth."
"Donald Trump is such a looser 2 me this morning by
trashing our president!" actress Vivica Fox tweeted. "I mean
really dude! STFU!" His "Celebrity Apprentice" castmate Star
Jones also tweeted her objection to Birther views, and suggested they
are motivated by race.
Trump's shows boast a solid
African-American viewership and black cast members [and a recent NBC/WSJ
poll found, according to NBC's Domenico Montanaro, that the among the
groups that views him most positively is African-Americans], some of
whom he's likely alienating. "As a people, we celebrated his
business acumen; purchased his books and anything else with the Trump
name we could get our hands on," Goldie Taylor wrote on The Grio.
"Now among African-Americans, the once gilded Trump brand is about as
worthless as a plug nickel."
"I'm not calling Trump a racist.
But he ought to quit quacking before people start believing he's a
duck.," she wrote.
Hank Ernest, who works in public
relations in Atlanta and first pointed this dynamic out to me a couple
of weeks ago, said he'd stopped watching The Apprentice and, after
joking about a boycott on Facebook, been surprised by his friends
enthusiasm for the idea.
"I figure that this is Trump’s way of
realizing that he won’t get the black vote, so he might as well get all
the white vote he can," he said.
So very, very predictable. So
sad. Obama promised to be a uniter, but his refusal to come clean
with the People is dividing us.
Obama
could end this today by pressing a button.
This is
never going to go away until Obama comes clean.
Obama Pressured Standard & Poor
Zachary Goldfarb
is reporting that The Obama
administration privately urged Standard & Poor’s in recent weeks not to
lower its outlook on the United States -- a suggestion the ratings
agency ignored Monday, two people familiar with the matter said.
Treasury Department officials had been discussing with S&P whether the
ratings agency should change its outlook on the United States to
"negative" from "stable," an indication that the country could lose its
crucial AAA rating in coming years over its soaring debt levels.
Treasury officials told S&P analysts that they were underestimating the
ability of politicians in Washington to fashion a compromise to curb
deficits, a Treasury official said. They argued a change in
ratings was not needed at this time because the debt was manageable and
the administration had a viable plan in the works, the official said.
But S&P analysts told Treasury officials on Friday that they were
unmoved -- and released a report that expressed skepticism that the
political parties could come together on how to bring spending in line
with revenue.
Any doubts by credit rating agencies about
government debt has the potential to increase borrowing costs for the
Treasury.
It is not uncommon for companies and governments to
push back when they don’t agree with a decision made by a credit ratings
agency. Sometimes, companies that issue debt -- which also pay for
the ratings -- will shop around for the best rating.
But the U.S.
government is an unusual case -- it doesn’t solicit ratings. S&P
and the other major credit rating agencies offer their judgments
notwithstanding.
Why Won’t Media Stand Up To White House?
Investors.com
says the Obama administration has picked another fight with a
dissident newspaper, kicking the Boston Herald out of the press pool on
an unprecedented claim that its coverage is unfair. Who died and
elected them judge?
If the mainstream media had any gumption at
all, they would vigorously protest the strange, new self-appointed
arbiter of "fair" press coverage as an implicit threat to their own
capacity to cover the news fairly.
What the White House has done
by telling the Boston Herald it can no longer send a pool reporter to
cover local campaign events on behalf of the media is another baby step
toward state control of the media, using the carrot of access against
the stick of exile. Outside the likes of, say, Ecuador, this is a
first.
As it stands, the Boston Herald is on its own, with its
media colleagues in other organizations largely silent as a vindictive
White House press office gets away with determining what's "fair."
It's not as if the Herald was making up stories -- as the New York
Times or Washington Post have been caught doing. Its "crime" to
the White House was an unrelated editorial decision to run former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's opinion piece on "the Obama misery
index" on its front page two months ago. Seems the newly
self-appointed goons of "fairness" never noticed that what the former
governor thinks is of particular interest to Massachusetts readers.
Nor did it notice that the Boston Herald has been unusually hard on
Romney in both its news and editorial coverage in the past.
"What
are you afraid of, Mr. President?" the Herald's Joe Battenfeld wrote.
It's part of an ever-widening pattern of media abuse.
Just
two weeks ago, the White House duked it out with the San Francisco
Chronicle, a lefty paper in a lefty town but one with an independent
voice. Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci was threatened with the
same booting the Herald got because of White House displeasure at her
filming of a bunch of looney left protestors improbably criticizing
Obama.
"I get that all powerful people and institutions want to
control their image and their message. That's part of their job,
to create a mythology that allows them to continue being powerful,"
wrote editor Phil Bronstein. "But part of the press' job is to do
the opposite, to strip away the cloaks and veneers."
Meanwhile,
an Orlando Sentinel pool reporter was stuffed into a closet and held
against his will on the Joe Biden campaign trail, while the Pleasanton
(Calif.) Weekly was warned by the White House its coverage of first lady
Michelle Obama was insufficiently flattering.
The media silence
over these repeated violations of press freedom is baffling. Can
the fact that 30 mainstream media outlets have been co-opted by $48
million in spending by George Soros, a top campaign ally of Obama, have
something to do with this? Or is the urge to fawn over Obama more
important than covering the news without fear or favor?
The one
thing that's obvious is that the media continue to take it with little
push-back, and as they do, the bouncers of the White House press office
grow bolder.
Related:Liberal Cartoonist Can't
Get Anyone To Publish His Anti-Obama Pieces
Here Comes The Gestapo
Chris O'Shea
says the White House has added a new position to "deal with"
unfavorable (to Obama) online media.
The White House has named
Jesse Lee
to a new position within its communications department titled Director
of Progressive Media & Online Response. According to The
Huffington Post, Lee will essentially be responsible for building up
Obama’s online presence as he prepares for his reelection bid, and
squashing any negative stories:
The post is a new one for this White House.
Rapid response has usually been outsourced to the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), if not done on an ad-hoc basis by
administration officials. And it signals that the White House
will be adopting a more aggressive defense of Obama and his policies
as his re-election campaign gears up.
If you’re going to post something online about
Obama that isn’t true, Lee is going to be the one to handle you.
Considering that Lee’s first tweet about his new position included a
picture of The Terminator, we suggest you watch what you say OR BE
DESTROYED.
Okay that was a little dramatic, but you get the
idea.
Remember, Barack Obama and the Obots describe any bit of information
they don't like as a lie, a smear, a distraction or Swiftboating, and
they'll call you a bunch of nasty names in the process. If that
doesn't work they sick their agents in the media, Democratic Party
operatives and/or their lawyers on you -- and they'll call you nasty
names. I know they do because
they did it to me
and there are dozens of other instances in these
pages of the Obots using the tactics of intimidation to suppress free
expression.
And it
looks like Team Obama ready to misuse the power of the White House to repress the
free exercise of political speech.
