An image purporting to show a racist, anti-Obama bumper sticker on the back of a vehicle has been garnering lots of attention on Facebook in the past 24 hours.

The bumper sticker reads, "Don't Re-Nig in 2012." And in smaller print below, "Stop repeat offenders. Don't' reelect Obama!" The sticker also features an image of the Obama campaign logo crossed out.

Several viewers have claimed the image has been digitally altered. After all, it seems shocking that someone would proudly display an openly racist image on their vehicle in 2012. So, is the image authentic?

In short, yes.

...And as one astute Facebook reader pointed out, the bumper sticker is not only offensive, it's pretty dumb. After all, if you take the top message at its literal meaning, to not renege in 2012, would mean to in fact re-elect President Obama.

It's as slick as any commercial Hollywood production. And it's about as much a "documentary" as a campaign speech by Joe Biden.

President Barack Obama's re-election machine on Thursday released a two-minute trailer for what they have billed as a 17-minute documentary that makes the case that he deserves a second term.
From the giant American flag fluttering over a cheering crowd in the opening scene to the dramatic recounting of the Navy SEAL raid that took out Osama bin Laden to Tom Hanks' narration, "The Road We've Traveled" is undeniably a state-of-the-art pitch for the president. (Let's take a moment to miss Don LaFontaine, whose trademark gravelly "In A World" could have been the cherry on top).

It could be the first campaign video to feature two Academy Award winners: Hanks, and director Davis Guggenheim, who helmed Al Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth."

Samuel L. Jackson only voted for President Barack Obama because of the color of his skin, the Hollywood actor revealed in a profanity-laced interview in the March issue of Ebony magazine.
“I voted for Barack because he was black. ’Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them,” Jackson said. "That’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama’s] message didn’t mean sh-t to me. In the end, he’s a politician. I just hoped he would do some of what he said he was gonna do.
According to the New York Post, the "Pulp Fiction" legend repeatedly dropped the N-word during his cover story interview.

"One of the major goals of President Obama's America's Great Outdoors initiative is to develop a conservation ethic for the 21st century," Salazar said in a statement.
"By designating these remarkable sites in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington as national natural landmarks, we help establish and pass down to future generations those awe-inspiring places that make America truly beautiful."

Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact, the political fact-checking outfit, says Obama has what he called an "astounding" success rate, keeping 26 percent of his promises.
But in a discussion with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep airing Wednesday, Adair says Obama's batting average should fall, now that he must contend with a Republican-controlled House

Q: Is President Obama's trip to India going to cost $200 million per day?
A: This highly doubtful claim originated with one Indian news agency quoting an anonymous source in Mumbai. The White House says it is "wildly exaggerated," and there's no evidence to support such a huge figure.

Republicans will probably win the House today. They might win the Senate, too. But either way, the brief moment in which Democrats not only controlled Congress, but held enough seats to do big things, is over. And it'll end in defeat.

Actually, scratchthat. It'll end in a few dozen politicians losing their jobs. But if you see the point of politics as actually getting things done, the last two years, for Democrats, have been a stunning, historic success. Whatever else you can say about the 111th Congress, it got things done.

President Barack Obama has managed to pass health care reform which, whether one agrees with its changes or not, is likely to significantly alter how medical care is done in the United States. It now appears that Congress is going to pass a financial regulation bill that, among other things, ends the shadow world in which derivatives operated and will supposedly include positive aspects for the consumer such as a new government watchdog agency. The question is whether with the passing of financial regulation reform Obama will become one of the most influential presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt when it comes to changing American society and how it operates, specifically two of its most important aspects: medical care and the financial system.

So, will Obama go down in history as a president that fundamentally altered American life in ways that Theodore Roosevelt (FDA), FDR (Social Security), Dwight Eisenhower (the interstate system), and LBJ (Medicare) changed it or will Obama's changes be repealed, forgotten or are they being over-hyped to begin with?

The world has not seen such a global recession in a long time. It seems to have been around for ages without an end in sight. But how did we come to be in such an economic hole? And, as far as America is concerned, who should shoulder most of the responsibility for the slide in fortunes?

Could it have been avoided and, if you were in charge, what ONE thing would you have done that might have made a difference to the situation.

Constructive and helpful comments are always welcomed.

Fire away!

In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.

This is a former slave house on Friendfield Plantation, where Michelle Obama's family has roots.
1 of 3 It's not exactly "Gone With the Wind," but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.

I was privy to reading an editorial by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, that berated President Obama up one side and down the other for abdicating America's special role in foreign affairs. Well, among other things. Her tenuous grasp of historical events (or her lopsided attempt to sway the Wall Street Journal's readers with a selective interpretation of events) was... interesting to say the least.

Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

If Liz Cheney thinks that competition of every form was not part of the basic Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, one must wonder what she thinks that the Apollo program (culminating in the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon on July 20, 1969) was all about. Did we spend millions of dollars to retrieve moon rocks for NASA to distribute to VIPs as paperweights? In reality, the intense competition in "everything from astrophysics to athletics" was the most basic expression of the international posturing that put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union's centralized economy. It was each country's best effort to convince their allies and the non-aligned powers that their economic and political systems were superior. It was the ultimate point of pride and the end of every logical debate when the United States could, in nearly every instance, point to the fruits of its labor as either the best in the world or point out that the Soviets had bested the West by chicanery. By chicanery I am referring to one of the best-known instances of Soviet cheating: turning the GDR (German Democratic Republic i.e. East Germany) women's swim team into a husky-voiced, peach fuzz-growing band of she-men to compete against Janet Evans in the 1988 Olympics. The end results of an endeavor almost always tell the story of superiority and our ability to demonstrably outdo the Soviet Union in nearly every facet of military technology (specifically aircraft, submarines and nuclear weapons) and even in many Olympics told the story: a free society can best one that is repressively yoked to the state.

Furthermore, Cheney seems to have rewritten fundamental American history when it comes to the Cold War. For each time we were involved in successful movements that broke the hold of the Soviet Union (Solidarity in Poland and the mujahideen turning Afghanistan into the Soviets' version of Vietnam) an opposite instance can be given in which we stood on the sidelines and watched freedom-loving people die at the hands of Soviet troops without lifting a finger to assist them (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). Liz Cheney needs to remove her rose-colored glasses and realize that, in many cases, as a method of our foreign policy the United States incited and supported opposition against the Soviet Union that we knew were likely to fail, nearly sure to result in casualties and then watched them happen without intervention to stop the killing. They were legitimate and needed foreign policy maneuvers, but Cheney writes as though Americans were the ones dying all over the world to spread freedom. In nearly all cases, no American casualties were registered: we bankrolled the people that were actually pursuing the part of the Cold War that could end in disfigurement or death. Those that were persecuted and ruled like 20th century Messenian helots by the modern day Sparta deserve the credit for risking their lives by refusing to be party to business as usual. America was, at best, a reluctant Theban democracy led, at times, by Epaminondas-like figures. The best way to earn ill will in the former Soviet Union is to cast ourselves as the heroes of the Cold War and those that did the majority of the dying as interesting but unimportant bit characters.

The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old."

People like Liz Cheney think it is an excellent idea for the President of the United States to be Paul to the Gospel of liberal democracy and constitutional government and, frankly, I think that the President should be our chief messenger when it comes to persuading other countries to convert to our method of governance. However, it is complete and total foolishness to believe that the President can make an ounce of progress converting possible liberal democratic states while playing deaf and dumb about an incident that indicates our country does not support the method of government itself if the method results in unacceptable leaders. Allowing that message to echo in perpetuity, which it has since the day in 1953 that we initiated the coup d'etat against Mossadeq in Iran, fatally undermines anything and everything any American emissary has to say about the benefits of liberal democracy. Until an American President, as Liz Cheney derisively puts it, pressed the "reset" button on the Mossadeq coup the residents of the states that we need to convert to liberal democracy to improve our national security, the Islamic entities of the Middle East, would absolutely refuse to listen to any discussion of changing government structures of their own countries. To that point, Muslims in the Middle East treated every American President touting democracy the same as an atheist treats a Christian that flagrantly sins while proselytizing to them: with patience looking towards the end of the lecture with no intention of converting or outright contempt for the evangelist. Cheney is clearly unfamiliar with the notion of leading by example.

Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much.

One that is truly exceptional will avoid any and all opportunities to trumpet their own exceptionalism. It is precisely this humble nature that makes them truly exceptional and this aversion to hubris is one of the primary attractions for an exceptional person or country's followers. The King James Bible concisely states just as much in Proverbs 16: 18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs?

No, he doesn't believe that North Korea will unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons if the United States achieves nuclear disarmament. Nor does he believe that Iran will simply give up its nuclear ambitions in such a situation. What he does believe, however, is that if the United States backs its demands for a world devoid of nuclear weapons with significant steps towards eliminating its own stockpile then our allies will likely vigorously follow our lead and our "allies" like China and Russia will be more likely to exert pressure on North Korea and Iran, respectively, to renounce their nuclear weapons programs. When one spine stiffens in a room, others are empowered to follow suit. The one thing that we do know is the only other country with the nuclear clout to straighten its back and empower other countries to take a tougher line on non-proliferation is Russia and that will never, ever happen.

Earlier this morning, June 24, Oregon University became the unwilling host for a rather unflattering message from Iranian hackers to the President of the United States. For about an hour and a half, a message that began by addressing President Obama "Hey Stupid Fly Catcher Obama!" demanded that Obama cease talking about the Iranian presidential election and that he mind his own business as well as declaring that there was no fraud in the contest that put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back into office for another term as Iran's president.

The pro-Ahmadinejad hackers had impeccable timing as they struck on the same day that the Obama administration unveiled the U.S. government's first integrated effort to protect military and civilian computers. Dubbed CyberCommand, the unit will fall under U.S. Strategic Command on the military's organizational structure. Strategic Command oversees both nuclear and computer warfare for the United States' national security community. Likely to be chosen to head the new command is Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander who is currently the head of the National Security Agency. Alexander is expected to keep his spot at the NSA as well as receive a fourth star as a reward for guiding both organizations. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has decreed that CyberCommand be up and running by October of this year and that it be fully-functional a year after its debut.

The government is spending $7.4 billion this year alone in attempts to secure all government computers from intrusions by curious hackers and hostile actors alike. Boeing created a division called Cyber Solutions in anticipation of a government expansion of computer security. Lockheed-Martin had its Information Systems division established already. Yet another defense contractor, Raytheon, has a longer-established electronic division dedicated to protecting essential computer networks called Information Security Solutions. Raytheon's ISS division, looking forward to new and larger government contracted for network security, acquired three computer security companies (Oakley Networks, SI Government Solutions and Telemus Solutions Inc.) and is planning to increase its stable of certified security engineers by 50% this year to improve their capabilities. L3 Communications and SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) Inc., both defense contractors for the government as well, have thrown in together to create a unit that does computer network security too. Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and L3-SAIC already face one barrier to entering the computer security industry: old hands McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., the latter the creator of the ubiquitous Norton Antivirus, have been at computer security for decades. Whatever the case may be, CyberCommand will not be hurting for potential partners to hire for assistance with its goal.

An oft-overlooked part of each story about anti-American groups putting out propaganda and threats, however, is where the messages appear: an American university's computer network. Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9-11, the incidence of attacks against computer networks has gone up. FY 2007 saw 37,000 breaches of private computer networks reported to the Computer Emergency Response Team. FY 2008: 72,000. Close to a 100% increase. Groups hostile to the United States have found that there are large, powerful and useful computer networks in America's colleges and universities that are not protected very well. They have been exploiting this weakness for nearly eight years now.

The NSA originally discovered in 2002 that al Qaeda was using vulnerable computer networks in America to host its websites and recruiting videos, unbeknownst to anyone involved with the computer networks. The practice was going strong in the second half of 2003 when the U.S. military discovered that there had been cross pollination of ideas between al Qaeda operatives in the Middle East and Iraqi insurgents. Wherever there were exploitable flaws and a few hundred free megabytes of storage, video files insurgents filmed of roadside bombs exploding on American patrols, the vile execution of foreign hostages or American POWs and other such media were appearing. The real kick in the pants was that it was usually the U.S. government paying for the computer that was hosting the video and the broadband connection that was uploading it to the aspiring young Islamist searching for propaganda footage.

The mission of increasing the security of educational institutions' computer networks is daunting. The most basic reason is because an educational institution's core mission is to be open and share information. This creates a large number of portals for which security is needed and, more importantly, that invaders can enter through. Another problem is that the patrons of educational institutions, primarily students, are young with less wisdom of judgment which makes them perfect targets on social networking sites like Facebook for phishing (tricking users into giving up their usernames and passwords). These students' accounts can then be used to set up hosting for a hacker's website or as a stepping stone for more privileges on the target network and more opportunities to hack deeper into the system. A third problem is that 32% of the 498 reported security breaches since 2000 are attributed to educational networks, just 3% behind the leader which are businesses. This paints a bleak picture for educational networks because while there are just thousands of them, there are 14 million businesses which makes educational institutions exponentially bigger risks for being broken into. So risky, in fact, that they are considered among the most dangerous to engage in transactions with because of the chance that sensitive data will be pilfered and abused. Some financial institutions have even declined to deal with educational institutions because of security concerns.

In the last year or two of its existence, the Bush administration belatedly made attempts to increase computer network security without a great deal of success. Now the Obama administration has embarked on its attempt to improve computer security in America and, hopefully, that attempt will meet with more success than previous tries.

Kim Jong-Il needs sophisticated medical equipment to treat his deteriorating condition. It is supposedly related to a stroke. Unfortunately for the Dear Leader, this sophisticated medical equipment can also be used to make nuclear weapons and, thus, it is prevented from being sold to North Korea or to anyone that would sell it to North Korea. North Korean officials are currently trying to get it through China. Ironically, Kim caused his own problem when he went ahead with a nuclear weapons test in 2006 which prompted the United Nations, led by the United States, to institute the embargo. So, should we allow him to get the medical equipment or make him suffer by withholding it?

I have never joined a political party, though I have voted in every election, and I don't think I'll join one at this stage in my life but, if the urge suddenly came upon me to be rashly political, David Cameron, the leader of the Tory opposition in Britain, would be the main reason for that action.

Ever since he became Party Leader in December 2005, amid criticisms that he was too young, too inexperienced, not cast in the usual Tory tradition and too modern (now where have we heard that before?) I have had great admiration for the man without really knowing why. Up until that point, the Conservatives would have been the last party I would have voted for mainly because, like the Republicans in America, they were not welcoming of Black people and are very monocultural in make-up. Even now, Cameron's top team are virtually all white and male, with a token Asian woman, in the 21st century of enlightened awareness and in a professed multicultural society. Yet, within a year of him taking office, I noticed some interesting things about him, quite different from the other mealy-mouthed politicians we are blessed with. One could say that he was the prototype for President Barack Obama.

David Cameron struck me as being fearless, consistent, heavily for change, caring, compassionate and a true family man. I am not sure if having a disabled son at the time helped his appreciation of family life, but he always stressed what he was doing at home on his website (like washing the dishes and looking after his children), generating handy jokes for some of the more macho and useless political rivals who hadn't yet got the plot! He was elected on a mandate to change the Party, especially its old image, and not many people gave him faith for achieving that. They mocked his private school background, especially as an Etonian, saw him as a kind of 'hurray Henry' with aspirations, more reflective of the old type of Tory than a new one, and smiled smugly. Change? What change? It would be business as usual, they chortled. But he soon proved them wrong and wiped the smile from their faces because the Tory Party has had significant changes since 2005.

Forget his good looks, panache and easy affability (no, I won't forget them - the man is a hunk!), I became rapidly impressed and did the unthinkable a few months later. In 2007 I actually wrote on my profile, on a popular global writers' website, that one of the people who inspired me, apart from my Mother, Nelson Mandela, older pioneers and Oprah Winfrey, was this virtual unknown, David Cameron. My friends thought I had gone mad, warming to a Party where Black people were virtually invisible, and needed to book myself into the nearest mental institution. I re-read the entry for a few months just to make sure it wasn't an aberration but I really felt inspired by the man and his emerging, laid-back style of leadership, especially his leading by example. Two years on it is still on my profile, more deserved than ever.

The Essence of Leadership

Leadership has a clear circle of development and authenticity. It starts with VISION, moves on to CREDIBILITY, the most difficult phase of acceptance, which eventually gains RESPECT and which finally provides the AUTHORITY to bring that vision to life. Last night David Cameron showed why my instincts were absolutely right in his perceived influence. At a time of national crisis with MPs from all parties helping themselves to taxpayers cash in the Expenses Claims Scandal, David showed those leadership skills in abundance. He forgot party lines and read the riot act to his members, displaying the leadership that is sorely lacking in the country at the moment and in the Labour Party, in particular. Cameron first apologised to the nation for their behaviour, adding that the issue of expense 'had done much to undermine our whole political process'. He pledged that members of his Shadow Cabinet will pay back all the claims that have caused concern and announced that a new scrutiny panel will examine every excessive claim by any Conservative MPs to decide if the money should be paid back.

However, he sought to ease immediate concerns by taking other measures to show his sincerity, such as banning all claims for furniture, household goods and daily subsistence allowance. Every claim made to the Fees Office from now on will be published online first (atta boy!), there would be no re-designation of homes without approval from the Chief Whip and any MP selling a home which has benefited from taxpayer's money must confirm that they will pay Capital Gains Tax on it, which all sounded quite sensible to me. He did not expect those actions alone to fix the 'broken politics' of MPs helping themselves in that manner to the tax we pay, a system he felt 'had been allowed to deteriorate over the years', but, if elected, he stressed that he would be asking the public to come together in a spirit of personal responsibility and thrift. "The least we can do is ask Parliament to live by those values as well," he concluded. Indeed.

It was there for all to see, the key leadership qualities of taking responsibility, accountability, transparency and respect for the people he leads. Our own President Obama, it seems, except that he was strutting his stuff long before the new president came on the scene. He just wasn't as well known. David Cameron represents the future of Britain, the clear and unequivocal direction we should be heading. There might be some rough edges to sort but one feels that a true leader for the next few years has emerged at last.

And what was our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, doing while the Opposition was busy leading the country? Damn all. Not a word of apology for the disgraceful actions of some of his MPs, no exhortation of immediate action, except to parrot David Cameron's idea afterwards in a supposed 'all party' move. In fact, just the usual hot air, smug look of detachment and ostrich-like perspective, far removed from the mood of the public we've come to expect from Labour. I wrote an article last year giving the main reasons why the Labour Party had not a hope in hell of coming back to power, and that was when they were riding high! After last night's lame and cowardly performance, they should start writing their epitaph. We have a new prime minister, and I cannot wait to see him in office.

One could say that, with the Opposition Leader's swift actions, the political gravy train has well and truly hit the buffers, while the Inland Revenue also benefits from an unexpected windfall. Today Britain feels a whole lot fresher. Perhaps we needed this cleansing to allow the real political giants to rise to the surface.

David Cameron, I might not join your Party - well, perhaps, not until I see enough people like me reflected where it matters, and might even dislike my local Tory MP intensely, but you certainly have my vote - the very first time for the Conservatives - which will be dutifully recorded at the next election! My friends will be even more convinced that I have taken leave of my senses, but hey, we all have to be a little rash sometimes, to be flexible and open minded. That's the beauty of true living and growing! :o)

President Obama at the Correspondents' Dinner Part 1

President Obama at the Correspondents' Dinner Part 2

Using witty, insightful, self-denigrating and subversive humor, President Obama managed to make the 2009 Correspondents' Dinner the single funniest one that I have seen. Even funnier than Stephen Colbert's. Watch the videos and then vote and comment: did Obama slay the audience or did he fall flat?

Barack Obama has been President of the United States for 100 days now. Are you still happy with the vote you cast on Election Day 2008? Feel free to discuss after you answer the poll question.

1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11

2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign.

3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion.

4. Asks his Cabinet to cut costs in their departments by $100 million -- a whopping .0027%!

5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15

This article is not going to discuss the morality of torture. Why? Because most of the people that support the use of torture in extracting humint (human intelligence) that even suspect someone of opposing torture on moral grounds reacts thusly:

Obviously it's [torture] horrible. But if you would rather see American cities bombed and thousands of Americans killed, then there is something wrong with you[me, the suspected morality geek]. If you care more about the enemy [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, though I doubt the poster knew his name or identity at the time of posting their comment] than the safety of your own country, then why don't you go move to the Middle East and see what it's like[Salute the flag or beat it, fag]. Those terrorists that you are defending are the same people who would cut your head off without hesitation. [As if I did not know that Islamists treat everyone that writes negatively about them the same, whether it is a lowly blogger like me or Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl]

Bracketed comments added by the author for clarity.

First, let's identify who I am because the hardcore "enhanced interrogation" crowd always makes it to the part where they ask "How do you know anything about national security? Are you in the military?" or the inevitable "Stop blaming America and/or the troops first!" I am Scott Isaacs. My great-grandfather six steps back was Colonel Elijah Isaacs of the southern half of the Continental Army that harassed, slowed and ultimately forced Lord Corwallis' surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. Colonel Isaacs had a widespread reputation for burning Loyalist towns that aided and abetted the British. My great-grandfather five steps back was Samuel Isaacs. Samuel Isaacs, whose rank I have not been able to verify, fought several 3-month hitches in the North and South Carolina militias alike which includes the Battle of Cowpens (in South Carolina) where he fought under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan who won a significant victory against the British. Records indicate further that Samuel Isaacs served as a spy for two years against both the British and the Native Americans for the equivalent at that point of the United States government. From that point to World War I, information on direct relatives is hard to come by because of several court house fires and floods that ruined property, birth and death records. WWI picks back up at the oral record that is still in the living memory of my grandpa. My great-grandfather, Charles Edward "Edd" Isaacs, fought in World War I. My great-uncle, Dorman Isaacs, fought in WWII with George Patton's Third Army. My grandpa, Rev. Bill Isaacs, fought in Korea. My uncle, Jack Isaacs (recently passed away), spent approximately two decades in the Army at different posts but spent significant time training recruits in the mechanics of close-quarters combat. One of his particular specialties was a method of silencing enemy sentries that he learned from the Apache Indians. My dad was too young for Vietnam and had already been hired in at General Electric working in the defense industry for thirteen years by the time that the next large conflict, Operation Desert Storm, got under way. My cousin Butch, however, was a Green Beret during Vietnam. My intention growing up, even though I am the last heir of my line, was always to join the military. At 16, I was experiencing severe pain that was similar to having my right side from the waist up doused in gasoline, set on fire and beaten with a sledgehammer. A neurosurgeon discovered that I had a congenital spinal problem called a Chiari I malformation and decompressed my spinal cord. I still live with chronic pain every day and I can no longer play contact sports (I had loved playing tackle football) and cannot take a job where hard hits are likely and that obviously precludes the military starting at boot camp. I did spend two semesters studying as a civilian with the Marines' ROTC at Miami University which I enjoyed very much. I still feel a kinship with the Marines and a fondness for their intellectual acceptance of me even though I couldn't take the physical rigors. My family has earned the right through its fighting to have a say in how this country runs and I intend to use that right to try to correct what I am convinced was a major setback to our war against the radical Islamists and I refuse to be dismissed as unpatriotic. If there be a flaw to find, find it in my argument because my forefathers took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and I consider that to be a sacred oath that is passed down through my bloodline and not just swearing it out. It is one of the highest honors and traditions of the Isaacs family and it is one that I will continue until the end of my time.

Moving from my qualifications to make this argument to the argument itself, I submit that in far too many cases torture elicits information that is neither genuine nor useful. In some cases in which the interrogator's resources are abundant and the information sought is expected to result in casting a wide net of arrests that leads to more torture and, thus, more arrests, torture can be of use. Consider the Third Reich's use of torture on suspected members of the French underground. The Third Reich almost always collected a majority of prisoners that were not active members, indeed some were not members at all, of the French underground. Instead, if they were lucky, they would obtain perhaps a few and sometimes as little as one captive that was a member of the underground that had useful information to give them. They would torture their entire stable of captives and nearly all would admit to being members of the French underground. Occasionally the Nazis ended up killing some captives through the stress of interrogation and others kept their silence so long that their infuriated captors lost the cat-and-mouse game over information by giving the prisoner what he or she wanted: death. Those still alive that had admitted to being underground members would then start naming names and continue naming as many names as they felt was required by their interrogator to prevent further torture. Sometimes the Nazis obtained an intelligence bonanza, snagging a high leader in the French underground in the act and then, knowing who they had, they would torture mercilessly to wring absolutely every name possible out of the subject before sending him or her to a concentration camp or a summary execution. The cycle would repeat itself. However, much more often, the Nazis would round up another bunch of "spies" that were anything but and spend precious time using torture to extract information out of them that would turn out to be so many dead ends. After a while the Nazis' interrogations had a similar effect on French society that the Salem witch trials had on its own society: French citizens in fear of being named as underground spies would voluntarily go to the Gestapo, confess to being a member of the French underground and then proceed to indict other Frenchmen. Some would go as far to name anyone and everyone they knew, including family, with no regard for the consequences so long as they were not the focus of an interrogation by someone like Klaus Barbie, affectionately known by his alter ego "The Butcher of Lyon." So, while the Gestapo's raison d'etre was to apprehend and execute spies, torturing their prisoners to extract useful intelligence was successful in only the most convoluted manner. By inducing nearly everyone to turn on nearly everyone else they had laid out for themselves a massive suspect pool by which they had to navigate using torture. In reality, it is a near certainty that far more Allied spies and members of the French underground were caught by the Gestapo using different techniques along the lines of investigation rather than torture. The Gestapo operated radio cars that would prowl the area of operations looking for outbound radio signals that indicated an Allied spy or FUM (French underground member) was transmitting his or her intelligence back to London to be sorted out and used by MI-5 and, when it came along later in the war, the Office of Strategic Services. (the OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency that would be created by Harry Truman after the war in 1947) Yet another obstacle that the Gestapo would use to smoke out a non-local (and, hence, a FUM or Allied spy come from another part of France or outside the country altogether) would be to decree that anyone seen riding a bike on Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be picked up for questioning and that beer was not available on Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend. Anyone ordering a beer or riding their bicycle on the respective days would summarily be identified as an outsider, reported to the Gestapo by a French collaborator and that was the end of the spy capers. Even more advanced techniques had the Gestapo identifying an enemy agent, keeping surveillance on him and when he went to meet up with one of the Lysander aircraft that the British sent to drop off and retrieve agents the Gestapo would be able to hook themselves the two agents, the Lysander pilot and any FUM's that had to be on-hand to facilitate the plane's landing in the dark, abandoned pasture.

The same fundamental problem with intel extracted by torture is clearly on display as well in John McCain's time as a POW and victim of torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors in the Hanoi Hilton. From a purely objective standpoint, you simply cannot get around the fact that it is the person that you are interrogating that decides whether they will give you useful information or not. An interrogator that uses torture has no option but to treat each confession from the prisoner as a possible truth to be vetted unless the interrogator already knows that what has been said is wrong. Thus, the interrogator's team spends hours (sometimes days or months) running down leads that don't pan out because the torture elicited something different than the truth from the prisoner. It provoked a malicious intent to lie to the interrogator and abuse the only advantage that the detainee has: only he knows what the truth is. Therefore, the prisoner can lie with impunity to his captor and the captor is faced with three choices: 1) end the torture 2) continue spending time torturing the prisoner in the hopes that the torture will wear him down and he will eventually tell you the truth 3) kill the prisoner with torture. McCain began reciting the Green Bay Packers' offensive line as the names of his squadron mates and naming cities that had already been bombed as new targets in upcoming bombing runs. The further into the five and a half years of torture that McCain lived, the more outlandish the stories that he made up to satisfy his captors. As McCain learned his captors' prejudices, he would incorporate them into his increasingly embellished information. At one point he drew a swimming pool on the fantail of an aircraft carrier. On the whole, if the North Vietnamese truly acted on the information they obtained from McCain, they frantically hunted for professional football players among the downed pilots they collected and shifted anti-aircraft defenses to quiet sectors that had already been bombed and were not likely to be hit again for some time.

The Knights Templar are the third example that I will use to illustrate that torture is not conducive to the collection of accurate and desired information. Philip Le Bel (Philip The Fair, in French, ironically enough) targeted the Knights Templar, the monastic organization whose whole reason for being was to conduct war against the Muslims in the Levant who controlled Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. By the time that Philip targeted the Templars, the last outpost of Outremer, Acre, had been lost to the Muslims. The Templars were now left with accumulated property willed to them over more than 200 years to conduct war in the Holy Land that made a tidy annual profit. They were also left as the first international banking cartel, having collected vast sums of money and then acted as the first banker to Europe's kings. King Philip, it turned out, owed them a great deal of money and was currently (and for the foreseeable future) broke to compound his problems. Everyone knew that the Templars had the mother lode, the greatest accumulation of wealth by any non-royal entity in Europe. Thus, Philip decided to seize the wealth for himself and net a double profit: he would wipe out his debt to the Templars by wiping out the Templars as an organization and he would snatch their riches for himself to spend as he liked. Clement V was the Pope at the time and was a childhood friend of Philip's. However, Clement tried to offer opposition to Philip in his plan to eliminate the Templars. He had little leverage to work with, however, after the Papacy was moved to Avignon, France and he was under the thumb of the French king 24/7. Philip used the only card in his deck that was available against the Templars: heresy. Because they were under the Pope's sole dominion the only crime that could force the Pope to discontinue his attempts to protect them from Philip was to convince the public that the Templars were not the upstanding and chivalric Christian knights that they were believed to be but, rather, heretics and enemies of the Church. On Friday, October 13, 1307 (hence the "unlucky" reputation of Friday the 13th to this day) Philip struck, sending his royal forces to every Templar stronghold in France and arresting and charging every Templar they found on their raids. They were hauled off to prisons where they would be consistently tortured, most notably the prison at Chinon. With only the confessions of the Templars under the duress of torture, Philip muddied their public image and then happily obliged when the French public demanded that the Order be punished. Interestingly, 56 Templars (including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay) recanted their confessions and swore on pain of death that the confessions they gave were under torture. They all were executed for maintaining that they did nothing wrong but get tortured by the French king's allies. But what happened to all that money? This is the part where torture failed to produce reliable information for Philip. Though he was absolutely desperate to get his hands on the Templar treasure (especially the treasure from the Paris priory which he had first observed when the Templars had to protect him from a mob of Parisians that wanted to kill him for melting down all the currency, selling that metal and minting practically worthless replacement coinage) torture never managed to reveal to Philip where every Templar possession in France that wasn't nailed down disappeared to. On Thursday, October 12, 1307, the day before the raids, the Templar fleet at La Rochelle, France showed 18 Templar ships in port. The next day, nearly everything of value the Templars owned in France and those 18 ships were gone and no record ever surfaced of where they sailed for nor where they ended up. Philip was left jilted and apparently no matter how much torture he ordered his Templar prisoners to undergo (including thumbscrews and having their feet smeared with fat and roasted over a fire until they literally disintegrated and the bones fell out) he was never able to find the independent information he wanted: the location of Templar monies. All he ever got from them was confirmation (later discredited) of his false accusations against them, which was worthless since all he wanted was their riches in the first place.

In addition to these historical examples of torture not yielding results worthy of practicing it, there are inherent problems in the risk-benefit analysis for a prisoner that is undergoing torture. In our situation, the first problem is that when we tortured members of Al Qaeda our first question would invariably be "Is there another attack coming?" or "When is the next attack coming?". The reality is that even if the true answer is that there is not another attack coming, the prisoner has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to give this answer. First and foremost, if they tell the interrogator there's not an attack coming they are going to get waterboarded (or whatever method is being used) again and that is a standing rule. The interrogator's assumption is that there is another attack and until that is confirmed he will continue to use torture to force his prisoner to confirm that. So, right off the bat, a lie will gain relief from harsh interrogation. The second problem is that a dedicated member of Al Qaeda will want to steer us away from any operations they truly know about. If they are a gifted story teller they will spend their time in their cells spinning a false yarn about an attack nowhere near the true target. They then give over this information during interrogation and what has been accomplished? We are now diverting intelligence resources from intercepting actual intelligence to gathering information and verifying a threat that never existed in the first place. A few "high-value" prisoners lying to us can open the kind of hole in our defenses that allowed the 9/11 attack to proceed to fruition with practically no interference from law enforcement whatsoever. Then, what is the solution to dealing with a detainee that has lied to us? Threatening him with more torture or worse torture if he lies again? At that point he will tell us an even more elaborate lie that may be impossible to actually verify and will leave us chasing our tail. Even if that is proven false, he has no incentive to do anything but tell us lies that will buy him time because the gaps between interrogation sessions are going to be longer if we have to verify information after each one. Furthermore, he has good reason to suspect if he actually tells us everything that he knows and thus renders himself useless as a font of information we will throw him into a dark hole, feed the key into a shredder and he will rot for decades until he dies. There is literally no incentive for them to tell us much, if any, legitimate information.

There are further complications as well. Double agents, which were used extensively during WWII and the Cold War, have a real propensity to refuse your offer to work against their government or group when they are having simulated drowning conducted on them, are left mostly naked in a room to lower their core temperature just above what will kill them from hypothermia or when they're forced to stay in the same stress position for 24 hours. In fact, they tend to turn down offers from people that torture them. Even if they do agree to be a double agent for you after you've interrogated them, you have scrambled their mind to the point that their former comrades are likely to detect something is wrong with them and then they have the choice of using them to feed you bad intel or they just execute them and you lose your source.

The final problem with torture is that it erects the deadly "Chinese wall" between the FBI and CIA that bears so much blame for this nation's inability to detect and foil the original 9/11. FBI agents are not allowed to torture nor are they allowed to witness torture without reporting it to the Justice Department. Therefore, if the CIA is going to torture they have to do their interrogations by excluding FBI agents. Also, there is a push by some to torture every detainee that is a possible significant source of information. At that point, the FBI is being shut off from all humint because torture is de rigeur and they cannot participate in such interrogations. At that point you are facing the benching of FBI agents that have years of experience studying and investigating our enemies (sometimes the prisoners that we have in particular) and when they cannot be present at the interrogation nor watch a tape of it that means something our most experienced intelligence agents might pick up will go by unnoticed to the agents interrogating the prisoner.

The simple fact of the matter is that torture is not effective enough to become standard practice (or even anything more than an occasional resort in a tight situation) and it creates problems that are, by nature, almost exclusive to torture and can open the way for another successful attack on this country. I understand that there are a number of people who truly think that torture can make this country safer, but this is one of those situations where the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- How does President Obama compare with his predecessors after nearly 100 days in office?

A new CNN poll of polls shows 64 percent job approval for President Obama.

On his job rating, Obama comes out just a little better. But he really stands out on personal qualities.

CNN's recent poll of polls, taken April 14-21, shows an average of 64 percent job approval for Obama.

According to Gallup polling examining past presidents' job approval, that's similar to where the last six elected presidents stood after 100 days.

Only Ronald Reagan got a slightly higher rating (67 percent). Bill Clinton and the first President Bush were both below 60.

The average for the six recent presidents after 100 days: 61 percent approval. All were in the same general range -- between 55 and 67 percent.

They were all elected after the late 1960s, when the great division in American politics emerged. Conservative versus liberal. Red versus blue. Each has taken office with a hard core of supporters and opponents.

New presidents used to come in with a greater reserve of good will. Ratings for John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower were markedly higher after 100 days -- Kennedy 83 percent, Eisenhower 72 percent.

Obama really stands out on personal qualities.

(CNN) – One of America's largest labor unions is teaming up with a prominent liberal interest group to target congressional Republicans' economic polices, calling the GOP the "party of no" in a new national ad buy coming only days before President Obama's first 100 days comes to a close.

In the new television commercial called "Timeline," the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Americans United portray target Republicans over opposition to Obama's stimulus package, the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and legislation seeking to allow women to sue for equal pay for equal work.

"There have always been those who said NO to progress. But in times of crisis, Americans have never taken NO for an answer," an announcer says in the 30 second spot.

The groups say the ad, described as a "mid five-figure buy," will begin airing Friday nationally for five days on MSBC and on all the cable news stations in the Washington, DC area.

The TV spot comes the same day the Democratic National Committee is launching a Web ad that declares, "After 100 days, the Republican approach is 'just say no.'"

This new DNC web video is the latest in a series that portray Republicans in Congress as a party devoid of new ideas.

Republicans disagree, and state that in saying no to President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, they are trying to save American taxpayers money and are attempting to rein in what they consider out of control government spending.

So what do Americans think?

Fifty-eight percent of those questioned in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Coporation national poll said that President Obama had a clear plan for solving the country's economic problems. That was more than double the 24 percent who felt Republicans had a clear prescription for fixing the country's economic mess. Three out of four polled said the GOP didn't have a clear plan.

The same survey also suggests that 62 percent felt President Obama is doing enough to cooperate with the other party, while only 37 percent thought Republicans were doing enough to reach out to the other side.

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing controversial interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process.

The narrative, posted Wednesday on the Senate Intelligence Committee's Web site and released by its former chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller , D- W.Va. , came as Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he'd "follow the evidence wherever it takes us" in deciding whether to prosecute any Bush administration officials who authorized harsh techniques that are widely considered torture.

In a statement accompanying the narrative's release, Rockefeller said the task of declassifying interrogation and detention opinions "is not complete" and urged prompt declassification of other opinions from 2006 and 2007 that he said would show how Bush Justice Department officials interpreted laws governing torture and war crimes.

These developments come days after the Obama administration declassified four Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 that revealed in detail authorized interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, sleep deprivation and putting detainees in containers with insects.

The drafting of the narrative began last summer, at the prompting of Rockefeller. The Senate Intelligence Committee staff drafted the document, with heavy input from the Bush administration, in a multi-department effort largely coordinated through the Director of National Intelligence's office.

Bush's National Security Council , however, refused to declassify it.

Obama's National Security Adviser, James L. Jones , signed off on its release last week and the Senate panel cleared it Tuesday.

Among other details, the narrative shows that:

— The CIA thought al Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah was withholding information about an imminent threat as of April 2002 , but didn't get authorization to use various interrogation techniques on him until more than three months later.

— Key Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed on the techniques used on Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 2002 and 2003.

— The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren't.

— The CIA briefed the Rumsfeld and Powell on interrogation techniques in September 2003 .

— Administration officials had ongoing concerns about the legality of waterboarding as they continued to justify its legitimacy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A key Democrat who reportedly was overheard on a National Security Agency wiretap discussing a deal with a suspected Israeli agent has called the wiretap an "abuse of power."

Rep. Jane Harman called on the Obama administration to release transcripts of the alleged conversations.
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Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, called on the Obama administration to release transcripts of the alleged conversations to her, saying she would make them public.

"I never had any idea that my government was wiretapping me at all," Harman said on CNN's "The Situation Room." "Three anonymous sources have told various media that this happened. And they are quoting snippets of allegedly taped conversations. So I don't know what these snippets mean. I don't know whether these intercepts were legal. And that's why I asked [Attorney General] Eric Holder to put it all out there in public."

Harman denied any wrongdoing and said she was outraged by news the National Security Agency had intercepted one of her conversations in 2005 or 2006.

"Many members of Congress talk to advocacy groups," she said. "My phone is ringing off the hook from worried members who think it could have happened to them. I think this is an abuse of power."

Allegations that Harman had made an inappropriate deal with a lobbyist for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, first surfaced several years ago, but they were given fresh currency Sunday night when the Congressional Quarterly published new details on its Web site.

Sources told CNN this week the National Security Agency intercepted a conversation that Harman was participating in, but said Harman was not the intended target of the wiretap. The wiretap was lawful, the sources said.

It is pretty straightforward... President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were all intimately involved in the decisionmaking process to go ahead with what amounts to torture. Should they be prosecuted for their role in making it happen?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama is launching an effort "to achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East," his spokesman said Tuesday.

President Obama speaks to the media during a meeting Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Obama has invited key regional leaders to Washington in the coming weeks for consultations on the peace process, Robert Gibbs said.

Obama wants to meet separately with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Gibbs told reporters.

Dates for the visits are still being worked out, he said.

Obama met Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

"With each of them, the president will discuss ways the United States can strengthen and deepen our partnerships with them, as well as the steps all parties must take to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab states," Gibbs said.

The leadership of Hamas, considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization, is not being invited. The group, which also provides social services, won elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006, prompting stringent sanctions from the West.

After the election, skirmishes between Abbas' Fatah and Hamas escalated, ending with Hamas in charge in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in charge in the West Bank.

A six-month cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended late last year and was followed by Israel's three-week incursion into Gaza. Israel said that operation was aimed at halting rocket and mortar fire on its southern towns and communities.

Despite a cease-fire called in January at the end of that fight, both Hamas rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes have continued.

Obama appointed a special Middle East envoy on his second full day in office -- former Sen. George Mitchell -- and dispatched him to the region within weeks.

Last week, during his third trip to the region s

1. BHO wouldn't authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams to the scene for 36 hours going against OSC (on scene commander) recommendation.

2. Once they arrived, BHO imposed restrictions on their ROE that they couldn't do anything unless the hostage's life was in "imminent" danger.

3. The first time the hostage jumped, the SEALS had the raggies all sighted in, but could not fire due to ROE restriction.

4. When the navy RIB came under fire as it approached with supplies, no fire was returned due to ROE restrictions. As the raggies were shooting at the RIB, they were exposed and the SEALS had them all dialed in.

5. BHO specifically denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN and SEAL teams.

6. Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR finally decide they have the OpArea and OSC authority to solely determine risk to hostage. 4 hours later, 3 dead raggies.

7. BHO immediately claims credit for his "daring and decisive" behaviour. As usual with him, it's BS.

[Woodrow] Wilson's empire has no borders because He does not govern territories. Rather He interprets the needs, the hopes, the faith of the human spirit, which has no spatial or temporal limits."

- Benito Mussolini, 1919

We've heard President Barack Obama be compared to Lincoln, FDR and JFK, much of it between election day and his inauguration. I don't recall hearing him compared to Woodrow Wilson though he is as much attempting to replicate the Woodrow presidency as he is Franklin Roosevelt's.

Wilson was hardly a man we would hope our children aspire to today. In some circles he is listed as one of America's great presidents, which is fine if you find a need to pay tribute to the progressive income tax, nationalization of private industry, the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, anti-immigrant hostility and institutionalized racial segregation.

Sure, there were obvious differences - President Obama is not expected to officially enact segregation in the federal government anytime soon - but some of the similarities center around government expansion and a political spiritual-ness that elevated both men to more than just men. While the reasons behind Obama's almost Holy existence has constantly escaped me, Wilson, as the son of a Presbyterian Minister, invoked sweeping religious overtones to his political rhetoric in speeches, essays and books. He painted government as a religious cause and "a mighty force in furthering God's kingdom," almost defining himself as an instrument of God (and in the above quote from a young Mussolini, it's no accident that Wilson is referred to as 'He' in the proper sense). Both Obama and Wilson have been known for their superior oratory skills.

President Obama seems to be concocting a recipe blending in the pioneering big-government initiatives of Wilson, the subsequent New Deal presidency of FDR and the inflated legacy of John Kennedy who's greatest accomplishment as president was the posthumous symbolism that spurred in LBJ's Great Society. Jonah Goldberg refers to these three 20th century events as a trifecta of soft American fascism where general freedom was subjugated for a larger purpose; where government took on a larger and larger role as income redistributor, financier of the downtrodden, enforcer of narrowed patriotism, usurper of parental authority and religious faith, expander of global authority over national sovereignty and all around thought police.

"Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."

This quote by Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, about sums it up. In this regard, Democrats should be thanking George W. Bush, rather than just blaming him for the current economic situation. Whereas a leader might see a crisis as a task to fix a crisis, the Obama Administration has gone into full crisis mode. Six months ago, when candidate John McCain claimed that the fundamentals of the US economy were sound, he was written off by Obama as out of touch. Obama, as President-Elect and then as President, made sure to scare investors at every turn. The bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity. Only recently has Obama begun to speak like a president who's every word has the potential to sway the markets in one direction or another, and despite higher unemployment and a much lower stock market, has managed to now adopt McCain's perspective as his own.

Opportunity is certainly knocking in what is amounting to the biggest expansion of government since World War II. This leads me to witness two fundamentally tragic observations about huge government: (1) so many are unaware, ignorant or oblivious to the ramifications of big government and (2) others are champions of and purveyors of it. Whether they recognize the negative residuals of big government remains to be determined.

The fight between small government conservatism and big-government leftism represents the most fundamental political divide in this country, over-shadowing most topics. I'm hoping for an opportunity for both sides to better understand the other.

Conservatives are described as lacking compassion and being indifferent if not hostile to people's suffering. This is emphasized if the people suffering are of a minority class. Conservatives and particularly religious conservatives lead the country in charitable endeavors - they are more than willing to sacrifice their own time and resources for social welfare. It's a genuine compassion when compared to the notion that supporting the forced seizure of people's resources to divide between those who may need it more is in itself the greater compassion.

Conservatives see personal charity as noble, a virtue; leftists seek to achieve that same virtue through the vice of unrestricted government. The question that arises from this (among other things): does big government exist and grow to support the legions of hurt and struggling people in this country...or do hurt and struggling people need to exist to support the goal of big government?

We all want better for our fellow citizens. So then what's the problem? The problem lies in the fact that government is the divide. Some think that something, everything, must be fixed with government involvement and then more government involvement to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Do I think that they are wrong? Absolutely.

I'm not a purist when it comes to being anti-government. I believe there are things that can be mandated only to the federal government. I understand that state, city and county governments are obligated to respond to their regional needs. But I also see government for what it is - the single biggest threat to a people, their families, their faith, their prosperity, their freedoms...anywhere on the planet. What is special about the United States is that we are a nation who's form of government was specifically designed to be as minimal a threat to liberty as any government can be and still functionally govern.

There is nothing in human existence that has the capability to do more damage to humanity than government. It is government that causes oppression; poverty; mass starvation; enslavement; genocide and war, almost exclusively over any other entity on the face of the earth. All it takes is a corrupt bureaucracy, a lazy people, a charismatic leader and a crisis to lead a country into the abyss with trains of people following, singing spirituals and dreaming of things that might be.

One of the key questions this raises is: why would any American trust the federal bureaucracy more than their own state and local government? The benefit of sending dollars and decision making to Washington DC over your own state or local government escapes me. The further you have to go from your own neighborhood to be governed, the more difficult it is to control and influence. You can often schedule a meeting with your mayor or city/county board; you can talk to someone in the office of your governor or your state legislative body; you can support referendums in your state elections; you can voice your concerns much more effectively on the local level; you can hold people more accountable when their office is a drive away versus across the country; you can have a direct say in what goes on in your back yard rather than turning the matter over to a barely accountable, bloated national government that may pit your interests against the interests of unlimited scores of others across the country.

There has been criticism recently of a few courageous governors who refused parts of the federal stimulus give-away. These are governors who feel that their states should have the freedom and ability to deal with their own problems and are leery of the attached strings that always come with federal involvement. Critics of these governors (such as Alaska's Sarah Palin and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal) have no respect for states that opt out and they come across as emotional and seething in their criticism.

I have to ask - why? If you aren't a citizen of Alaska (a state that has the benefit of oil revenues) then why is it so tragic to you if the governor of that state says, 'we can do without'? Is the idea to spend federal money where there is a crisis and the money is truly needed...or is the idea to simply spend federal money?

I can support these governors because their reactions support my philosophy on the role and the dangers of big government. This makes me wonder - what is the philosophy in play here on the part of their critics, particularly those who don't stand to personally gain from Alaska accepting federal handouts?

Which leads to the biggest question of all - what do you hope to personally gain from this current whirlwind of federal spending? Are you personally looking for a handout? Free various services that are more rewarding if someone else pays for them?

What the last few months have taught us is that in a crisis, anything can be deemed an emergency or as in dire need for help. What I wonder is if this current atmosphere represents a climax in runaway government expansion or is this just a prelude?

Vote in the poll and then discuss as you like.

A man from President Obama's hometown of Chicago has been arrested for allegedly sending Obama and his staff envelopes containing HIV-infected blood, in the hopes of killing or harming them.

It's only the second time ever that HIV-infected blood has been sent with malicious intent through the U.S. mail system

See more irresistible headlines

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama's helicopter...

Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.

The channel quoted the company's CEO, Bob Boback, who said Tiversa found a file containing the entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One....

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Although Candidate Obama promised a sweeping agenda of change, President Obama so far has upheld a number of Bush administration policies.

I had a discussion a month or two back with a Newsvine user that implanted the idea in my head for an article about a Christian perspective of universal healthcare. Why a Christian perspective? Because it is unique from the perspective of all other faiths as well as different from the perspective of those that do not adhere to any faith whatsoever. Also because the party that many Christians belong to and support at the polls is, I feel, factually at odds with the history, philosophy and theology of Christianity.

Christianity has had a relationship with healthcare from the very beginning, going all the way back to the one that we consider our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, many of Jesus Christ's miracles were miracles of healing the sick and lame as well as the parable of the Good Samaritan which he gave to his followers to further illustrate how he expected those that renounced a life of pursuing material wealth to take up a cross and follow him to act. I offer the following Bible verses as the basis of this fact:

Mark 5:21-43: A Dead Girl And A Sick Woman

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live." 24 So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' " 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." 35 While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more?" 36 Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe." 37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." 40 But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" ). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Luke 4:38-44: Jesus Heals Many

38 Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. 39 So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.

40 When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. 41 Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, "You are the Son of God!" But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ.

42 At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. 43 But he said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." 44 And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Luke 5:17-26: Jesus Heals A Paralytic

17 One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. 18Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven."

21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." He said to the paralyzed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen remarkable things today."

John 4:43-54: Jesus Heals The Official's Son

43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.

46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

48 "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."

49 The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."

50 Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."

53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.

54 This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.

John 9:1-38: Jesus Heals A Man Born Blind

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

6 Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. 7 "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" 9 Some claimed that he was. Others said, "No, he only looks like him." But he himself insisted, "I am the man."

10 "How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.

11 He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."

12 "Where is this man?" they asked him. "I don't know," he said.

The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."

16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.

17 Finally they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened." The man replied, "He is a prophet."

18 The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. 19 "Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?"

20 "We know he is our son," the parents answered, "and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don't know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself." 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ[a] would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God,[b]" they said. "We know this man is a sinner."

25 He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"

26 Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"

27 He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"

28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from."

30 The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

34 To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

Spiritual Blindness

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"

36 "Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him."

37 Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."

38 Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

Luke 10: 25-37: The Parable Of The Good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

26 "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27 He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[a]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[b]"

28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30 In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

There is also this passage from the Sermon on the Mount:

42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Jesus Christ, according to three of the four Gospels, had a prominent healing ministry that was at the heart of his conversion of others based on his preaching which was validated by his acts of kindness, compassion and miracles. Jesus likely healed more people than we actually know about from recorded accounts of his life in the Bible, though. In all recorded instances, however, he never asked for recompense for healing actions. He simply healed people because it was his nature and Christians are called to emulate Christ firstly. Secondly, in the parable about the Good Samaritan Jesus tells the law expert to go and do likewise: care for the sick at your own expense and you are doing Christ's work. The names of many hospitals (hospitals just in the Cincinnati area bear the names of Good Samaritan, Mercy Hospital, Christ Hospital, etc.) bear out the fact that the monastic orders of monks and nuns have both endowed and run hospitals for centuries upon centuries as one of their charitable donations to their communities in the name of their faith. In fact, during the age of pilgrimage and crusading to Jerusalem the Knights of St. John (a military monastic order) gained their nickname from the medical care and respite they gave pilgrims on the route to Jerusalem: the Hospitallers. Medical care in the West bears, if not a singular Christian brand, a significant Christian flavor indicating that the Catholic Church and the Christian offshoots from it have solely financed, staffed and influenced most medical facilities until the twentieth century. Most of those groups still bear a great deal of influence today even though the practice of medicine has passed into the hands of secularism. Many Christians, in my opinion, are on the wrong side when it comes to universal healthcare because they support the Republican Party and the Republican Party is adamantly opposed to the government taking any interest whatsoever in the healthcare industry. Their answer, as best I can tell, is that healthcare should be left in the hands of the private companies that have had control of the industry for decades and if people cannot get healthcare on their own then the problem will fix itself. This approach, which has been tried over the last thirty years or so by the administrations of both parties has "worked": that is, if you consider "working" society slowly grinding its way to increasing bankrupt private comapnies' healthcare pension plans approaching insolvency or going bankrupt and abdicating their responsibilities to the government safety net. The aforementioned government safety net is called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The PBGC, as it will be referred to from here on in this article, has collected a whopping $63 billion in assets from American corporations that are required to pay into the system although, technically, it has abided by the Republican maxim since Reagan: no tax money is to be spent in private enterprise endeavors... that is, unless, private companies find a way to fleece the government for corporate welfare like farm subsidies in which the corporations take the lion's share of what was originally meant for small farm owners. In such a case, the government applauds and then turns a blind eye while taxpayers' money is gobbled up to increase the bottom line of companies like Archer Daniels Midland. Getting back to PBGC, however, the government-run insurance corporation has future commitments amounting to $74 billion. How did the PBGC come to have such a bailout-worthy future commitment package? Because of free market economics. Nine of the ten largest pension plan bankruptcies that PBGC has had to take responsibility for have come about since 2001. Those nine include companies like United Airlines and Bethlehem Steel that got while the getting was good and left the PBGC holding the bag. What will happen if PBGC cannot pay out the pension obligations left to it in these companies' legacy costs they passed on is that the taxpayers will have to bail them out just like the banks. Also if General Motors and Chrysler go under, weighed down by medical costs that are not addressed by a government healthcare program, the government will have to pay for those pensioners' healthcare costs anyway without the benefit of jobs being provided by the companies for taxpayers. No matter what way you cut it, our government is already up to its eyeballs in connections with business. All the President is suggesting is that we reorganize the government so that it alleviates certain pressures from the businesses, helps them compete globally and brings jobs back to the United States. I don't think it's too much to ask that these companies bring employment back from overseas given the massive amount of financial responsibility that they have dumped on the U.S. government. Plus, it's what Jesus would do. Also, before anyone says that "charity is a private matter" please find me a private charitable organization that will provide insurance for the 37 million uninsured people as well as covering the gap in the PBGC's commitments versus assets. Then I will agree with you, it is a private matter. I might even want the organizers autograph too.

President Barack Obama has a problem with the military. It has not split into an open rift yet, but it is a boiling cauldron of extremely serious issues that, carried through to their logical conclusion, could spell the end of civilian control of the military. Plus, who would have suspected that his problem started with a war that began before he was born and ended when he was a teenager?

I will start at the logical point: the beginning of the problem and that is the all volunteer military force. Please do not start screaming hysterically that I am anti-military. I have demonstrated that my direct family line has opened a vein time and time again when this country goes to war from the Revolutionary War onward. In fact, the reason that I am writing this is because I want to defend the sacrifices my family has made. Civilian control of the military is the most integral part of our government as formed by the Founding Fathers. Why? Because the military is the part of our society that wields the force to compel our laws and values at home and abroad. The start of this problem began with Vietnam because Vietnam is what caused the societal schism that brought about an all volunteer military to start with. The government gave up conscription because the public at the time did not want it (even though it had been a part of our military from the beginning) and it was simpler and more efficient because the more motivated people were joining up and leaving the slackers and lightweights that conscription brings behind. It looked great, for a while at least.

Much has been made of the "Vietnamization" of politics after the war in which service in the war played a part in every presidential campaign onward. Clinton was a draft dodger, Al Gore was a sissy reporter with a camera and John Kerry was an unrepentant anti-Vietnam veteran. All three played significant roles in their presidential campaigns and were the tipping point in losing for Gore and Kerry. The "Vietnamization" of our military has gone on as an unnoticed undercurrent throughout this and has finally started to become more clearly visible now that a president that was too young to serve in Vietnam has ascended to the White House.

Flash to today. The all-volunteer military is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, according to every single poll and the last election's results, is a war that the majority of the public no longer wants to be involved in. Problem is that Obama is sending clear signs to disengage and the message is not being received well by the military and, frankly, who can blame them? As the all-volunteer military has progressed it has become more like a fraternal order than ever before. Because it draws the same two types of people (people that want to fight and people that need the economic benefits, more importantly the former) that means that relatives, friends and other close associates of military members are coming from families with long histories of military service and, thus, similar beliefs. They have now gone through a war in Iraq in which everyone in the public but their close associates and military aficionados have detached from them because the average American no longer has a family member or close friend serving in the military and they feel, rightly, betrayed. Furthermore, they have been fighting in Iraq for six years next March and over these years they have watched relatives and close friends become casualties of the Iraq war. This is personal loss and, for those that have lost more than one (and there are many), it is personal loss upon personal loss with each making the latest more difficult than the last. Now put yourself in their shoes and imagine a president that never volunteered for military service in his life elected by a public that largely forgot about you is now saying "Okay, time to go home or go to Afghanistan." What is your reaction? The same one playing out in the high command of the military: "Are you ****ing kidding me?" Vietnam was hard enough to break away from because it entailed the public admitting that 58,000 of its sons had died for no discernible gain whatsoever. How does a reasonable person think that a smaller group bearing 4,165 dead and 30,182 wounded sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and friends is going to take it after they already took one for the team by volunteering for the military to start with when the order comes down to break off engagement when essentially nothing has been accomplished in Iraq except the execution of Saddam Hussein? In short, not well. They are being ordered by a president elected by a public with nothing but a monetary stake in the war to leave after accomplishing no long-term objectives. Their reasoning is simple: "Who the hell are they to tell me to quit fighting when me and my crew are bearing the fighting and dying?"

The all-volunteer military had another unintended consequence, rather like that which turned Rome into an empire from a republic: It put a demoralized volunteer military into the hands of each individual president to fund as he chose. This gave them the power that Caesar wielded: the ability to buy the military's loyalty. This is when the military started playing favorites politically when Ronald Reagan boosted military spending and invaded Grenada to give the military its pride back after the Vietnam debacle. Reagan not only lavished them with funds, he gave them their pride back. As a result, everyone still in the military that was in that military during Reagan's eight years tends to revere him as the anti-Jimmy Carter and, then, that loyalty branched out to Reagan's successors: the Bushes. Even when George W. Bush did not fund the VA right or made poor strategic decisions that cost lives, the military and veterans largely refused to hold him accountable because it has become silent doctrine that Republicans are pro-military and Democrats are anti-military. Some in the military resist this notion; many others from Vietnam families come with that belief already firmly intact.

Is it any wonder then that much of the high leadership in the armed forces is seeking to drag its feet, bureaucratically delay Obama's withdrawal order and considering trying to go around their Commander in Chief and change the public's opinion about Iraq because they're unwilling to fight another war where many died for nothing discernible?

Where exactly does this military model end up and what are the consequences, if any, for the country and civilian control of the military?

"Here's the deal Bob - what we're trying to do is get money out the door as rapidly as you can."

- Vice President Joe Biden - Face The Nation 01/25/2009

There's one campaign promise that's almost a guarantee will be kept once a candidate is elected and that is the promise to spend your money. President Obama, during the campaign, certainly was not cryptic about his desire to turn Congress into a tax funded ATM. Fortunately, the Reid/Pelosi Congress is there to reign in...okay, I tried.

The 2008 campaign where Obama laid out parts of his near-trillion dollar agenda coupled with the hype about the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression", have more or less numbed Americans to the impending spending spree that Congress is currently engaging in. What's noteworthy about it is that this doesn't even really represent Obama's campaign promises that initially promised oodles of new federal spending. Candidate Obama was peddling his health care welfare plan and other big spending initiatives (BTW, $600 million of the $1.1 trillion spending package is dedicated to "preparing" the nation for universal healthcare). What we are seeing now is not that but rather an emergency "economic recovery" package.

So we have yet to even tap into the Obama agenda but by the second week of the new era of Hope and Change, we have politicians already falling over themselves to increase spending to levels not seen since the 1950s, when we were still coming down from WWII and the Great Depression, where the national debt to GDP ratio peaked at an astonishing 109% (meaning that we were spending more than the sum of our economy).

And let's be real about this: there is virtually no such thing as a one-time spending bill. Federal spending, without specific guardrails, is permanent spending. Democrats in Congress want to increase federal spending on providing meals for starving and impoverished public school students. Putting aside the fundamental question of why the federal government should be feeding students in your local school, roughly 6 out of 10 public school students now get some kind of subsidized food, be it breakfast, lunch or after school snacks, be it free or reduced. Translated, the federal government believes that a majority of parents of public school students can't provide basic meals for their kids. They can provide cell phones and X-boxes and PSPs and DVD players, but can't wrap up a peanut butter sandwich and an apple to send off with their children.

The Times-Herald Record, last September, practically complained that not enough students were taking advantage of free food offered through public schools even claiming that in addition to subsidized meals, food donations represented "the only nourishment they — or their families — receive all day", citing that "a lot of kids who need help won't apply."

The US Department of Agriculture has a long standing program to provide free meals to students. In 2004, the USDA spent $1.8 billion on breakfast alone. That's even without, as USA Today pointed out in 2004, 9 million students (out of close to 50 million total public school students) who received a subsidized lunch but did not take advantage of the free breakfast.

I'm picking on subsidized public school meals out of a barrel full of irresponsible spending proposed under the guise of the Economic Recovery and Rescue Package (later changed to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Call me strange, but perhaps legislation with a name like this should actually include spending that helps the economy recover. If politicians want to throw more money down the throats of students, then someone can sponsor a bill designed to do precisely that. Representative GT Thompson referred to the Economic Recover and Rescue Package as a "stim-u-less" package. And it seems apt to me, when $30 billion is dedicated to highways and bridges and, in sharp contrast, $724 million will go to providing students with afterschool snacks and $82 billion will end up as welfare checks, under the guise of a tax refund.

What we have here is a political junction that could not be more opportunistic. We have a disturbingly supported Left wing Democratic president, an eager Democratic controlled Congress and a media-driven myth that we are in the worst economic crisis since the nation's worst ever economic crisis.

George Friedman, author and head of Stratfor, in an interview promoting his new book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, pointed out that during the Great Depression, the US economy contracted by 50%. Compare that to today, where by the most pessimistic analysis, the US economy has contracted by, at most, two to three percent. Many are quick to point to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a substantially worse era than what we are going through today.

For years we've been hearing about the debt. The worst period of debt in US history, by some estimates, worse than all other periods combined. The truth is that the debt - as a percentage of the economy - has for most of the Bush era, remained at or below average going back to the end of WWII. Washington and Hamilton supported the idea of a national debt, believing it was necessary for American survival. There has only been one genuine attempt to eliminate the country's debt and that was by President Jackson in the 1830s. He reduced the debt to $18,000.

That hasn't been attempted since, no, not even by President Clinton. In a 2005 report on debt, the Heritage Foundation pointed out that the Bush debt ratio was at 38%. Clinton's entire presidency consistently boasted a debt ratio higher than that, and contrary to popular history, debt did increase under his administration...but, like for much of the Bush era, the economy grew at a faster rate.

And even today, Obama supporters on the Left are slamming the Bush debt with as much zeal as they had when he was in office. A bit of a canard since they somehow manage to stop their complaints about debt and deficit spending when the conversation is moved from the past to the present where these people are quick not to criticize any of the specious spending requests in the name of economic recovery. Debt can now, at the very least, be ignored.

Despite all evidence pointing to the notion that the current economy isn't as dire as we are led to believe and is expected to recover, Vice President Biden told Face The Nation on Sunday that the economy is "worse, quite frankly, than everyone thought it was, and it's getting worse every day." We've been hearing for years about the dreaded 'politics of fear' but here we are getting slapped upside the head with it. Democrats have taken an economic downturn and turned it into their own blank-check spending party, including $50 million more for the National Endowment for the Arts, a program that funds and subsidizes failed artists - a program that's a joke on it's own but infuriatingly absurd in the context of an economic recovery package.

Perhaps members of Congress could combine two of their favorite subjects: spending and prostitution. We could subsidize the johns and put tens of thousands of hookers to work (in D.C. alone). They could even combine it with their contraception initiatives in the package. Sound absurd?

Well, that is basically what Pelosi and gang are attempting to do as a means to create jobs and jump start an economy. Pelosi wants to spend hundreds of millions on "family planning" efforts (in other words, throw money at institutions like Planned Parenthood) through the twisted and almost sinister logic that the burden on the economy is due to people themselves simply existing and by taking all measures to prevent the existence of as many children as possible, only then can we help the economy rebound. I guess this is great news if you want a job in the abortion or contraceptive industries. Not so great if you want to be born.

In line with this approach, we could simply start a program to assassinate every third child born to a mother. Firing squad, perhaps? This could boost the gun industry and create jobs in cremation services, as well as get rid of some of these moochers who Pelosi feels are draining our economy. (Funny that the Pelosi's of the world want to prevent reproduction and births out of fear that they will run out of government funds to feed them)

FDR taught us that the federal government can't spend it's way out of an economic mess. Creating jobs - assuming you believe that will be the result of all of this - is meaningless when more and more people are being put on the public dime and government is turning into a trough for pigs to bury their snouts in. It's not free money.

Someone just needs to tell that to Congress.

(and kudos to the entire Republican side of the House and the 11 courageous Democrats who are aligned with them against this shamefully gluttonous and disgustingly deceptive recovery package)

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States..." were the words that President Obama planned to say on January 20th before Chief Justice John Roberts botched the presidential oath of office and Mr. Obama repeated his mistake. Assuming no darker motives—that Mr. Roberts was not deliberately creating a validation for a future ruling that Mr. Obama is not America's president—his public snafu with Mr. Obama might at least foreshadow a period of little cooperation, perhaps even blatant counteraction, between an economically interventionist Mr. Obama and a still strict-constructionist Supreme Court.

1978, the last time America saw a Democratic majority in Congress as great as it is now—nearly 60%—coincided with the first term of President Carter—also a Democrat. The 96th Congress that convened until 1980 was marked by broad productivity, passing more laws than the two Congress' that preceded it. If the high output of bills was due to Democratic control of the legislature and the White House, then the current—111th—Congress ought to be the most productive in a long time. Nonetheless, the current federal judiciary remains much more conservative than that of 1978, suggesting that any productive period in Congress will likely be met with constitutionality rulings in the Supreme Court.

Although he never succeeded in convincing a majority in Congress to add the appropriate clauses to the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), Mr. Obama—not to mention other Democratic Senators and Representatives—supported allowing judges to rewrite mortgage contracts. As national banks fought the proposed measure by saying introducing insecurity into mortgage contracts would inevitably lead to rate hikes, some Congressional conservatives pointed out that mortgages are legal contracts and arbitrarily altering them could prove unconstitutional; a former Harvard University student in constitutional law, Mr. Obama claimed that the situation called for it; he did not address inconsistencies between his bailout plan, Treasury Secretary Paulson's requests to get Congressional approval to spend $700 billion in stimulus with no judicial oversight, and the confines of the Constitution.

Nearly sixty-five years after leaving the White House, President Franklin Roosevelt is remembered primarily for leading America out of the Great Depression and later to victory in the Second World War. His First 100 Days in office—often alluded to by Mr. Obama—are meanwhile credited with ending bank runs and lowering national unemployment, in turn beginning to reverse the downward economic trends of the Great Depression. To a lesser extent, Mr. Roosevelt's First 100 Days are remembered for being spawning the National Recovery Act (NRA) which was later ruled unconstitutional leading Mr. Roosevelt to attempt to pass an act through Congress that would allow him to appoint five new Supreme Court Justices, which Congress killed in realizing it violated the balances of the Constitution.

Mr. Obama would no doubt be satisfied if his name someday conjures the same populist heroism that Mr. Roosevelt's continues to today, but Mr. Obama should note that an increasingly analytical and often critical media makes such favorable legacies increasingly less likely. Mr. Obama ought to also understand that his background in constitutional law all but obliterates ignorance as a plausible defense for endorsing bills that are in violation of the Constitution. For a first term president, Mr. Obama's power—both in popular approval and legislative control—is possibly without precedent; the financial crisis and American recession give him greater leverage. The point is that he can't abuse it—or rather that he can and that he probably will—but he shouldn't. And if he does, there will be a day not so long away when, as he is forced to testify before a contentious and Republican Senate set on impeachment, he will regret it.

With our first glimpse into how the government wants to use $825 billion to juice the economy, it's clear that some of the money will quickly and directly affect most Americans lives, while other spending is intended to produce either longer-term, less tangible benefits or is targeted at narrow segments of the population -- like the unemployed.

Although the sum is huge, the money isn't intended to turn the economy around, but to keep it from falling even further into decay.

... supporters -- including most Democrats and the president -- say it would ultimately cost the U.S. more -- in the form of lost jobs, economic output, and lost tax revenues - to drag our feet. They want the plan enacted quickly.

Here's how some of the billions in the House stimulus bill could change your life.

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With one era ending and another about to begin, this should not only be a time for reflection but also a time for looking ahead. I'm in no way a fan of Barack Obama's but even I can't help but feel a twinge of excitement at the start of a new political experiment while at the same time feeling some sadness at the departure of a president who I have admired and even have some affection for.

At this point in time one would think that we should all be looking ahead yet it's clear that some of us, especially some of the most ardent and vocal champions of Obama, are incapable of doing that. After years of setbacks, the American Left experienced one of the strongest political victories in modern history last November. Democrats were not only able to get an inexperienced, sub-par politician into the White House but were also victorious in securing a party stronghold in both houses of Congress (and may end up getting away with stealing a Senate seat in Minnesota - talk about icing on the cake!).

No political partisan from any party could ask for more yet it's difficult to identify a true excitement for the new era. I'm not talking about the ceremonial aspects of electing and inaugurating a new president; there's no doubt that people get woozy over events like Obama's convention speech, his victory, his November acceptance speech and his upcoming inauguration speech, not to mention of course the historic symbolism of electing the country's first semi-white president. These are givens. But when the country elects a man who is more symbol and slogan than anything else, I guess there's not much to look forward to until something actually happens.

While the task of 'fixing' the nation should be front and center on the minds of everyone who passionately stumped for Obama, I haven't sensed much of that. Instead, the fringies of the party and ideology of the Left are still obsessed with tearing down yesterday. (What do you get from the radical who has just been given everything? Nothing that you didn't get before.)

Barack Obama, as any clear-thinking person would have predicted, has all but put the kibosh on the years-long Leftist fantasy of investigating, charging and prosecuting (and imprisoning, if not executing) George W. Bush and his cohorts in the White House for...well, for anything that might stick. The last thing any new president would want would be to have his first couple of years in office consumed by a divisive and damaging partisan fight that (1) wouldn't work, (2) would threaten both parties and (3) would undermine the unity that the new president has promised throughout his campaign. Obama enters office with a clean slate and a party in complete power. He knows that he can use this opportunity to bridge divides (to his own advantage) or he can succumb to the crazies in his party and use it to exasperate the partisan wars that have left Washington distracted and unpopular.

This should be a time for healing but even the best medicine available (victory) can't help some people cure themselves of their obsessive disorders. When the Left puts everything they have into tearing someone down it's a good indication that the target is an effective threat to the movement to manipulate the public. What is modern progressivism other than the deliberate manipulation of the country as the only real means to advance an agenda that seeks to move the country away from it's founding principles?

George Bush, within a matter of hours, will officially become a footnote in history. After eight years of the most vile and deranged slander and libel imaginable, it almost seems that the Left is now going to miss Bush more than his supporters. They can't let him go. They want to keep him in the spotlight and seem more than comfortable with letting the past dominate the present and the future. While I never had an appreciation for the tactics of the political homicidal maniacs of the Left, I at least had an understanding of why Bush might have upset them so. But I can't wrap my mind around why, when they have a chance to get rid of him for good, they seem eager to keep him at the top of the news cycle when this should be the time for their guy to shine.

The same goes for Sarah Palin. Palin, on the surface, seems like she would be a strong candidate for least threatening and offensive politician on the scene today. Yet, two months after losing the election, there is no one in politics today whose very mention of her name invokes the most rabid venom and vitriol from the fringies on the Left. It's so over the top that it's not even rational to respond to it. To hear her intelligence admonished so eloquently by people who hold doctorates in Wikipedia and who "get smarter" by reading Killfile's web page is laughable at best.

Ronald Reagan was (and still is) a target of the Leftwing tear-down machine, but as Ann Coulter put it, people still remember and like Reagan so it hasn't worked. Richard Nixon also brought out the worst in these people, and while they did get him in the end, it was his popularity and his previous career as a Red hunter that put him at the top of their 'enemy's list'.

Which leads us to perhaps the biggest victim of this kind of political hatchery, Senator Joseph McCarthy. We can argue the semantics surrounding McCarthy all day long but there are a couple of indisputable facts surrounding his legacy: there were Soviet spies and Stalinist sympathizers working in the federal government; Democrats took quiet measures to enable if not protect these communists in their positions in State, the Pentagon, Treasury, the Army and even the White House; McCarthy took on this scourge when few others had the political will to do so.

McCarthy, during the height of his attempts to cleanse our government of enemy agents, was one of the most popular politicians in the country and was a possible future president. Even after he was politically destroyed and vilified, people lined the streets by the thousands a couple of years later to honor him when he died.

What does McCarthy have in common with some of the more modern victims of leftist hate and hysteria?

One, he was an enemy of and a threat to America's enemies. Like Nixon and Reagan, he was a Republican and a staunch anti-communist. George W. Bush was a threat to America's Islamic threat in the same way these others were threats to America's Communist threat. Exposing the enemy, standing up to the enemy, rallying and strengthening Americans against the enemy...these are things that fly in the face of America haters who not only believe in weakening America but feel that America deserves it. And why? Because weakening America is necessary to move forward with the manipulation required for modern progressivism.

And like McCarthy, these other Republicans were (at least at some point) effective.

This still doesn't explain the Palin factor though it could be because she is expected to remain a rising figure in national politics and they fear her. Whether it's Palin or Bush or even McCarthy, there is a divide between not liking a politician and being consumed by fantasies of outright destruction, this sort of scorched earth effort against these people.

Bush? Fine. He prevented Al Gore from stealing his presidency and he's launched controversial wars that have led to thousands of dead American soldiers. But Palin? What was so controversial about Sarah Palin that would make her one of the most reviled personalities in politics today? She doesn't have a history of taking on America's enemies; she hasn't sent soldiers off to war; she didn't have some scandalous background. She is a governor of a relatively quiet state and she joined a failed presidential campaign.

The real fly in the ointment is this: if she is truly the dumb, incompetent disaster that her harshest of critics paint her out to be and if she is destined to become a leader in the Republican Party, then this should actually please the left. They should welcome if not encourage her success at this point. But they don't because she's none of those things they say she is and subconsciously, these people know that.

From McCarthy through Palin, if an enemy of the Left becomes the victim of a campaign of destruction where the target is passionately hammered and slandered with accusations of being dumb or evil or incompetent or an alcoholic or a cross dresser (J. Edgar Hoover, another effective anti-communist) or a homosexual, be assured that the person in question is probably a decent, patriotic American with unique appeal and effectiveness and is thus naturally an affront to the Left...even at a time when they hold all of the cards.

The sinister Bobby Jindal is next...

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th and first black president of the United States of America has coincided with another revolution in the way government works: technology, especially Internet-based technology, is being integrated into the transition with more sure to follow when Obama occupies the White House.

Obama's campaign from the very start was technology-oriented. The campaign used the Internet to collect record-breaking financial resources, enough to decline public financing, in a way that capitalized on Howard Dean's original idea and exploited improvements in the Internet to remove obstacles that kept ordinary people from contributing.

Yet another ingenious use of technology was the collection of e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers in order to distribute information to campaign supporters. The text messages sent to cell phones were particularly useful because people that have cell phones are rarely without them, thus insuring they received the message. E-mails were of great use in generating new funding resources by giving the campaign a list that would ultimately number approximately 4 million contributors, making it easy and cheap to send a mass e-mail as opposed to a mass mailing which costs the postage unlike e-mail. The e-mail was a great addition because it had little overhead costs and generated millions upon millions of dollars in donations to the campaign.

Yet another idea that was toyed with in 2004 was MeetUps with other supporters of the same candidate. The Obama campaign simply took this idea and carried it to the next level by creating its own website for Obama supporters exclusively and then using that website as a way for volunteers to do things for the campaign like canvass and make phone calls to voters in important states. It also came equipped with a point system so that more work would get done as volunteers worked to outscore other volunteers. This website was also critical to the canvassing efforts, particular the Election Day canvassing efforts, to make sure that no possible Obama votes were missed, even in the reddest of red areas and that helped to win states like Ohio which were critical to Obama's victory.

Obama has continued as the president-elect using technology to discharge his duties. He has established Change.gov as a portal to foster more communication between the transition team and the public. It is also being used as a platform for Obama policy wonks and Cabinet members like Tom Daschle of Health & Human Services to communicate with the public and answer their questions. The public can pose questions to the administration team and they answer certain questions. Obama has also been distributing his weekly addresses to the American public through the website. The site is also being used to organize meetings among regular Americans to discuss what they think universal healthcare should look like.

Obama's administration is also pushing for upgrades in the healthcare industry to all doctors' offices to computerized records and prescriptions to avoid the drug interactions that result in many fatalities each year

The integration of technology into how the government does its business is going to result in a cleaner, more transparent government. When Barack's administration takes its position, thanks to technology, it will be the most prepared administration to enter the White House and it may be one of the most "in touch: with what Americans are feeling and wanting from government. All-in-all it's a pretty good start.

When many islanders look at Barack Obama, they see not only the next president, but a skilled bodysurfer, a man who flashes the "shaka" or hang loose sign, and someone who wears the same rubber slippers they do.

Hawaii is overflowing with pride that a son of the islands who shares their culture and traditions is going to the White House. Now that Obama is back in the islands for the winter holidays, the state is giddy.

On Tuesday, supporters squealed, screamed and shouted "thank you!" when he visited the Honolulu Zoo with his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

Last weekend, supporters clamored to shake his hand and take his picture when he visited a store selling shave ice — a local version of the snow cone — with his daughters and friends.

"It means a lot to the state, to the people," said Damon Kakalia, a mason, while bodysurfing at Obama's favorite break, Sandy's. "People back him up 100 percent here. There's no doubt about it."

In some ways, locals are still trying to get used to the idea that someone born and raised in this small, isolated island state is going to occupy the Oval Office.

"He is so well balanced and worked so hard to get to this point," said Jody Awana, who was waiting outside Obama's vacation home for a glimpse of his motorcade. "He's just awesome."

Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961, two years after Hawaii became a state. He lived in Indonesia for four years when he moved there with his mother and stepfather, but spent 14 of his first 18 years as an island boy.

Many in Hawaii feel a powerful affinity for Obama even though he moved to the mainland to attend college in 1979 and has since only returned for vacations.

Some of his popularity may be explained by the fact Hawaii is an overwhelmingly Democratic state. But his local roots are a more important, emotional factor.

Christian De Quevedo, who was in the crowd around Obama outside Kokonuts Shave Ice & Snacks last weekend, spoke to the future president as though he was just another island surfer.

"I was like, 'Ho, Barack, are you going to Sandy's?' Cause last time he went down there. It's like his favorite place ever. He's like 'Oh no, they don't let me anymore,' " De Quevedo told KITV. "It's exciting. He's just like right over there."

Obama didn't say who prohibited his surfing at Sandy's on Oahu's south shore. But given that Sandy's is also known as "Broke-neck Beach," the Secret Service may have determined it was too dangerous. The popular spot, which attracts dozens, if not hundreds, of people at a time, may also be too difficult for the agents to secure.

Al Balderama, president of the Hawaii State Bodysurfing Association, said bodysurfers were proud to see Obama at Sandy's in August when he visited Hawaii for a mid-campaign summer holiday.

They knew the entire country would see photos and videos of Obama enjoying their storied sport. King Kamehameha II (1797-1824) was known to be a skilled practitioner.

Balderama, a civilian fire inspector at Hickam Air Force Base, said it's clear Obama is as good as any of his bodysurfing association's 180 members.

"Oh yeaaaah," Balderama said, drawing out his words. "He knows what he's doing. He's got the nice form." The association's board this year unanimously voted to make Obama an honorary member.

A bodysurfer doesn't ride a board, like in better-known forms of surfing.

Instead, the surfer strives to become part of a wave. Bodysurfers must be good swimmers, because they need to kick and generate momentum to get into a wave, Balderama said.

Obama, he noted, didn't wear fins that would have given him extra power. That's the most pure form of the sport, he said.

During this visit, Obama has mostly been golfing. He's twice hit the greens at Mid-Pacific Country Club and once at Olomana Golf Links, a public course where he played as a kid. On Tuesday he played basketball at his alma mater, the private Punahou School.

Mark A. Kam, president of the Punahou Alumni Association, said Obama's repeated visits to Hawaii show he hasn't forgotten where he came from.

Kam lightheartedly pointed to Obama's flip-flops as evidence of how deeply Hawaii is ingrained in him.

"Granted he's in Chicago now, he's cut his teeth in politics in Chicago. But when I saw him walking around town in rubber slippers — I said, OK, that's who he is. That's the local boy that grew up here," Kam said. "How many other people go away, come back, and slip right back into rubber slippers?"

More substantively, Kam said that Obama carries with him an ability to work with people of different backgrounds that he learned in Hawaii, where there is no majority but a mix of whites, Chinese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Japanese, Koreans, Samoans and others. About 20 percent, like Obama, are mixed-race.

"He can reach out to both sides of the aisle, he can communicate effectively with all types of people," said Kam, who doesn't know Obama personally but has watched his career and spoken with Punahou graduates who know him.

"He can bridge those gaps and bring people together instead of being divisive. I think a lot of that was formed here, growing up," Kam said.

Obama is due to leave New Year's Day after a 12-day vacation on Oahu with his family.

__

Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

Just where will Michelle Obama "get her hair did" while living in the White House? Hair stylists in the Washington D.C. area are already angling to secure the soon-to-be First Lady as a client...

"I'm going to be doing her hair!" says positive thinker Barry Fletcher, the 52-year-old owner of The Hair Palace Salon in Mitchellville, Md. He cites his experience in international hairstyling challenges and working with actress Halle Berry and singer Mya, a D.C. native.

Hairdresser Keith Harley of Keith Harley Hair & Scalp Clinic in Arlington, Va. uploaded his resume to President-elect Barack Obama's Web site a month ago...

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On Wednesday, the Republican congresswoman got a call from President-elect Barack Obama, didn't believe it was him, and hung up on him. Twice.

According to Ros-Lehtinen's flack Alex Cruz, the congresswoman received the call on her cell phone from a Chicago-based number and an aide informed her that Obama wanted to speak to her. When Obama introduced himself, Ros-Lehtinen cut him off and said, "I'm sorry but I think this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks." Then she hung up.

Moments later, Obama tried again, this time through his soon-to-be chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

"Ileana, I cannot believe you hung up on the President-Elect," Emanuel said. And then--yes, you know what's coming--she hung up on Emanuel saying she "didn't believe the call was legitimate."

A short time later...

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A Democratic official says President-elect Barack Obama will name New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as commerce secretary.

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I have a personal story that I think is rather disturbing and I will lay it out here, but first...

I acknowledge and accept Barack Obama as my president. I will never be one of those who declares a president "not my president" because I didn't vote for him. I'm an American - he's the American president.

In that context, I want him to succeed. I don't want some of his leftist politics to succeed, but overall when it comes to keeping this country safe and prosperous, I hope he accomplishes that, even if I disagree with how he goes about doing it.

My biggest beef with Obama is that he was elected based on an effective PR stunt - face it, he's a celebrity. The images of him; the comparisons to Lincoln, FDR and JFK; the songs sung in praise of him, whether it's a commercial hip-hop song, a reggae song, songs recorded in foreign countries in his honor, zombie-like chanting or classrooms of young children singing his praises; adulation by much of the world, including people's whose world views don't sync with American interests and especially the rhetoric. Particularly from everyday people.

The day of the election a co-worker was in the break room talking about voting and repeating over and over again 'I hope he wins'. The only other thing she said was that McCain was old school and Obama was about change. Change is a big thing here. We've seen numerous times on television regular people being asked about the election or about Obama stating that "Obama is going to bring change", "He's about change", change, change, change, change...

Then there's the woman from a couple of weeks before the election who (as I heard the audio) stated that Barack Obama was going to make things better, most troubling being that he was going to take care of putting gas in her car (I believe she actually called it "free gas"). I almost feel sorry for Obama when I hear things like that.

I suspect that most people who voted for Obama know little to nothing about him, good or bad. They simply know the character. My mother, a social conservative and all around Republican thinker, voted for Obama. I haven't asked her why yet. I realized that due to extraordinary circumstances, I haven't seen my parents in almost two months so I had no opportunities to discuss the election with them since I attended the GOP convention. And my mom does work in a public school, so it's very possible that in a public school in a very Democratic city of a pretty Democratic state, she heard all of the hype and never had an opportunity to hear the concerns. She doesn't have cable, she doesn't listen to talk radio and she gets her news like most Americans, from network TV and newspapers. She's very pro-life and I would bet the farm that she never considered that Obama wasn't to the extent that he's not.

Okay, fine. The election is over. I haven't become depressed or angry. I've said very little to anyone about the election or Obama, though I've taken a lot of light jabs from people over it. But last night introduced for me something that needs to be addressed.

I joined a bowling league at work last month, organized by a member of an activities committee, but not sponsored directly by the company. I'm a supervisor in a large office. Tonight was our third league match up and our first time up against a team called the "[Company Name] Bangers".

We played side by side with this team tonight in a three game match. One woman from the Bangers team was a co-worker, we cracked a little joke at the start and then bowled an uneventful first game. The woman's husband was also on her team, though not an employee of the company.

In the lane across from me were some other people from my department, including a girl who I car pooled with and at some point in the evening, had a brief conversation with. We were standing on the level just off the lanes and began discussing her bowling score, which she said she couldn't see because she didn't have her glasses on. We figured out her score, which was a sad 38. For those unfamiliar with bowling scores, a 300 game is considered a perfect game. One would generally have to be almost legally blind to justify bowling a 38. So I teased her a bit.

I said, laughing, "You have a 38. Wow - you're entering into Barack Obama territory here!"

That was it. We went on with our bowling.

The reason I said that was because earlier in the year, Obama, in a campaign stunt to show his 'blue collar roots', went bowling for the press. I don't recall exactly what he bowled, but it was less than 38. It was 36 or 32, but regardless he was awful. A couple of weeks later he showed off his hoop skills and apparently is a much better basketball player than bowler.

It took a couple of minutes before I realized that a member of the Bangers team was yelling at his team mates and it took me another couple of minutes to realize that he was yelling about me. The only words I could make out (repeatedly) were "racist!" and "disrespectful!". Others began to figure it out too.

The atmosphere suddenly became tense. One person on my team indicated that she wasn't interested in bowling anymore and certainly wasn't going to play this team again. Another person went to the coordinator to complain about the verbal hostility coming from the other side. It was almost surreal. And none of these people really had any interest in politics. Just bowling.

The angry man's wife, who as I said works with me, chimed in too. While I had expected that she would calm her husband down and make it about the bowling, instead fueled the tension with angry declarations about having to work with me and echoing what her husband was saying.

For several minutes I just focused on the game and avoided interaction. But since I was standing four feet from the man, I finally confronted him and asked him if he was angry with me and why. He made reference to my mentioning Obama and again indicated that I was racist. I explained the whole Obama bowling story and how I was ribbing someone over her bowling score but that didn't win him over. He asked what if he had said something about McCain's bowling and I asked him, "Why would I care?" I then asked if he would be angry if it were Bush's bowling score I alluded to, to which he replied something along the lines of Bush being a lousy bowler. I told him I wasn't even aware of hearing that Bush ever bowled.

I asked him if this meant that for the next four years, I couldn't mention Obama's name. He yelled back at me, "Eight years!". To which I said, "That's certainly a possibility." He replied, "It's going to happen" and I said, "Fine, it might." So I can't talk about the president for eight years.

The hostile rhetoric subsided though the anger on the other team was sustained through the rest of the game.

Not that it was otherwise relevant, but our match up was of an all white team (mine) vs. an all black team. Outside of the angry couple on the other team, there really wasn't any direct tension between anyone else, though the fun of the evening was clearly gone and people wanted to finish bowling so we could go home.

At the end, I approached the coordinator and apologized for any trouble I may have inadvertently caused. He assured me that I didn't and that the Bangers team were officially off the league. I told him that I didn't want anyone kicked off, that I just wanted assurances that we could bowl without trouble. He insisted that they were out of line and that he put too much work into holding the league together to let something like this tear it apart. I repeated that I would be fine with them staying on but it seems his mind is made up.

This had the feeling of a Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing moment based on the words, "[Your bowling score is] entering into Barack Obama territory." It was almost like an out-of-body experience and I did, for at least a few minutes, worry about this turning into something serious.

So I'm curious for people's reactions. Is there going to be 'soft censorship' on all things Obama that don't praise the man? Shouldn't people, particularly black Americans, be happy for this election result? Has anyone else had negative experiences in regards to Barack Obama? Is there justification for racial tension between Obama supporters and opponents - is there perhaps some poetic justice in this?

Or are people really this passionate about bowling?

A record audience tuned in to CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday night to watch the first televised interview with Barack Obama and his wife Michelle since he was elected the 44th U.S. President.

...Nielsen Media Research showed the program was seen by 25 million people, giving the news hour its highest overnight ratings since January 1999 and the most viewers of any prime-time show seen this season....

Watch Obama on 60 minutes

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Reporting from Washington -- For more than three decades, Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night to his wife, Helene, who kept him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him. He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week.

"I never missed a day of work,"...

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Barack Obama ended his campaign so flush with cash he's telling staffers to keep the change - and then some.

Long-suffering political footsoldiers who toiled tirelessly, at least since September, to put Obama in the White House recently learned they will be getting extra paychecks worth a month's salary, the Daily News has learned.

And boy, are they grateful.

"I think it's a very nice gesture for people who slaved away and sacrificed for the past year," said one pleased ex-staffer...

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...developers at Zensoft have done just that with Super Obama World, a new online game that is surging 400% in Search.

Playing on the Obama-mania of so many of his cyber-aged supporters (young voters preferred Obama more than two to one), the game combines the nostalgia of Super Mario Brothers with a biting political message...

Play the obama game now

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...The president-elect transforms one of Ronald Reagan's pet projects into an Internet phenomenon...

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You can call it the Camelot effect or maybe it's just that people are nosy. Whatever it is, people can't stop searching for information about the Obama family, not just the immediate first family, but the extended family as well.

Once Carol E. Lee at Politico got the scoop that Michelle Obama's mother would be moving to Washington, D.C., searches for "michelle obama's mother" showed up, prompting us to wonder about Marian Robinson -- the new "first grandma" -- and her role in the Obama household.

Robinson's main job during Barack Obama's two-year-long campaign for the presidency was to make sure the Obamas' young daughters, Malia and Sasha, were taken care of while mom and dad were on the campaign trail. According to a Boston Globe article from early this year, duties included upholding family rules (8:30 p.m. bedtime, healthy food) and getting the girls to the appointments on their daily schedules....

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BDL linked to this "Obasketball" news last week, but now we have moving pictures. Here's video of Barack Obama shooting hoops with friends on Election Day. Check out that Manu-like behind-the-back dribble!

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Having named his chief of staff, President-Elect Barack Obama now moves to fill his cabinet. His choice for Secretary of State should lend some insight into how he wishes to govern, his true intentions on bipartisanship, as well as his foreign-policy agenda. Also, just how big of a role Vice President-Elect Joe Biden will play in foreign policy decisions may be illuminated by this choice.

"Well, this evening, the country has proved my old man wrong and we're the better for it."...

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...A large number of NBA players seem to be in Obama's corner, but one of the Illinois senator's most repeated promises is to raise taxes for the richest Americans, those who make more than $250,000 per year. The subject came up at the Indiana rally.

"He says, 'If you make under $250,000 a year, raise your hand,'" Chandler wrote. "And everybody there raised their hand, except for this one small section of guys. That was our section."

True, if any group of people fits into the description "wealthiest Americans," it's NBA players. Not all of them are set for life 10 times over, but the league's minimum salary this year is $442,000.

There was strong support for Obama inside the Bulls' locker room in the days leading up to the election and not one of the players questioned expressed any fear of his tax policy.

"I'm going to vote for him," Ben Gordon said. "I think he represents change. ... If the rich just keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer and the economy isn't doing well because of that, I don't think that helps."

Added Drew Gooden, "If that's going to make it a better world — from paying 48 (percent tax rate) to 51 or 54 — it ain't going to hurt us that much. If it's going to help the world, we're ready to do it."...

The U.S. military said Wednesday it was investigating claims a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan hit a wedding causing civilian deaths, as President Hamid Karzai urged U.S. election winner Barack Obama to bring an end to civilian deaths.

...a villager at the scene, reported that 33 women and children -- all members of a wedding party -- were killed during a U.S. fight with the Taliban.

"If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan,"

Afghan and United Nations officials said 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in the August 22 strike.

The U.S. military initially denied any civilians were killed but a subsequent investigation prompted by cell phone pictures showing dozens of bodies conceded that 33 civilians were killed.

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The election of Barack Obama as president brings the Rev. Jackson to tears.

Watch now

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A dying Florida man fulfilled his last wish on the way to the hospital when he stopped to mail his absentee ballot.

Lloyd Chamberlain died a few days ago during a triple bypass operation.

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America voted in record numbers, standing in lines that snaked around blocks and in some places in pouring rain. Voters who queued up Tuesday and the millions who balloted early propelled 2008 to the highest turnout in generations, maybe a century.

Preliminary projections based on 83 percent of the country's precincts tallied, indicate that more than 131 million Americans will have voted this year, easily outdistancing 2004's 122.3 million, which had been the highest grand total of voters before.

That puts the 2008 turnout rate of eligible voters hovering around 64 percent, experts said.

That's the best in at least 44 years, maybe more depending on who is doing the counting and how they count.

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Careful what you wish you may regret it,
Careful what you wish you just might get it!

- Metallica, King Nothing

This is, for all practical purposes, my lone article for the general election (post-Convention, of course). The main reason for that is because writing articles in the final weeks of a presidential contest is like whispering into a vacuum cleaner - it just adds to the noise.

But it's important to bundle some of the election together into one neat ball of understanding: the two most damaging words in American history will be "President Obama" (seemingly conventional wisdom indicates that Wall Street is going to take a belly flop at the news). And why is that?

It mostly stems from the fact that Obama is a polished, nice looking used car salesman. Buy this car and I'll throw in free rust protection and a free car washes for a year. But what's under the hood? Oh, good stuff, my man! If you buy a car from that other guy it won't be as good - he's not offering the same give-aways. Buy my car and I promise that someone will chauffer you around in it. But, um...what's under the hood? What about it's previous owners? I heard that Bill Ayers used to own this car. I'm not too keen on that. You weren't even born yet when Ayers got his groove on. Who wouldn't want to be affiliated with someone so respected in academia? Go ahead - look at the tire. Just don't kick it (like that Joe guy did). And so on...and so forth...

Yes, Obama is a master salesperson. He is a professional campaigner and has boldly embraced every left-wing initiative to grow the federal government. He wants to buy this election.

How does he do that?

Remember that so-called "amnesty bill" that President Bush and Senator McCain and dozens of other conservative Republicans supported? The one that was brought down by the hard-right hot air machine? The same one where I said that if we don't do this now, we may very well have a President Hillary or Obama do it for us, with eager support from the Pelosi-Reid union in Congress. And when this happens we will never again be allowed to abuse the term "amnesty" because real amnesty will be a reality in the next year or two (after we see government entitlements extended to illegals). This all-or-nothing mentality on this issue has gotten us just that - nothing. Not only nothing, but a long-term change to the how we handle the gates at the nations edge. Change We Can Believe In!

And here's the sale: kaching!! Obama and the Democrats have just rewarded millions of new voters with the gift of being beholden to their new welcomers and their new president, both in votes and contributions. This kind of sale will also be applied to felons serving time and millions of young people lining up to be indoctrinated by the Obama theme.

Obama and the Democrats stand to buy themselves electoral security for years to come. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will weaken our support for our democratic allies like Georgia and Israel. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will deal with our friends and enemies in the ways that have led to Cold War global expansion of Soviet Communism, the Killing Fields and the Peoples Republic of Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, the Second Intifada, a nuclear-armed North Korea and ultimately, a nuclear-armed Iran (Obama can finish the job started some thirty years earlier by Jimmy Carter). Change We Can Believe In!

Conservatives who have behaved in ways that suggested they had no where to go will suddenly find themselves with no where to go. We can brace for it but the reality is that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid trifecta will push through the biggest expansion of government spending, power and leftist politics this nation has ever seen. And Obama will use this opportunity to secure his own ideological philosophy through the appointment of two to four SCOTUS justices (the court of which will soon be named, The Dancing Ginsburgs). Change We Can Believe In!

As we've been told how both General Petraeus and Osama bin Laden considered Iraq to be the ultimate battlefield in the war on terror, tomorrow's election will be the ultimate battleground in the US war of politics and culture. Abortion will find a permanent home in America - Change We Can Believe In!; marriage will become obsolete - Change We Can Believe In!; national interests will take second place to international concerns - Change We Can Believe In!; our enemies will most certainly (per Joe Biden) test a President Obama - in ways they would never test a President McCain - Change We Can Believe In!; Big Government will find itself a permanent and lasting mandate to help fund every conceivable challenge and setback in life through spending and programs that once initiated, will never go away - in other words, your tax dollars are going to go to pre-school for three year olds, college for spoiled brats, health care for people regardless of economic circumstances or citizenship, doubling funding for the UN, increased foreign aid, an "army" of teachers, expansion of the Peace Corp, mandatory government service to achieve a high school diploma, higher salaries for teachers with no merit-based mechanism in place, federally funded abortions, unions doing away with secret ballots, energy programs that punish people, a welfare check for every working American who doesn't pay federal income taxes - Change We Can Pay For!

And conservatives who like their Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity or Beck...rest assure there will be drastic restrictions if not outright destruction of your favorite conservative talkers. The resurfacing 'Fairness Doctrine' may well be the first step toward silencing the opposition. - Change We Can Fall In Line With!

In my prophetic way, I pleaded with conservatives months ago to understand that they share a symbiotic relationship with the GOP - the crippling of the Republican Party will render conservatism impotent. Conservatives and Republicans will have to embrace each other again in order to at least hope for a midterm shift, in the face of all of the odds stacked against them, courtesy of the Democratic Party and the politics or purchasing elections and silencing conservative voices.

There is no Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings to fix everything. There is no fix. Even if circumstances lead conservatives back to a position of influence or power, instead of fighting for the America we have today, we will instead be fighting for the America the New Left Democrats will hand back to us. The status quo will be sharply different.

These are the thoughts I have late at night. Every generation is, in the face of aggressive progressivism, concerned about transformations that move us farther from the ideals of strength, sacrifice, family, faith, hard work and individualism. For the first time in my adult life, I am concerned. I sadly envision my children raising their kids in an America that is unrecognizable to us, one that shifts us farther away from lessons of the founding fathers, one that doesn't celebrate the family as we see it today. Today's America is an answer to the leftist shifts of much of the rest of western civilization; tomorrow's America may very well be leading the charge.

So to those honestly purport to be conservatives or Republicans, yet still think the answer is in a third party, or in staying home on election day or in making absurd comments questioning who the real conservative in the race is or prematurely writing off this election as in the bag for Obama (it is not) - it's time to put up or shut up. You can make your meaningless statement with your vote and throw the country under the bus or you can take the sure course in keeping conservatism alive and relevant and vote for John McCain.

There is no 'redo' or 'cleanup' function in tomorrows election. Come January, America will either continue to be the great country it has always been or it will "change" as promised...and those changes will be long lasting and damaging.

Believe It.

Two men are "extremely sorry" for hanging an effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the University of Kentucky campus, their attorney said Friday, but he said charges related to their "ill-conceived prank" were excessive.

UK student Joe Fischer, 22, and Hunter Bush, 21, pleaded not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct, burglary and theft the day after their arrest.

Their attorney, Fred Peters, told The Associated Press in an e-mail that "this incident was an ill conceived political prank."

"The two young men are extremely sorry for what they did and the embarrassment they have caused everyone," Peters said. "The charges are very extreme for what they did and we will deal with them in the courts."

The life-sized effigy was found Wednesday, hanging from a tree with a noose around its neck.

A judge set a preliminary hearing for Dec. 1.

Both men were still in the Fayette County Detention Center on Friday.

It was the second time in about a month such an effigy was found on a college campus. George Fox University, a small Christian college in Oregon, recently punished four students who confessed to hanging a likeness of Obama from a tree.

No criminal charges have been filed in other cases of political effigies displayed recently, including likeness of Barack Obama in Redondo Beach, Calif., and Clarksville, Ind. A mannequin of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin hanging in a man's yard in West Hollywood, Calif., also did not prompt charges. All those displays were taken down.

With less than a week to go before voters are expected to head to the polls in record numbers, a bogus flyer directing Republicans to vote Nov. 4 and Democrats to vote Nov. 5 has surfaced in Virginia. The state's Board of Elections said the fake has been distributed in Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, sounding louder alarms of voter fraud and intimidation across the nation.

"These tactics tend to escalate in the days before the election," said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice, adding there is concern that "we'll see more attempts like this."

Click here to see the flyer.

She said these types of misleading flyers appear each election year in an effort to suppress votes....

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The GOP vice presidential candidate addresses attacks made on the senator. Watch

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An upstart group calling itself the "National Republican Trust PAC" mixes a pile of false claims and the image of 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta to create one of the sleaziest false TV ads of the campaign.

A McCain-Palin/RNC ad claims Obama 'rewards his friends with your tax dollars.' It's off the mark.

Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday.

In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

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It was 1988, and Mary Andersen was at the Miami airport checking in for a long flight to Norway to be with her husband when the airline representative informed her that she wouldn't be able to check her luggage without paying a 100 surcharge:

Mary had no money. ... -I was completely desperate ...

As tears streamed down her face, she heard a "gentle and friendly voice" behind her saying, "That's okay, I'll pay for her."
Mary turned around to see a tall man whom she had never seen before.

-He had a gentle and kind voice that was still firm and decisive. The first thing I thought was, Who is this man?

Who was the man?

Barack Obama.

Sen. Barack Obama is returning to his promise of "a new politics" as he delivers what his campaign calls his "Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need" in Canton, Ohio, a lunchtime on Monday.

"In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope," he says.

With a comfortable lead in state and national polls, Obama is kicking off the final full week of his grueling two-year campaign by shelving the slam and poke of the daily grind for a reminder of the reasons he initially captured the imagination of national Democrats as a promising young unknown...

"[W]hat we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone,"...

Here are excerpts of the speech, released Monday morning by the campaign:

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OK this is how this works.

This is where you can refute whatever claims have been made against your candidate of choice.

You list something negative that your candidate has been accused of, smeared with or generally associated with then in the SAME POST you refute it with evidence to to the contrary or a point countering the claim with the same or similar accusation that has been made. Here I will start.

OK one by one......

Obama/Biden > ACORN no formal charges in fact they report what they believe to be fraudulent registrations while turning in all registrations as required by federal law

McCain/Palin > The head of a voter registration group hired by the California Republican Party was arrested over the weekend for allegedly lying about his address in the state in order to vote illegally, the office of California's secretary of state announced Sunday.

Mark Anthony Jacoby, the owner of a signature-gathering firm called Young Political Majors, was taken into custody by Ontario police just after midnight Saturday and booked with a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.

NEXT!!........

Obama/Biden > Ayers

McCain/Palin > G Gordon Liddy Source Oregon's Citizens Alliance Source

Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?"

Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign.

In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for McCain's senatorial re-election campaign -- the two posed for photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated radio show. Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host's values. During the segment, McCain said he was "proud" of Liddy, and praised Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Which of Liddy's "principles and philosophies" was McCain referring to? Liddy's advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations? Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and Hillary?

And

It seems that in 1993, John McCain was the keynote speaker at a fundraising banquet for the Oregon Citizens Alliance, the notorious anti-gay organization that was causing all sorts of trouble in Oregon in the 1990s.

McCain quickly got a first-hand flavor for the OCA. Marylin Shannon, the vice chairwoman of the Oregon GOP, had a spot on the program to give an opening prayer. In short order, she praised the Grants Pass woman accused of shooting an abortion doctor in Wichita and thanked the Lord "for Lon Mabon and the vision you put in his heart."

Let's check that again. Marilyn Shannon praises a terrorist who shot a doctor while introducing John McCain, and not only does he stay, he stands up and gives a fundraising address for these terrorist-lovers?

Outrageous. Will John McCain do what he should have done 15 years ago - and denounce the domestic terrorists who shoot doctors who provide legal medical services?

America is waiting.

NEXT............

Obama/Biden > Rev Wright "god damn America"

McCain/Palin > Ed Kalnins "if you disagree with Bush you are going to hell"..source

A review of recorded sermons Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, also offers an "eyebrow-raising sketch of Palin's longtime spiritual home,'' the Post reports.

Kalnins has preached that critics of Bush will be banished to Hell, questioned if people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to Heaven, charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."

During the 2004 election, Kalnins praised Bush's performance in debate with Sen. John Kerry, then offered a not-so-subtle message about his own preference: "I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry." Kalnins said. "If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time."

Kalnins later bristled at the criticism Bush was facing for the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina: "I hate criticisms towards the president, because it's like criticisms towards the pastor -- it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That's what it'll get you."

NEXT...........

Obama/Biden > Tony Rezko

McCain/Palin > Council for World Freedom. Source

GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

Oh, my. Playing the Guilt by Association Game doesn't seem to be a good idea for McCain with friends like those.

Not following the format of point/counterpoint will result in your post being deleted. ( I will not delete simple I agree or I don't agree statements to show support, but if you make a point about a candidate it must be point/counterpoint.

Please post your point/counter points one post at a time, not like above all strung together.

See how this works? No baseless claims without citing a source.

This could be interesting.....

Your move......

John McCain is a maverick and Barack Obama is a postpartisan problem-solver. But you wouldn't know it by looking at their economic plans. Both candidates' proposals faithfully reflect the traditional economic priorities of their respective parties. That makes the track records of past Democratic and Republican administrations a very useful benchmark for assessing how the economy might perform under a President McCain or a President Obama. The bottom line: During the past 60 years, Democrats have presided over much less unemployment and much more robust income growth.

Obama today said that Biden was merely making the same point that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made to Bloomberg News yesterday, that "any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distractionYou have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists.'' The first World Trade Center attack came in the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency; the 9/11 attack came in the first year of George Bush's...

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McCain is set for a huge near landslide in the elections. See below as to why and examples from the last 5 Presidential elections. The people who will be shocked are those in the media. Even though they know the polling from the past juxtaposed with the actual election results is never very kind to the Democrats. They are so hyped on McCain losing and Obama winning, that they fail to be objective in the least.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is canceling nearly all his campaign events Thursday and Friday to fly to Hawaii to visit his suddenly gravely ill 85-year-old grandmother, his communications director said.

Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Obama's plane that Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, who helped raise him, was released from the hospital late last week. But he said her health had deteriorated "to the point where her situation is very serious."...

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...Right-wing screeching over nefarious doings in Ohio (where Freddie Johnson of Cleveland testified that ACORN encouraged him to sign 73 voter-registration forms—all in his own name) overlooks the fact that all 73 registrations would still have allowed Freddie to vote just once. The connection between wrongful voter registration and actual polling-place vote fraud is the stuff of GOP mythology. As Rick Hasen has demonstrated, here at Slate and elsewhere, even if Mr. Mouse is registered to vote, he still needs to show up at his polling place, provide a fake ID, and risk a felony conviction to do so.

Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there. In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters." Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that five days before the 2006 election, then-interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman exuberantly (and futilely) indicted four ACORN workers, even when Justice Department policy barred such prosecutions in the days before elections. RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

There is no such thing as vote fraud. The think tank created to peddle the epidemic has evaporated. A handful of cases have been prosecuted. Then why is Sarah Palin shooting off e-mails contending that "we can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election?" Why is former Sen. John Danforth announcing, all statesmanlike, that the whole 2008 election "has been tainted?" Why is Ted Olson, the Republican National Lawyers Association lawyer of the year, claiming that "[ACORN] acknowledged having to get rid of a thousand people or more who were participating in voter fraud efforts." These people know the difference between registration fraud and vote fraud. Why continue to suggest they are the same thing?

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A McCain-Palin ad claims Obama was rated the "most liberal" U.S. senator, which was true only for 2007 but not for his entire Senate career. He was rated 10th and 16th in his two previous years.

The ad also misquotes Obama. It says he defended himself against the "most liberal" rating by saying "they're not telling the truth" and "folks are lying." Actually, Obama said McCain and Palin weren't truthful about the "Bridge to Nowhere," and he was correct. And his "folks are lying" remark referred to anti-abortion groups that accuse him of favoring "infanticide" because of votes he cast in the Illinois state Senate.

After twisting Obama's words, the ad accuses him of being "not presidential."

In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false

Praise his charisma, his ability to relate, the supposedly debonair figure he cuts in a suit, but realize Obama emerged Tuesday as the anti-JFK with a refrain that should offend young Americans: ask what your government can do for you, not what you can do for your country.

Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America's adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, "You have to talk to enemies." He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

Joshua Rea, 30, heard the news while having a bite at CC's White Cottage restaurant. "This is crazy, man," he said incredulously, reaching for a phone to call his dad.
"Obama's ancestors lived right down the road," he told his father, a local farmer. "Our ancestors were probably kicking it with his ancestors."

Again the McCain / Palin team, try mudslinging and lying. Is this the campaign of "hockey moms, and Joe six pack". I used to think McCain was above this, but that was before he sold his soul to the Rightwingers in the Republican party.

A McCain-Palin ad calls Obama "dishonorable," while distorting his words and votes on troop funding.

It accuses him of saying "our troops in Afghanistan" are just bombing villages and killing civilians. What Obama said, in context, was a criticism of U.S. military strategy, and not of American troops.

It accuses Obama and "Congressional liberals" of voting repeatedly to cut off funding for troops, "increasing the risk on their lives." In fact, the votes were for bringing the troops home, cutting off funding only if the president failed to comply.

Students who showed up to see "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane thought his speech was freakin' sweet.

The event was part of the Obama campaign's last-minute effort to get people registered to vote before today's voter registration deadline.

Adrianne Palicki, a star of the television show "Friday Night Lights," was also on hand to lend their support to the Obama campaign at a rally that took place on Saturday morning outside of University Hall.

Could a leader that evokes awe in me actually win a presidential election? Could the beauty – and logic – of his words win over the majority of this country's voters? Could they see past the lies and distractions to the center of a human being who sincerely wants to invoke citizens' higher selves?
Could a system that seems so broken, so moneyed, so corrupt actually serve to help the American people elect an authentic, complex thinker? Could it be that – despite all that is wrong with the electoral process – there is enough right to allow a thoughtful candidate to get through the muck and emerge earnest and excited to lead?
Could the inspirational, not aspirational, America that I was raised to believe in – Eleanor Roosevelt with her Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Martin Luther King Jr. with his dream, and John F. Kennedy with his "ask not" encouragement – be the America that I live in?

This is a very neat little quiz called Match-o-Matic. What i love about it is that it presents pairs of statements said by both presidential parties which you have to vote on. If you are like me, who has hardly paid attention to any of the in depth comments on the issues, then the statements would be brand new for you, which presents a dilemma, as each statement used appear very reasonable to any audience.

I carefully went through all the statements dealing with all the issues and came out with a majority score for Barack Obama. That did not surprise me so much. But what did amaze me was that I gave three votes to John McCain!! I wouldn't believe I that could ever agree with anything McCain said. And that is what fascinates me here. How many people doing this exercise, who started off on one side of the fence, will end up voting for the other side because their statements are perfectly plausible and suitable in the cold light of day? It should be interesting to see.

What this little test shows up is that labelling people with party names, to be either one thing or the other, is often a useless activity as we tend to react to the moment: what seems RIGHT and PLAUSIBLE. Not just what aligns with party politics.

Why don't you have a go now? Then come back here and put your results in the poll, as well as your comments on the exercise. Be honest now! It should make for a great debate.

A McCain-Palin ad claims the Obama-Biden ticket opposes clean coal. Not true

NEWBERG, Ore. - Students and school leaders at a small Christian university expressed outrage Wednesday at the discovery of a life-size cardboard effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama hanging from a tree on campus.

A custodian at George Fox University discovered the effigy early Tuesday and immediately removed it, President Robin Baker said. University spokesman Rob Felton said Wednesday that the commercially produced reproduction had been suspended from the branch of a tree near Minthorn Hall with fishing line around the neck.

A McCain-Palin ad says that Obama was "born of the corrupt Chicago political machine" and implies that the candidate himself is corrupt by association with four local political figures. But the ad's implication and many of its supporting details are false. In fact, this is a particularly egregious example of ricochet sliming:

Now that he's finally fired up on the soup-line economy, Barack Obama knows he can't fade out again. He was eager to talk privately to a Democratic ex-president who could offer more fatherly wisdom — not to mention a surreptitious smoke — and less fraternal rivalry. I called the "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin (yes, truly) to get a read-out of the meeting. This is what he wrote...

What would Jed Bartlet have to say about the upcoming election? As a Democrat (and a West Wing fan) I have to say... Go Jed!

It's another election season, so that means it's time for Democrats to start uttering wild malapropisms about the Bible to pretend they believe in God!

In 2000, we had Al Gore inverting a Christian parable into something nearly satanic. Defending his nutty ideas about the Earth during one of the debates, Gore said: "In my faith tradition, it's written in the book of Matthew, where your heart is, there is your treasure also." And that, he said, is why we should treasure the environment.

The highlighted text appears to be lifted - almost word by word - from a political cartoon, which can be seen in the link:

John McCain says he's about change too. Exce- and and so I guess his whole angle is - watch out, George Bush - except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl-Rove-style politics, we're really gonna shake things up in Washington.

That's not change.That's that's just callin' sumpin' the same thing somethin' different.

But you know, you can't, you know, you you can put, ah, lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

Obama dodges question about when life deserves protection again, lying by suggesting that the question was of theology rather than legality:

"And so, all I meant to communicate was that I don't presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions," [Obama] said in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Then Joe Biden answered the question in a way that begs the follow-up: Is abortion murder, Joe?

"I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment," Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society."

"If [John McCain's service is] important to you, great. I merely said that I was tired of hearing about it...truly heroic contributions to the American way of life were being made at the time by journalists who exposed the illegal acts of the Johnson and Nixon administrations and war protesters who were gunned down at places like Kent State."

"For instance, I happen to be personally more inspired by lots of average people that I've met working as volunteers in disaster areas than I am by John McCain." - Mike Stuckey (MSNBC.com editor/producer)  09/05/2008

"When I was listening to the POW part of his speech, I was struck by how amazing the story is... but them my cognitive skills allowed me to move on and ask 'what does this have to do with the matter at hand?'" - Miss Dev 09/04/2008

Well, Miss Dev - it has everything to do with it.

I agree with Mr. Stuckey - there are heroes everywhere, whether it's a reporter covering a battle or exposing government corruption, volunteers who go into the eye of the storm to assist people, first responders who put their safety second to others and even Berkeley graduates who don't pigeon-hole themselves with statements that make it obvious they attended Berkeley.

To acknowledge general heroics is one thing.  But in every industry where we may respect the people who step out on to the ledge, it is useless to point out heroism unless you can highlight and showcase unique individual examples.  A disaster relief aid may be a hero but an aid who risks their own physical safety to shield a child from falling debris is a step beyond the natural heroism identified with the job.  We consider veterans to be heroes but we hold those who have served in combat to a higher degree and others, like some showcased at the convention this week, who deliberately give their lives to save others (by placing themselves on a grenade) to be of yet another tier of hero.

Where does John McCain fit in?  Miss Dev's quote reflects what many who oppose McCain suggest - that being a POW does not qualify one to be president.  I would agree with that.  Michael Moore recently suggested that getting shot down doesn't make one fit to be president.  I would agree with that too, just as a protester getting shot by authorities in itself doesn't make that protester a hero.

Why John McCain's story is important and relevant to his campaign is because it has everything to do with who he is.  Not that he was captured, not even that he was tortured.  There are many people who have suffered these things who would not get anywhere near the White House.  

His heroics are embedded in his judgment, his choices, his endurance and his character.  The suffering he lived through would have broken the vast majority of Americans, physically, mentally and spiritually.  Most of us would have cashed in the 'daddy-general ticket out' immediately upon being given the chance.  Most of us would not have stayed in the military, determined to fly again.  Most of us would not have had left what was necessary to run for office and grow a family the way he has.  

Adding in that before his Hanoi Hotel experience, McCain was an arrogant, hard-fisted, womanizing jerk.  He left his prison humbled and appreciative of life and liberty.  

The bottom line is that what McCain demonstrates is that when the hardest of decisions are placed at his feet, he will do what is right - not what is self-serving.  Character is always important in a presidential candidate and when someone dismisses that fact, it is typically because their candidate lacks either evidence of character or character itself.  

For those who think the country has been in a downward spiral, that we are getting weaker and our enemies are getting stronger, that America is on a plane being shot at in the sky over enemy territory - who do you want in the cockpit with you?  Barack Obama, who may very well call in for a polling sample before he decides what level of personal sacrifice (or political sacrifice in the spirit of the metaphor) he may be willing to take? 

I'll take John McCain.  To deny McCain his story, to suggest that McCain needn't talk about his military story for the next two months, that he hasn't earned that is to apply the very mindset that a John McCain contradicts - the mindset that puts self and self-interest above the right thing.  People can deny the relevance of McCain's tale and the character it highlights and denigrate his service and sacrfice, all in the name of falsely propping up a do-nothing, done-nothing Democrat candidate, but rest assure - John McCain wouldn't do that to his opponent if Obama were the one with the story to tell.

And that, to me, is all the difference in the world.

Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain , dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention last month, will include a forceful response to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday night

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