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Archive for February, 2008

HAS ANYTHING REALLY CHANGED WITH McCAIN AND IMMIGRATION?

Posted by straight shooter on February 29, 2008 under Immigration, Political

McCain Retools Immigration Stance
Julie Hirschfeld Davis

John McCain faces a dilemma on immigration as he works to persuade conservatives he’s tough enough on the issue without erasing his historic appeal to Hispanic voters. Once a crusader for offering the nation’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants a way to get legal status, McCain now says his first priority is fortifying U.S. borders.

The metamorphosis reflects McCain’s intensifying effort to consolidate his support among conservatives, who deride the Arizona senator’s past proposals on immigration as offering amnesty to lawbreakers, and bitterly resent his work with Democrats, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the issue.

Coming off a primary season where his immigration stance was seen as a major liability and GOP opponents hammered him for having an overly permissive approach, McCain is remaking his image with an eye toward the general election.

If he goes too far in the other direction, though, he could alienate the Hispanic voters who he’s counting on to siphon support from a Democratic rival in states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and to be competitive in California.

McCain infuriated the Republican base when he teamed with GOP moderates like Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. and Democrats led by Kennedy in 2006 to push legislation … with strong backing from President Bush … that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. That measure died after the House, then dominated by conservatives, passed a bill that dealt only with border security and refused to consider provisions to address undocumented workers who are already in the United States.

The bipartisan group tried again last year … but this time, McCain kept his distance from the negotiations as he campaigned for president. He rarely showed up for the marathon round of meetings where the plan was shaped and seldom spoke publicly on the effort until a deal had been cut.

That bill, too, ultimately died in the Senate after being branded as amnesty by conservatives and condemned as too punitive by liberals.

Listen to McCain’s speeches or look on his campaign web site now, and there’s little mention of the fight to give illegal immigrants a way to stay in the U.S. lawfully. He instead emphasizes border security … the catch phrase of conservatives who scorned his earlier proposals.

It’s a difference of emphasis, not a change in stance, Republican strategists say.

“He’s in an excellent place with conservatives who are concerned about immigration, because his position … that he’ll secure the border first and have that security certified by the border-state governors, and then we’ll go back and deal with the 12 million … seems to have satisfied most people,” said Charlie Black, a McCain adviser.

He says, ‘Look, we got the message … the American people do not trust us when we say we’ll secure the border,'” Black added. McCain told congressional Republicans in a closed-door meeting recently that he had been badly bruised by his push for immigration reform and had learned the hard way that sealing the border should be his priority.

Republicans who support McCain say he has no choice but to abandon his past approach on immigration in favor of one that causes less consternation among conservatives virulently opposed to providing undocumented people with legal status. “What kind of an idiot can’t figure out the route that you took didn’t work? You don’t keep charging the center line when you’re getting your head bashed in, and John was on this,” said former Sen. Trent Lott, R- Miss.

Persuading Republicans that he can be trusted on immigration has been a slow process for McCain, and it’s not over yet, Lott added. “I don’t know if they’re happy yet, but they’ll get happier.”

Specter predicted that immigration, a main theme of the Republican primaries, wouldn’t have much influence on the broader presidential race, and that GOP voters … even those angry about McCain’s immigration stance … ultimately will turn out to support him. “I think conservatives will, because the alternative of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton will persuade Republicans of all political views to support McCain,” Specter said.

Tamar Jacoby, who has worked with McCain on immigration overhaul efforts, said he has positioned himself well on the issue, taking the get-tough stance the party faithful espouse while stopping short of repudiating a broader solution that could address the legal status of those who are already here illegally.

“McCain is promising conservatives to do what conservatives most want done, which is to secure the border. Does that mean he will never go further than that to rationalize the system? No, but he doesn’t have to say that,” said Jacoby, the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a coalition pushing for a broad overhaul.

McCain has won re-election in Arizona with large majorities of Latino voters. He has drawn backing from 45% of Hispanic Republicans this year … slightly better than the 39% support he got from whites … according to exit polls from 22 states that have held Republican primaries.

Only one in five Republicans name illegal immigration as the country’s top problem, half the number who name the economy but about the same proportion as those who named Iraq. But fewer than three in 10 of those have voted for McCain this year, his worst showing based on issues that concern GOP voters.

“He is obviously aware of where the base is on this issue,” said Sara Taylor, a former top political aide to Bush. “His challenge is bridging a communications gap that the base perceives they have with him.” At the same time, Taylor said, McCain’s position on immigration has a silver lining for Republicans: “His stance and the way he’s communicated it potentially puts a state like California in play.

Hispanic voters there and elsewhere, though, are listening with concern to the same change in tone that has gained McCain points with the GOP base. “His rhetoric has absolutely shifted, and people have noticed,” said Munoz of La Raza, “He’s going to have to figure out a way to talk to this community.”

I would say if the pro illegal Tamar Jacoby believes McCain has not really changed his position and still favors an amnesty, that should be an eye opener for all of us.

A LITTLE MORE INSIGHT TO OBAMA

Posted by straight shooter on February 29, 2008 under Political, Terrorism

The Obama Files
By John Batchelor

What you need to measure about Barack Obama, a likely potent adversary for the presidency, is that while he is a politically junior and consciously liberal-voting member of the U.S. Senate, he is actually a veteran Chicago politician with a fertile record of surprising associations in controversial events well apart from his work in legislatures.

Some of these associations from his years in Chicago law work and urban development, and from his career in the Springfield, Illinois senate, speak to the quality of his judgment and to the strength of his character. Four associations in particular go to the heart of the inquiry ahead in order to ask and answer the fundamental questions about who is Barack Obama.

The story focuses on four astute men who have little in common other than Mr. Obama: Messrs Rezko, Ayers, Khalidi and Auchi. Finding facts about Mr. Obama’s exchanges with this quartet creates much of what can be called a political profile of candidate Obama.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko is the primary history to investigate for Mr. Obama’s political profile. According to Mr. Obama, Mr. Rezko contacted the young law student when he was elected editor of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and offered him employment in Chicago. Mr. Rezko, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen described by the Chicago press as a “fixer,” is now in federal detention in Chicago and about to go on trial on March 3 for purloining up to $6 million from the people of Illinois with various kickback schemes while he was working for the present Democratic Governor, Rod Blagojevich. Mr. Rezko’s involvement with the rapid rise of the political career of Mr. Obama long predates his work for the governor and remains largely unexamined. Mr. Obama joined a small Chicago law firm in 1993, Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, that was then headed by Allison S. Davis, a politically connected man who would go on to become a partner with Mr. Rezko in real estate deals in Chicago and, much later, a large donor to the current mayor, Richard Daley, and to Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama.

Through the connection of this law firm, Mr. Obama became a paid director of the progressive Woods Fund of Chicago, a sixty-seven-year-old philanthropy that later committed $1 million to a lucrative project developed by Mr. Davis in 2000 in partnership with Mr. Rezko. Meanwhile, Mr. Rezko advised and raised funds for Mr. Obama from his maiden entry into state politics in 1995-96, when he won a state senate seat from the 13th District, to his unsuccessful campaign for the U.S House of Representatives in 2000, to Mr. Obama’s successful primary and general candidacy for the U.S. Senate in November 2004. Critically, Mr. Rezko became unusually entangled in the purchase of Mr. Obama’s present home while Mr. Obama was a U.S. senator in June 2005.

Of his association with Mr. Rezko and the purchase of the Chicago home in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area, Senator Obama told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News “This Week” on January 27, 2008, “This is a story that has been out there for a year and has been thoroughly gnawed on by the press, both in Chicago and nationally. Tony Rezko was a friend of mine, a supporter, who I had known for 20 years. He was a contributor, not just to myself, but Democrats, as well as some Republicans throughout Illinois. Everybody perceived him as a businessman and a developer. He got into trouble that was completely unrelated to me, and nobody has suggested that I’ve been involved in any of those problems. I did make a mistake by purchasing a small strip of property from him, at a time where at that point he was under the cloud of a potential investigation. I’ve acknowledged that was a mistake. But again, nobody has suggested any wrongdoing, and I think at this point, it’s important for people to recognize that I have actually provided all the information that’s out there about it.”

There is a deal to examine in this statement, offered coincidentally the day before Mr. Rezko’s re-arrest and detention by order of U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve, acting on a warrant by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, that argued successfully that Mr. Rezko was a flight risk to Middle Eastern countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

One detail needing scrutiny for its possible inaccuracy is that the “mistake” that Mr. Obama made was not “purchasing a small strip of property from him.” An established fact is that Mr. Obama did not purchase any property from Mr. Rezko. Mr. Obama bought a ten-foot-wide piece of a yard adjoining his home from Rita Rezko, Mr. Rezko’s wife; and Mrs. Rezko purchased that corner lot of the original estate in part with the help of a $500,000 loan against unclear collateral from a local bank administered by another Rezko political associate in the governor’s circle.

William Ayers is the second Chicago figure to consider in the political profile of Mr. Obama. William C. Ayers, known as Bill Ayers, is notorious as a terrorist bomber from the 1970s who, on September 11, 2001, in the New York Times was quoted as finding “a certain eloquence in bombs.” Now, at 62, Mr. Ayers, a former aide to the current Mayor Richard M. Daley, is an established professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Importantly, Mr. Ayers and his wife, the equally notorious Weatherman terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a crucial meet-the-candidate event in their Hyde Park neighborhood home in 1995 when Mr. Obama, also a Hyde Park resident, was sounded out by vital citizens, among them the retiring state senator Alice Palmer for the 13th District.

In 1999, Mr. Ayers joined the Woods Fund of Chicago as a director and served alongside Mr. Obama for modest remuneration until Mr. Obama left the board on December 11, 2002; Mr. Ayers was for a time the chairman of the board. Also of note is the fact that Bernardine Dohrn works for Northwestern University Law School’s Children and Family Justice Center, which received a grant from the Woods Fund in 2002.

Mr. Ayers, who has been described by one supporter as “friends” with Mr. Obama, openly speaks and writes of his role in the 1974 bombing of the U.S. Capitol Building where Mr. Obama now serves. Mr. Ayers is widely quoted from his reminiscence, which appeared in the New York Times on the infamous Tuesday, September 11, 2001: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” When asked in that same interview if he would set more bombs today, his response was, “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”

Rashid Khalidi is the third Chicago citizen to consider in the political profile of candidate Obama. Now the voluble Edward Saïd Professor of Arab Studies and head of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, Mr. Khalidi is said to have made Mr. Obama’s acquaintance when they were colleagues at the University of Chicago, with Mr. Obama a lecturer at the law school and Mr. Khalidi a professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

In Chicago in 1995, Mr. Khalidi and his wife Mona founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a group associated with confrontational statements of support for Palestinians and antagonism toward Israel. In 2001 and again in 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, with directors Ayers and Obama, made grants of $40,000 and $35,000 to the AAAN. Importantly, the AAAN vice-president Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada has remembered Mr. Obama’s speaking in 1999 against “Israeli occupation” at a charity event for a West Bank refugee camp; and Mr. Abunimah, an American citizen, Hyde Park resident and Princeton graduate, has also recalled Mr. and Mrs. Obama at a fundraiser held for the then-Congressional candidate Obama in 2000 at Rashid and Mona Khalidi’s home, where Mr. Obama made convincing statements in support of the Palestinian cause.

There is also a report that Mr. Obama attended a farewell dinner for Professor Khalidi on the latter’s appointment to Columbia University and move to New York, at which Mr. Obama socialized with the Khalidis as well as with Edward Saïd, and at which Mr. Obama left a polite testimonial, as did Mayor Daley and Governor Blagojevich.

It is necessary to consider, in light of Mr. Obama’s politically rich relationship with Mr. Khalidi and his colleagues, that Palestinian sources in Ramallah confirm, for Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily.com and my radio shows on WABC and KFI, that Rashid Khalidi was a paycheck-receiving PLO agent when it was formally named as a terrorist organization. In Beirut from 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi headed the Palestinian press agency WAFA, for which his wife Mona Khalidi also worked. Mr. Khalidi also served Yasser Arafat’s PLO at the Madrid conference in 1991. Mr. and Mrs. Khalidi have yet to comment on their reported political, financial and programmatic association with Mr. Obama in Chicago; as recently as last week neither of the Khalidis would speak on the telephone when asked about Mr. Obama, Mr. Rezko or Mr. Auchi.

The fourth name that contributes to the political profile of candidate Obama is Nadhmi Auchi of London, an Iraqi-born billionaire investor who founded his global enterprise General Mediterranean Holdings (GMH) in 1979 before he left Iraq.

Mr. Auchi apparently enters the political stage of Mr. Obama in 2003, when he was introduced to Mr. Rezko and became involved in developing a sixty-two-acre vacant lot along the Chicago River with his undercapitalized partner Mr. Rezko. Mr. Auchi is a prominent, mysterious figure, who was convicted in a French court in 2003 of political shenanigans in Iraqi oil contracts with regard French government officials and the oil giant TotalFinaElf. There are suspicions, never proven, of Mr. Auchi’s commerce with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, and even the Byzantine and corrupt UN sanctions regime for Iraq called “Oil for Food.”

In liberated Baghdad, Mr. Auchi is still regarded as a “Saddam guy” by Iraqi politicians. Nonetheless, Mr. Auchi has been linked with troubled communications systems contracts in Iraq; also, according to published Chicago Business reports, from 2004 to 2006 Mr. Auchi was linked with an aborted project by Mr. Rezko and another adventurous Chicago resident and former Illinois Institute of Technology classmate of Mr. Rezko’s, Aihman Alsammarae, who in 2003 and 2004 was Iraq’s Minister of Electricity, to build a power plant in Iraq. In April 2004, Mr. Auchi traveled to Illinois to meet with Mr. Rezko, Governor Blagojevich, State Senate President Emil Jones, Jr., and reportedly with then-State Senator Obama, who had just won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Prevented from returning to Chicago in November 2005 by the U.S. State Department, despite the written pleas of Mr. Rezko and others, Mr. Auchi has continued to make connections with Rezko affairs. The chief reason Mr. Rezko was rearrested on January 28, 2008, was because of allegedly hidden wire transfers in April and July 2007 of $3.7 million from Mr. Auchi’s GMH via a Beirut bank to the accused and otherwise impoverished Mr. Rezko.

Considering the breadth and depth of the involvement of these four unusual men, Rezko, Ayers, Rashidi and Auchi, with the Chicago political journey and fortunes of Mr. Obama, it is reasonable to assume that more discovery will result in more anecdotes, comments, even electronic and paper records of the relationships. In April 2007, Mr. Obama, commenting about Mr. Rezko to the Chicago Sun-Times, anticipated many of the questions now being asked about his choice of political associations and his subsequent career decisions when he said, “One of the perils of public life is that you end up being responsible for, or you’re being held responsible for, associations that you didn’t necessarily know were a problem.”

Finally, it is surprising to observe that the Democratic Party looks ready to nominate for the presidency a gifted Chicago politician, from the remnants of the old Richard Daley (father of the current mayor) machine, who asserts, against Mr. Obama’s own established ideological and self-interested record, that he is “post-partisan.”

There is a flickering presidential campaign analogy from the 1970s while Mr. McCain was detained in Hanoi – while Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were setting bombs, Mr. Rashidi was in the Mideast with the PLO, Mr. Auchi was in Baghdad with Saddam Hussein and Mr. Obama was eleven years old in Hawaii. In March and April 1972, Democratic primary voters elbowed aside Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s favorite, Ed Muskie of Maine, in order to nominate for the presidency the self-described “people’s president,” George McGovern of South Dakota. The Daley team telephoned Rowland Evans and Robert Novak to complain, “anybody but McGovern.” The prescient quote from the Daley partisan: “I think the nomination of George McGovern would mean the end of the Democratic Party we have known.”

Well, Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern, forty-nine states to one. Will the four horsemen of Mr. Obama’s November, Rezko, Ayers, Rashidi and Auchi, lead to a similar defeat for the spectacular candidacy of Barack Obama? If you are concerned about

THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE

Posted by straight shooter on February 29, 2008 under Abortion, Social Concerns

Racism Alive And Well At Planned Parenthood

A shocking set of recordings was released this week that could prove disastrous for Planned Parenthood’s ties with the African-American community. Lila Rose, a pro-life student and reporter at UCLA, launched an undercover investigation aimed at exposing the racism of the nation’s largest abortion merchant. With the help of an actor, she contacted Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states, inquiring if they would be willing to accept a donation earmarked for the abortion of black babies. The results were jaw-dropping.

Rose was appalled to discover that every last clinic agreed. Not one employee objected or questioned the request, even when the actor insisted that the purpose was to “lower the number of black people” in America. When the caller phoned an Ohio branch, he was told that Planned Parenthood “will accept the money for whatever reason.” Video: Planned Parenthood Racism Investigation.

Actor: …I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids.
Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.
Actor: And we don’t, you know, we just think the less black kids out there the better.
Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable… This is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

Students at UCLA are so infuriated by the investigation that they are petitioning the university to cut all affiliation with Planned Parenthood. What few people realize is that the organization has a history of racism that has been ingrained since Planned Parenthood’s earliest days, when founder Margaret Sanger advocated negative eugenics and spoke to a woman’s branch of the KKK (Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography , 1938, p. 336-367). However, as is customary for Planned Parenthood, the organization has managed for decades to cover its tracks – and the facts. That task has just been made monumentally more difficult. Abortion has taken the innocent lives of over 14 million black children – a national tragedy that has begun uniting and mobilizing African-Americans across party, state, and financial lines.

At the National Black Pro-Life Gathering in Washington, D.C., which drew pastors, parents, leaders, and activists from across America to commemorate Black History Month, abortion merchants like Planned Parenthood we called on to stop preying on their community.

As these abortion clinics continue to demonstrate that blood money is not colorblind, we need to call on Congress to de-fund and disavow Planned Parenthood. Taxpayers should not be forced to spend over $300 million on an organization whose scruples are for sale, even to those who seek racial genocide.

FORGET ABOUT HISTORY … TRUST US … WE KNOW WHAT’S BEST !

Posted by straight shooter on February 29, 2008 under Immigration, Political

New immigration plan ignores history’s lessons.

There are times when reason ceases and the mind is carried from the rational to the absurd. That is where the leadership of the U.S. Senate now resides.

What many once regarded as the world’s great deliberative body looks more like a flea market in which senators feverishly hawk betrayal and deceit as bright jewels of public policy. Comprehensive immigration reform is just such a trinket being sold for the real thing … buyer beware!

Most sinister among those merchants of deception is none other than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who has been peddling his wares at the Senate flea market for more than four decades. Kennedy’s counterfeit immigration views reach all the way back to his selling of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

In signing that legislation into law, President Lyndon Johnson promised it would not be revolutionary or affect the lives of millions, even as it overturned 60 years of U.S. immigration policy of national origin quotas and led to the creation of explosive chain migration.

Twenty-one years later, President Ronald Reagan signed into law amnesty for more than three million illegal aliens who had entered the country. President Reagan then promised the new employer sanctions would “remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities,” and that the law’s amnesty provision would allow millions who were hiding in the shadows to “step into the sunlight.” The sanctions were not imposed and the incentive was reversed.

And now, 21 years later, we hear the same trash as the pro-amnesty and open borders advocates demand that American citizens ignore history, reason and the national interest. They are again marketing the same false assurances about border enforcement and insist there will be no social or economic cost to the taxpayer or the nation. It has cost plenty … over 338 billion dollars a year. More than four decades of disruptive and destructive immigration policy initiatives should be a sufficient history lesson for all Americans.

The essential truth is clear: We cannot reform immigration law until we control immigration, and we cannot control immigration until we control our borders and our ports. This president and the congressional Democratic leadership refuse to recognize this reality and will not honor the known facts.

If we continue to follow the course they have set, true tragedy awaits us. And the fault will be ours.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF MMD’S

Posted by straight shooter on February 28, 2008 under Political, Religion

A Barna study (9/24/07) shows 16-to-29 year-olds are more critical toward Christianity than previous generations were at the same life stage. While Christianity remains the typical experience and most common faith in America, a fundamental recalibration is occurring within the spiritual allegiance of America’s upcoming generations.

We best not forget that imbedded in these conclusions are four deceptions that have been spread by MMD’s (Media of Mass Deception) for some 50 years.

1. Present-day Christianity is judgmental. We’ve been taught by the MMD to be “tolerant” – that is accepting of all religions, viewpoints, and versions of morality. Any Christian that stands on the Scriptures – even when it clearly calls for us to be “salt” in the culture (preserving biblical principles and calling “sin” sin) is intolerant. Fifty years ago a Christian that stood for biblical principles would have been called courageous – today they are called a bigot.

2. The MMD loves to ignore the vast number of testimonies, stories, and literature about how Christians have helped turned countless social, governmental, and cultural travesties into triumphs for the betterment of mankind. Look back to the end of slavery in any country and you will see a Christian leading the charge. Find an effort to end persecution, despotism, genocide, mistreatment of women, or suffering children in any stage of recent history and you find Christians working in the midst of the struggle. Yet the MMD refuses to publish those stories. Instead, they pick the isolated incidents of hypocritical Christians and use those unfortunate occurrences to paint a picture of the entire Christian population, and it has apparently worked.

3. Since when did having a peaceful, just, moral, society become old-fashioned? Since when did telling the truth become out-of-touch? Since the MMD made it fashionable to promote sin, violence, and hedonism.

4. Too involved in politics – I find this perception troubling as well. If the young person in America does not understand the necessary role of a Christian to be involved in his/her government, we have some educating to do. This perception is the result of the MMD’s successful campaign to convince Americans of the so-called separation of church and state – a myth created by the MMD to remove Christians from being spheres of influence.

I don’t think Christians are involved enough in politics. If, as research indicates, some 90% of Americas believe in God and some 80% believe in the resurrection of Christ, it would appear the majority SHOULD rule in politics. Yet the Church is strangely silent and, as such, has allowed these unfortunate conclusions to be drawn among our young people. Being a Christian carries with it a civil responsibility to be involved in all aspects of life – not just Sunday morning.

I hope this research is a wake-up call to the Christian. It is an irrefutable fact the MMD has, for 50 years, been spreading lies about our God, our country, our heritage, and our values. This research indicates those lies are having an effect. We need to be strong and courageous – fifty years of deception CAN be reversed. And the positive impact on our culture will result in saved souls and transformed lives transformed. New media breakthroughs and availability will help to turn the tide. People are tired of the predictable liberal bias in everything.

Global Warming Deaths on the Rise! Surely they are not already claiming large scale death due to alleged warming climates. I thought they would at least wait until it “happened.” But then I read on….

“About 160,000 people die every year from side effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition, a group of WHO scientists said Tuesday. What’s more, they projected the “disease burden caused by climate change could almost double by 2020.”

160,000 deaths year, huh? Every year? Which year? Who was the first guy to die? And wow, how many years has THIS been occurring?!

This is exactly the kind of “study” that makes for big headlines. Death and destruction on the rise, backed by “credible” science. It’s enough to make me run for cover under the Kyote treaty. Or so they hope.

WHO (World Health Organization) is at it once again … just about as useless as the United Nations. They are spreading junk science in the form of a press release. How did WHO make this calculation? Patrick J. Michaels from the CATO Institute sheds some light on it: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5225. Michaels explains how many of these “global warming deaths” that had “occurred” in Europe in 2003 when France and neighboring countries shut down in August to vacation. Hospitals were understaffed and broken air conditioners went unfixed. In France alone, 15,000 senior citizens died from neglect, not global warming! These people might have lived if it hadn’t been for negligence … turn on the a/c and cool it down!

The people at WHO also included death by tornado, hurricane, flood, and climate related disease. But it makes you wonder how many weather-related deaths would occur annually even at temperatures in, for example, 1990? The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed 20,000 people in the Caribbean. Did that count? And aren’t there many other factors to consider? Surely lots of people died of heat stroke in pre-air conditioning days. It seems possible, even likely, that the advent of air conditioners have substantially reduced death due to weather.

Maybe WHO should converse with the folks at the American Journal of Epidemiology who recently documented that in “hot weather, the death rate for persons who had central air-conditioning was 42% lower than the rate for persons who did not have air-conditioning …” http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/136/1/106

More junk science!

HOT OFF THE PRESS COURTESY OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS !

Posted by straight shooter on February 28, 2008 under Social Concerns

Taxpayer Funded Porn Guide

As if parents did not have enough to contend with in protecting their children from the evils for pornography, they now have to face government-funded projects.

Unfortunately, that’s the “net” effect of Planned Parenthood’s online venture, teenwire.com. The site, which is so offensive that FRC’s Internet filter blocked it, was supposedly created as a resource for kids seeking “medically accurate” information.

According to the nation’s biggest abortion merchant, that information now includes normalizing pornography. Although Planned Parenthood is careful to state that it’s illegal to ply children under 18 with sexually explicit images, that doesn’t stop its “advice columnists” from telling kids that “many people use pornography as part of sex play.”

On the “Ask the Experts” page, one young visitor says, “I look at porno sites… but people say looking at those sites affects your school work… Should I stop it? If I should, how?” An “expert” responds, “There is no correlation between using pornography and getting bad grades in school.” Among other things, kids are encouraged to play games about issues from bisexuality to birth control. Another page gives teens the lowdown on having an abortion without their parents’ consent. To teens struggling with homosexuality, Planned Parenthood says, “Having sex with girls and boys is normal and healthy.” With over $300 million in taxpayer funds, the organization has the U.S. government to thank for helping to promote these messages. Contact your leaders and urge them to support Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. David Vitter’s bills to zero out funding for groups like Planned Parenthood – IF NOT SOON Title X programs will soon mean XXX programs!

INTERESTING THOUGHTS ON OBAMA …

Posted by straight shooter on February 28, 2008 under Political, Social Concerns, Terrorism

Obama: More Taxes, Rights for bin Laden
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:12 AM
Ronald Kessler

Two events made Condoleezza Rice switch from being a registered Democrat to a Republican.

The first was when she watched the 1984 Democratic National Convention that nominated Walter Mondale for president. Rice, who grew up during segregation, was turned off by an endless refrain of appeals to “women, minorities, and the poor, which basically means helpless people and the poor,” she has said. Rice decided she would “rather be ignored than patronized.”

The second event was Jimmy Carter’s professed shock at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, demonstrating naivete and spotlighting his feeble approach to national security. The spectacle sickened her.

Substitute the name Barack Obama for Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter and you have a good summation of this presidential candidate’s approach.

To be sure, Obama is a master at seeming to appeal to all sides. But his voting record makes it clear he is a doctrinaire liberal who sees minorities as victims and the government as the solution to all problems – except when it comes to protecting us from terrorist attacks.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, Obama has proposed at least $287 billion a year in new government spending. That does not include his more recent $150 billion “green energy plan.” He also co-sponsored a Senate bill to spend at least $845 billion a year to fight global poverty.

Obama would pay for these increases with much higher taxes, including by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010.

Americans for Tax Reform gives him a lifetime rating of 7.5, compared with 82.7 for John McCain. Indeed, the National Journal has ranked Obama the most liberal senator for 2007.

“He’s a bleeding heart liberal, but he’s smart enough not to put it in people’s face right now,” says Republican Illinois State Sen. Bill Brady, who worked with Obama in the Illinois State Senate and calls him that body’s most liberal member.

When speaking out against tax cuts, Obama has likened the Ownership Society, which includes such measures as personal Social Security accounts, health savings accounts, incentives to expand home ownership, and tax cuts to encourage growth of small businesses, to “social Darwinism.”

Speaking to the National Women’s Law Center in November 2005, Obama said, “The idea here is to give everyone one big refund on their government – divvy it up into some tax breaks, hand them out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own healthcare, their own retirement plan, their own unemployment insurance, education, and so forth.”

In Washington, he said, “They call this the Ownership Society. But in our past, there has been another term for it – social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself.”

In other words, instead of helping people to help themselves and grow the economy at the same time, Obama’s approach would keep them dependent on government handouts, encouraging them to think of themselves as victims. When it comes to keeping America strong against terrorist threats, it’s quite a different story.

Like a 6-year-old kid who wants to be friends with everyone on the block, Obama has said he would offer prompt negotiations with anti-American despots. More frightening, Obama voted last August to give Osama bin Laden and other terrorists the same rights as Americans when it comes to intercepting their overseas calls in order to pick up clues needed to stop another attack.

Obama recently avoided voting on extending the Protect America Act, thus putting America at risk when immediate interception of terrorist communications is required.

Obama would withdraw immediately from Iraq, leaving that country to morph into a haven for al-Qaida and a staging ground for attacks on America.

While Obama has portrayed himself as a candidate for all Americans, his closeness to his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, tells a different story. For more than two decades, Wright has been Obama’s friend and sounding board, a man he consults before making important decisions like whether to run for president.

In December, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan as a man who epitomizes greatness. Farrakhan has blamed blacks’ troubles on Jews, America, and whites, whom he calls “blue-eyed devils.”

Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago espouses what it calls the Black Value System. While the Black Value System encourages commitment to God, education, and self-discipline, it refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.”

The Black Value System defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”

Contrary to Obama’s portrayal of himself as a unifier, on every bipartisan effort in the Senate to forge compromises on tough issues, Obama has been missing in action.

In sum, Barack Obama’s voting record, the comments of his close friend and sounding board, and his own statements suggest that the dazzling orator from Illinois represents everything that Condoleezza Rice rejected about the Democratic Party.

If Obama is his party’s nominee, we will all applaud the symbolism of a black man achieving so much. But if they are aware of his radical agenda, it’s doubtful most Americans will buy entrusting the country’s future to him.

Faced with a press that adores Obama, the question will be whether Republicans can portray the stark difference between the man and the myth.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.

ISLAM LEADER PRAISES OBAMA … HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM !

Posted by straight shooter on February 25, 2008 under Political, Religion, Terrorism

Farrakhan Sings Obama’s Praises

In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the “hope of the entire world” that the U.S. will change for the better.

The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours’ Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator.

“This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better,” he said. “This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama’s audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed.”

Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion’s founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.

“A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” he told the crowd of mostly followers. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”

Farrakhan also leveled small jabs at Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, suggesting that she represents the politics of the past and has been engaging in dirty politics.

Farrakhan’s keynote address at McCormick Place, the city’s convention center, wrapped up three days of events geared at unifying followers and targeting youth.

The Real Barack Obama

February 21, 2008

Ronald Kessler

Michelle Obama’s comment that, for the first time in her adult life, she feels proud of America helps crystallize who Barack Obama is.

To be sure, the wife of a candidate is perfectly free to have views that are distinct from her husband’s. But on a matter that is so fundamental to one’s being as love of country, it is difficult to imagine that Michelle Obama would publicly twice make such a statement suggesting disdain for America unless she felt it comported with her husband’s views.

Equally important, her statement aligns perfectly with the hate-America views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s minister, friend, and sounding board for more than two decades. On the Sunday following 9/11, Wright characterized the terrorist attacks as a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism.

“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,” Wright wrote in his church magazine Trumpet. “White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

Wright has been a key supporter of Louis Farrakhan, and in December, honored the Nation of Islam leader for lifetime achievement, saying he “truly epitomize[s] greatness.”

Farrakhan has repeatedly made hate-filled statements targeting Jews, whites, America, and homosexuals.

Those who think two of the closest people to Obama could publicly make anti-America statements unless Obama himself felt that way, are fooling themselves. To date, Obama has proven himself to be nothing more than a great orator, rendering the statements of those around him even more important in illuminating his true character and agenda. During his Senate career, he skipped 17 percent of the votes and sponsored only one bill that became law. That bill was to promote “relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Bereft of official accomplishments, Obama has distinguished himself mainly by being against measures that protect American security, such as finishing the mission in Iraq. If we were to leave Iraq quickly, as Obama vows he would do, it would become a launch pad for al-Qaida attacks on the U.S.

Obama avoided voting on extending the Protect America Act, thus putting America at risk when immediate interception of terrorist communications is required. Last August, Obama voted against a measure that would have allowed the U.S. to continue to monitor overseas conversations of terrorists like Osama bin Laden without first obtaining a warrant.

If his radical vote had prevailed, bin Laden would have been given the same rights as Americans.

To this day, Obama has not distanced himself from most of Rev. Wright’s comments. In a statement supposedly issued to address the matter, Obama ignored the point that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Farrakhan and that Wright’s church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader. Instead, as outlined in a Jan. 17 Newsmax article, he disingenuously claimed he thought the magazine bestowed the award on Farrakhan for his efforts to rehabilitate ex-prisoners.

Neither Wright’s encomiums about Farrakhan nor the Trumpet article mentions ex-prisoners.

Similarly, after John McCain’s wife Cindy responded to Michelle Obama’s remarks by telling a Wisconsin rally, “I have, and always will be, proud of my country,” Barack Obama told a radio interviewer that his wife did not say what people think she said. He then proceeded to rewrite her comments, claiming that she had meant she was encouraged by the “large numbers of people” who have gotten involved in the political process. Michelle Obama then made a similar revision of her remarks.

In her speech in Milwaukee, Michelle Obama said flatly, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

And what has been wrong with America up to now? That it gave Michelle the opportunity to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School? That it gave Barack Obama the chance to attend Columbia University and Harvard Law School and become a U.S. senator making more than $1 million a year from book royalties?

Was it that America stopped Nazi Germany from continuing to murder millions of Jews? That America has provided Africa and other countries with $15 billion to combat the spread of AIDS/HIV and that another $30 billion is on the way? That 46% of all Americans classified by the Census Bureau as poor own their own homes, 76% of them have air conditioning, and 75% of them have at least one car? Or that America allows us to express our views freely without fear of being put in jail, as is the case in Russia?

As a lawyer, Michelle Obama is perfectly capable of expressing herself precisely. In fact, she spoke from a written speech. Hmmm

Those who do not want to believe she meant what she said – and that Barack Obama could not be so close to Rev. Wright if he did not himself believe in much of what he has said – are in denial.

The real Barack Obama is starting to emerge, and for those of us who are grateful to America for everything it represents, it is not a pretty sight.