I'm Horrified At The Extent of The Scandal

I'm Horrified At The Extent of The Scandal

I'm talking about the campaign financing scandal swirling around Hillary Clinton. First it was Norman Hsu, and Chinese mail carriers contributing truly astonishing amounts of money. Now it is dishwashers and cooks in Chinatown making $1000 contributions to the Clinton campaign. The October 19, 2007 Los Angeles Times (hardly a conservative rag) points to some very suspicious behavior:

NEW YORK -- Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton's success in gathering money from Chinatown's least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins.

Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Fujian province. The organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous influence over immigrants. The associations help them with everything from protection against crime to obtaining green cards.

Many of Clinton's Chinatown donors said they had contributed because leaders in neighborhood associations told them to. In some cases, donors said they felt pressure to give.

The October 22, 2007 Washington Post (again, a Democratic newspaper) editorial is a lot more forceful:

DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York senator in New York City's Chinese community. Out of 150 donors examined, one-third "could not be found using property, telephone or business records," the Times reported. "Most have not registered to vote, according to public records."

This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign's zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment. After the fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton's money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs. As the Times reported, a single Chinatown fundraiser in April brought in $380,000. By contrast, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry raised $24,000 from Chinatown in the course of his entire campaign.

Gee, do you suppose that this money might have started out in Beijing? Or is that just paranoid?

The Clintons have a long history of incredibly dirty (even by the standards of Democrats) fundraising practices, much of it clearly illegal, and some of it that has the fingerprints of being from foreign governments. Even when the money is clearly American in origin, the violations of law seem to be taking a long time to catch up to them, as this October 16, 2007 Los Angeles Times article points out:

LOS ANGELES -- A state appeals court denied a bid Tuesday to reinstate Sen. Hillary Clinton as a defendant in a lawsuit that claims she, former President Clinton and others induced a former supporter to finance a 2000 fundraising gala.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld a lower court's decision to remove the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate from a lawsuit filed by Peter Paul. It also said Clinton can recoup legal costs.

Clinton's attorney, David Kendall, praised the ruling as one that found "no evidence of misconduct by Sen. Clinton in regard to the 2000 fundraiser."

Paul said he will consider appealing to the California Supreme Court.

Paul claims he spent more than $1.9 million to underwrite the lavish Hollywood fundraising gala in August 2000 that attracted Brad Pitt, Diana Ross and Cher.

Paul said he financed the event and other fundraisers for Hillary Clinton because Bill Clinton agreed to join the board of his company, Stan Lee Media, after he left the White House. Paul has said the event cost nearly $2 million, but campaign reports at the time estimate it was about $500,000. Clinton didn't end up working with Paul.

The Hollywood fundraiser was the subject of a criminal trial of Clinton's former national finance director, David Rosen, who was acquitted in May 2005 of lying to the Federal Election Commission about the event.

And then there's this worrisome piece from the November 5, 2007 The Nation (about as far left as you can get in print without ending up in 9/11 Truther land):

In the Clintons' pursuit of power, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps.

Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency. The persistently unprofitable Harken--many of whose board members, connected to powerful foreign interests and the intelligence community, nevertheless profited enormously--faced intense scrutiny in the early 1990s and again during Bush's first term.

Now Quasha is back--on the other side of the aisle. Operating below the radar, he entered Hillary Clinton's circle even before she declared her candidacy by quietly arranging for the hire of Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe at one of his companies. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's chairmanship of the Democratic Party and the time he officially joined Clinton's campaign, Quasha's firm set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him.

Just a few years earlier, McAuliffe had publicly criticized Bush for his financial dealings with Harken, disparaging the company's Enron-like accounting. Yet in 2005 McAuliffe accepted this cushy perch with Quasha's newly acquired investment firm, Carret Asset Management, and even brought along former Clinton White House business liaison Peter O'Keefe, who had been his senior aide at the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe remained with the company until he became national chair of Hillary's presidential bid, and O'Keefe never left. McAuliffe's connection to Quasha has, until now, never been noted.

Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means.

In June, by liquidating a blind trust, the Clintons sought to distance themselves from any financial entanglements that might embarrass the campaign. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson argued that the couple had gone "above and beyond" what was legally required "in order to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest." But throughout their political careers, Bill and Hillary Clinton have repeatedly associated with people whose objectives seemed a million miles from "a place called Hope." Among these Alan Quasha and his menagerie--including Saudi frontmen, a foreign dictator, figures with intelligence ties and a maze of companies and offshore funds--stand out.

"That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause," says John Moscow, a former Manhattan prosecutor. In the late 1980s and early '90s he led the investigation of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) global financial empire--a bank whose prominent shareholders included members of the Harken board. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with," says Moscow, "or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay."

You think Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton are suspicious? Compared to the Clintons, his ties to Halliburton are positively harps and halos territory.

Barack Obama's Troubled Father

Barack Obama's Troubled Father

This article from the January 27, 2007 Daily Mail is more than a year old, and most of it is an attempt to throw mud on Barack Obama by pointing out what a monstrous creep his father (Barack Obama, Sr.) was. It's a sad story, but not relevant to Obama Jr.'s character.

What is of some relevance, however, is the extent to which Obama's autobiography falsifies what actually happened:

Many believe Mr Obama is a serious threat to Hillary Clinton's hopes of becoming the Democrats' choice for their next Presidential candidate - and his lovingly written account of the debt he owes his father, also called Barack Obama, will do no harm at all to his Presidential hopes.
Indeed, by offering up a conveniently potted account of his personal history in this way, he might even have made a pre-emptive strike on those sure to pose the awkward questions that inevitably face a serious contender for the White House.
Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.
We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.
And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends.

The article also takes Obama to task for his description of the constant racism that he encountered growing up:

Mr Obama was later admitted to read politics and international relations at New York's prestigious Columbia University where, his book claims, "no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence (about) niggers."
But one of his classmates, Joe Zwicker, 45, now a lawyer in Boston, said yesterday: "That surprises me. Columbia was a pretty tolerant place. There were African American students in my classes and I never saw any evidence of racism at all."
Family members and acquaintances believe that the real cloud over Mr Obama's life has been the discovery that his father was far from the romantic figure that his mother tried to portray.
A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."

There's a saying that the higher the office a politician seeks, the more humble the home in which he was raised. (This is rather like the manner in which the older you get, the longer of a walk through the snow to school you had--at least, as you tell it to your kids.) I find myself wondering if Obama is telling Democrats the story they want to hear--how he overcame the ferocious racism of redneck America--you know, Hawaii, and Columbia University--rather than the more mundane story of a privileged kid working his way up the ladder. Texas Governor Ann Richards's description of President Bush as someone who was born on third base, and thought he had hit a home run, comes to mind.

Those Curious Campaign Contributions to Obama

Those Curious Campaign Contributions to Obama

Here's a longer article which shows that many of these clearly false contributions were made in small chunks--small enough to fall below the $200 level where individual contributors have to be identified in reports:

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.
And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

...
The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.
But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.
Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.
Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.
Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.
But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.
“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.
But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.

Some of these small contributions are clearly unlawful, exceeding the maximum allowed contribution by an individual, and made in small chunks to avoid reporting:

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.
There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.
In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Far more worrisome is that there are lots of overseas contributions--and some are clearly unlawful:

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.
But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.
Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.
With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.
At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.
Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.
In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.
“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."
Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.
The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.

But what about the contributions already made? The interest alone on some of these unlawful contributions has doubtless given Obama a leg up. What may finally make public campaign financing happen--assuming that Obama's foreign supporters don't successfully buy this election--is that it may be the only way to stop al Qaeda from getting the most malleable president that money can buy.

Jon Stewart on Obama's Resemblance to Frodo

Perhaps it's because I was so nauseated by the hypocrisy of the Democrats pretending to be so much more moral than Bush, but I find this Daily Show segment hilarious.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

A lot of the things that Obama is doing--and Jon Stewart is upset about--actually make sense, in a realpolitik sort of way. But I'm sick of the liberal hypocrisy in attacking Bush for actions that have turned out to be necessary--and some of what Bush did is actually pretty mild by comparison, as Stewart points out.

If They Found Something, Why Aren't They Blowing the Whistle?

I've mentioned before that I find Obama and the DNC's willingness to spend money rather than reveal Obama's long form birth certificate really curious--more curious than the fairly weird and weak evidence that has been presented. 

One of the claims made by "birthers" is that Obama received financial aid as a foreign student--and I would not be at all surprised if checking this claim is the reason that nine people might have illegally accessed his student loan records.  From the May 25, 2010 Iowa Independent:

Nine former workers at a Department of Education contractor in Coralville who allegedly tried to access the student loan records of President Barack Obama pleaded not guilty in a federal court Monday, the Associated Press reports.

The indictments were handed up in U.S. District Court in Davenport. Authorities say that between July 26, 2007, and March 13, 2009, the defendants accessed the records while employed at Vangent Inc., which contracts to handle incoming calls for a variety of agencies, including calls on federal student aid for the U.S. Department of Education and calls regarding Medicare and Medicaid for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If these nine people actually accessed Obama's student loan records, I would think that this was probably the reason--to see if there was any truth to such claims.  (Can you imagine anything more boring to look at than somewhat's student loan records?)  However: if there was anything in those records that suggested that Obama received student aid as a foreign student, I would expect at least one of the accused to have gone public with it by now.  Why would you get yourself fired, and get yourself in a pile of legal trouble, if you had what would have to be the single most devastating piece of news in American history, and didn't use it?

This Is Most Curious

This Is Most Curious

I've learned to regard with some skepticism many of the more bizarre claims made about President Obama--but this comes straight from the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Barack Obama surrendered his license to practice law in 2008:

Voluntarily retired and not authorized to practice law

What? Why, exactly, would someone who is running for president of the United States surrender his license to practice law? This seems...peculiar.

UPDATE: Just to clarify: President Clinton didn't give up his law license when was elected. He did afterwards--but that wasn't voluntary.

UPDATE 2: A reader who is a retired Texas lawyer says that the difference between inactive and retired isn't dramatic, and it is plausible that Obama just figured that he wasn't ever going to practice law again.

UPDATE 3: A number of readers have pointed out that Michelle Obama also went inactive in 1993, and suggest all sorts of disciplinary reasons for this. However, the August 4, 2009 World Net Daily (not exactly part of the Obama fan club) points out:

James Grogan, deputy administrator and chief counsel for the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, or ARDC, has been with the commission for 30 years. He told WND that on July 1, 1994, the Illinois Supreme Court entered an order allowing Michelle to be transferred to inactive status pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court rule 770.
The ARDC website explains, "Prior to November 1, 1999, former Supreme Court Rule 770 provided for a proceeding in the Court for any voluntary transfer to inactive status, whether because of some incapacitating condition or solely as a matter of the lawyer's preference because the lawyer would not be practicing law."
Grogan explained, "At the time, the only way to go on inactive status was to do what she did – which was to file a petition in the Illinois Supreme Court."
He said attorneys often filed a petition for 770 when they wanted to pursue other careers, retire or begin raising a family.

There's nothing to this story, really.

Proof That Democracy Has Its Flaws

Proof That Democracy Has Its Flaws

I thought reasonably highly of W. He wasn't my first choice. I would have preferred a conservative. But he at least seemed to know that Austrians don't speak "Austrian," and his Secretary of State was fluent enough in Russian not to have screwed up the stupid "Reset" button gift.

Now I see that buyer's remorse for the Zero is beginning to set in. From the December 9, 2009 Politico:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama's declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that's somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country's difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans and especially ones like Rob Portman who are running for office and have close ties to the former President.

I keep hoping that the fools who let CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN/George Soros do their thinking for them have learned a lesson. But I wouldn't count on that.

I Guess This Theory Is Dead

I Guess This Theory Is Dead

I mentioned a while back that Hawaii has a procedure for issuing birth certificates to people born outside Hawaii, but legally adopted in Hawaii--and suggested that perhaps this is the reason the long-form birth certificate hasn't been exposed. I see now that Hawaii actually has regulations on the issuance of birth certificates for the foreign born that requires the birth certificate to clearly state country of birth.

The question still remains: why is Obama so intent on keeping that long-form birth certificate hidden--enough so that it is worth having a bunch of very high priced lawyers fighting this matter out in the courts at probably $500 per hour. Since he seems to have been born in Hawaii, it almost certainly isn't a question of whether he is legally qualified to be President of the United States. I'm guessing that there is something terribly embarrassing on the long-form that is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep hidden.

The Obamajugend

The Obamajugend

This video from a public school in Burlington, New Jersey, should disturb you. This kind of organized praise of an elected political leader fits cult of personality states like Nazi Germany, Mao's China, or Stalin's Russia.



I'll be curious to know how liberals justify this. If anyone had proposed that school children should sing the praises of President Bush, even right after 9/11, conservatives would have been perplexed, amused, or shocked.

Take a look at about one minute into the video--you can see the poster of Dear Leader on a stand. And the "equal pay for equal work" verses--I'm guessing that progressives aren't going to apply that to trial attorneys.

"Suborned in the U.S.A."

"Suborned in the U.S.A."

Andrew McCarthy's article over at National Review Online has a very clever pun on Bruce Springsteen's song, "Born in the U.S.A." but the article itself is worth reading in full. McCarthy finds the idea that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii very unlikely--but makes the point, quite powerfully, that Obama behaves like he is hiding something. It might not be the problem that the birthers think (is he a natural born citizen?) but something that would expose Obama's claims about himself as a fraud:

The primary qualification supporters offered for Obama’s candidacy was his compelling life story, as packaged in 850 pages’ worth of the not one but two autobiographies this seemingly unaccomplished candidate had written by the age of 45.

Yet we now know that this life story is chock full of fiction. Typical and disturbing, to take just one example, is the entirely fabricated account in Dreams from My Father of Obama’s first job after college....

I've previously pointed out that the unwillingness to release the long form birth certificate might be something along these lines--not that he was born in Kenya, but that the tales that he told over the years would reveal him to be less than he pretends. I would encourage you to read the article in full. As the subtitle to the article points out:

The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born.

The whole response of the Obama campaign and the DNC to a pretty simple question reminds me of what said when the Lewinsky affair was raging around Bill Clinton. Nixon turned a minor crime that he was not involved in planning or carrying out into a major crime by attempting to obstruct the investigation. Bill Clinton managed to turn something that was merely sleazy, but not illegal (sex with the hired help), into a crime (perjury) with the coverup.

The Twelve Step Program For Obamaholics

The Twelve Step Program For Obamaholics

An amusing parody of the AA program for those who have figured out they made a big mistake last year:

It may be time to begin the twelve step recovery program for Obamaholics

1. Admit you are powerless over the Cult of Obama and that your TAX BURDEN has become unmanageable.
2. Come to grips with that fact that you need a Power greater than you to restore you to sanity; and no, Jon Stewart is not the answer.
3. Make a decision to turn your life over - at least temporarily - to a deprogrammer.
4. Make a fearless and moral inventory of the depth of your problem.
5. Call a conservative talk show and admit all the wrong-doings.
6. Be ready to have the deprogrammer remove these aberrant thoughts and behaviors, beginning with cancellation of your N.Y. Times subscription.
7. Ask the deprogrammer to remove your shortcomings.
8. Make a list of all those you talked into voting for Obama and ask their forgiveness.
9. Make amends to them by buying them a subscription to "Human Events" or the "Limbaugh Letter"
10. Stay vigilant and guard against any sign of a relapse, such as signing petitions to give White House advisor Van Jones his job back.
11. Throw out all Obama buttons, pictures, mugs, etc. and remove those Obama –Biden rainbows from your bumper--AND I MEAN ALL OF THEM!
12. Devote yourself to helping others similarly afflicted and begin attending OA (Obamaholics Anonymous) meetings in your neighborhood.

Net Spending Cuts

Net Spending Cuts

David Bernstein over at Volokh Conspiracy brings back this wonderful reminder of what could have happened if we had voted for the guy who promised a net spending cut.

Great Video

Great Video

It shows the different response of rank-and-file Marines to President Bush, and to President Obama.



I'm not sure that the opinion of the military should be the only factor in deciding what makes a great president--but it is sure interesting that people actually in harm's way seem to have a higher opinion of who put them there, then the guy who campaigned on a promise to pull them out. And I notice that a lot of the black Marines that are visible in these video clips seem pretty enthused about Bush--unlike Obama, for those leftists who insist that any and all opposition to Obama has to be racism!

What If?

What If?

This has been floating around for a while, but really captures the absurd way in which the news media simply stopped criticizing the President--as soon as that President wasn't George W. Bush:

What if ? If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the fourth of May (Cuatro de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word advice would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as “proof” of what a dunce he is?

If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on “Earth Day”, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush’s administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually “get” what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how he inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had sent his wife and daughters on a shopping trip to London on Air Force One, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 5 months -- so you'll have three years and seven months to come up with an answer.

No common sense, naïve, incompetent, uninformed voters did this to themselves. Insanity is widespread. Real Americans are waking up.

One last question.... Are you stimulated yet?

More Theories About Obama's Birth Certificate

More Theories About Obama's Birth Certificate

John T. Reed thinks that Obama's birth certificate might be withheld because the name is embarrassing:

[P]erhaps because his first name was Barry and/or there was no Hussein middle name. Both Obama senior and junior went by the name Barry in the U.S. Obama, Jr. apparently started using Barack either to use affirmative action to get into Occidental and Columbia or to get street cred as a black guy in the South Side of Chicago when he moved there to start his political career. Hussein would also contribute to black street cred. Obama has admitted using the name Barry until adulthood when he started calling himself Barack. The implication has always been that Barack was his birth certificate name. Revelation that his birth certificate name was “Barry” would reveal that his claiming to be named Barack is simply false and apparently chosen with no basis whatsoever for affirmative action purposes and electoral politics advantage.

I'm hard pressed to see how "Barry" to "Barack" would help from an affirmative action standpoint: race is what matters, not having a foreign sounding name. But I can see another reason why he might have restyled himself as "Barack Hussein Obama." You know the song, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off"? Vulgar. But at least when I was in college (and I'm just a bit older than Obama), having an exotic name, background, and appearance was at least as useful as tequila with spoiled rich white college girls--and I wouldn't be surprised if the same strategy worked with spoiled rich black college girls.

One of my readers also points to a possible explanation for Hawaiian newspaper birth announcements of Obama's birth that doesn't require extraordinarily long range planning. Anyone in 1961 who seriously thought that a black kid was going to grow up to be President would need their head examined--unless, of course, they also arranged for all the social change of the period as well. That's long range planning and organization that belongs in a paranoid novel, not the real world.

I lived in Texas for some years. Remember the 1986 amnesty bill? If a Mexican illegal could prove that he had lived in the US for 5 years, then he would be granted amnesty and quick citizenship.

Well, there was a brisk trade in "documents" that would enable an illegal who'd lived here less than five years to "prove" that he had lived/worked here more than five years. They all got citizenship.

Also, if an American citizen Mexican-American was in Mexico when his child was born, he'd call the states and have someone put a birth announcement in the paper. Then later find a cooperative midwife to "swear" that is was a home birth and get a birth certificate issued.

The same holds true for American expatriates.

Anne Dunham was part of the expat community and had access to the collective knowledge of the expat community. She would want her son to have American citizenship (if he was born in Kenya) -- would know enough to call home and have a couple birth announcements published. She could worry about the birth certificate later. But maybe "later" never came....

There are women who cross into the U.S. from Mexico to have "anchor babies." I would think that even in 1961, it would be obvious that being born in the U.S. would have benefits over being born in Kenya. Admittedly, Obama's mother was only a teenager--but a very smart teenager, who later went to get a Ph.D.

CNN: Making It Up As They Go Along?

CNN: Making It Up As They Go Along?

From July 27, 2009 USA Today:

Last week, CNN's Lou Dobbs demanded Obama's original birth certificate. CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein told staffers of Lou Dobbs Tonight that the issue is a "dead" story, Kline told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Sunday.

In an e-mail, the Times reported, Klein wrote that CNN researchers determined that Obama's 1961 birth certificate no longer exists because Hawaiian officials had discarded paper documents in 2001 — a claim denied Monday by Hawaiian health officials.

In 2001, Hawaii's paper documents were reproduced in electronic format, but "any paper data prior to that still exists," Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.

Okubo would not say where Obama's original birth certificate is but said, "We have backups for all of our backups."

Now, the article quotes Okubo as reiterating that she has seen the original long-form birth certificate, and that Obama was born in Hawaii. So why would CNN's President make the claim that the original no longer exists? It inclines me to think that Obama really was born in Hawaii--but that there is something really, really severely embarrassing about what is on that birth certificate--so problematic that it is worth spending a million dollars in legal fees, as well as telling Obama's lackeys (like the President of CNN) to tell outrageous falsehoods.

Two Theories of the Supposed Kenyan Birth Certificate

Two Theories of the Supposed Kenyan Birth Certificate

1. The reason that Obama doesn't just produce the long form Hawaiian birth certificate is that energy being spent on this is energy that can't be spent on analyzing the very serious disasters that Obama and friends are organizing for America (cap-and-trade, health care too complicated for any member of Congress to read). Plus there's the bonus that it makes anyone raises the issue look like an idiot.

I don't find this a particularly plausible theory because until this last weekend, there has been no discussion in the mainstream media about it--and it isn't like there hasn't been an enormous amount of careful (and some not so careful) analysis of Obama's policy proposals. To tie up World Net Daily on this is really worth a million dollars? I am inclined to think that Obama really was born in Hawaii, but there is something really embarrassing about the long form birth certificate that is worth a million dollars.

2. The Kenyan birth certificate dated 1964 is, in fact, an actual document, but produced fraudulently by a corrupt registrar there at the request of Obama's father so that Barack Obama could go into Kenyan politics. (Remember that he has a cousin who made a serious try there a couple of years ago.) Is that Byzantine enough for you?

The Supposed Kenyan Birth Certificate

The Supposed Kenyan Birth Certificate

This supposed Kenyan birth certificate should be utterly devastating. Let's just say that I am going to need some serious proof that it isn't a forgery. But one of the criticisms by Don Surber is just wrong:

He was born in 1961. There was no Republic of Kenya then. Kenya was a colony.

It did not become independent until he was 2 years old.

A search for the phrase "Republic of Kenya" in books and documents published in 1961 and earlier finds hundreds of examples. It appears that the colonial government used that term in treaties, etc. Full independence from Britain followed a period when Kenya was nominally a republic in the British Commonwealth.

UPDATE: A reader points out that some of the documents in that list were actually published after 1961. The books.google.com engine uses the publication date of the first volume in a serial set--so a number of these items that were returned by a search by date were actually well after 1961.

In any case, the supposed birth certificate was apparently printed in 1964, several years after the supposed birth, and could well have said "Republic of Kenya" on it. I don't know that this is a real birth certificate. It may well be a fraud. But the presence of "Republic of Kenya" on it doesn't preclude it being real.

Boy, There's a Lot of Smoke

Boy, There's a Lot of Smoke

Where's there's smoke, there's fire, the saying goes. Well, sometimes there is just smoke. So what should I make of this Ghanian newspaper account of President Obama's visit? From the July 9, 2009 Modern Ghana:

For Ghana, Obama's visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth. [emphasis added]

I had no idea that Hawai'i was in Africa!

And the U.S. Army Reserve major who challenged his orders to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama wasn't born here, and therefore, isn't lawfully president? According to the always somewhat questionable July 14, 2009 WorldNetDaily;

A U.S. Army Reserve major from Florida scheduled to report for deployment to Afghanistan within days has had his military orders revoked after arguing he should not be required to serve under a president who has not proven his eligibility for office.

His attorney, Orly Taitz, confirmed to WND the military has rescinded his impending deployment orders.

The Rapidly Changing Past

The Rapidly Changing Past

You know, as much as I want to discount the whole claim that Obama wasn't born in Hawai'i, a heck of a lot of people seem to be working overtime to create that impression--and I'm talking about Obama and his supporters. This July 7, 2009 WorldNetDaily story points out that when Obama wrote a letter to Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu referring to his birth there, and WorldNetDaily pointed out that almost all previous accounts say otherwise, within 90 minutes, websites that referred to Obama's birth at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children started changing to reflect the rapidly changing past. In some cases, they changed news stories dated November 4, 2008. (At least UPI acknowledged that they changed it.)

You know, for a ridiculous claim, a lot of people who would call it ridiculous are spending a lot of time trying to cover over the fact that there seems to be some confusion about where Obama was born. On top of the almost one million dollars that Obama and the DNC have now spent to avoid producing the original, long-form birth certificate, this sure looks weird.