2008 Presidential Elections

[Ryan Ruck]

[Brian Baldwin]

video looks like an NBC promo spot. Only they'd mean it seriously. lol

[Ryan Ruck]

Hahaha... I had that song stuck in my head for a while after I watched it.

[American Patriot]

Democrats fear that civil war may draw crowds but end in bloodshed
Times of London ^ | 03/10/08 | Tom Baldwin

Democrats fear that civil war may draw crowds but end in bloodshed

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton go head-to-head to win the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, John McCain is busy uniting the Republican party

Tom Baldwin in Washington

Surging optimism among Democrats about regaining the White House this year has been tempered by fresh warnings that the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama risks turning into a bloodbath before the Denver convention in August.

The Democratic race has already smashed all records for turnout and fundraising, with millions of new voters and hundreds of donors galvanised by the historic choice of picking either the first black or the first female presidential nominee.

Caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday had a sevenfold increase in the numbers taking part compared with 2004, while Democrats also celebrated winning the Congressional seat vacated by Dennis Hastert, the former House speaker — a victory some compared to toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad.

Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, yesterday said that such results showed why his party was on course to defeat John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, in November’s general election. He added, though, that elder statesmen might yet have to talk to Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton “about how to make peace and the convention work”.

Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives Speaker, has urged them to keep their “eyes on the main prize” — and not turn off the American people.

Gary Hart, a former presidential candidate, said that Mrs Clinton’s attacks on Mr Obama’s credentials as a commander-in-chief have “severely damaged” the latter, whom he hopes will be the Democratic nominee.

Samantha Power, Mr Obama’s adviser who was forced to resign last week for branding Mrs Clinton “a monster”, has caused further embarrassment by casting doubt on his plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq. The Clinton campaign spent much of the weekend circulating these comments as evidence that Mr Obama is all words, no action.

Mr Obama’s aides have responded by accusing Mrs Clinton of telling lies about his foreign policy and running a “scorched-earth” strategy against him. A campaign memo describes her failure to disclose tax returns as confirming Mrs Clinton to be “one of the most secretive politicians in America”. It asked: “You have to wonder whether she’ll be open and honest with the American people as president.”

Although Mr Obama won Wyoming by 61 to 38 per cent, he made a net gain of just two convention delegates. Tomorrow’s primary in Mississippi, where more than a third of the electorate is likely to be black, should give him another win.

It is almost impossible for either candidate to win the nomination without support from a large portion of the 794 super-delegates, many of whom are now biding their time to see who is best placed to win the general election.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign is putting pressure on Mr Dean to allow a rerun of primaries in Florida and Michigan — both of which she won in January — but where the 366 delegates are banned from the convention because of a dispute over party rules.

Mr Dean suggested yesterday that he was sympathetic to the idea of a postal ballot in both states, which could help Mrs Clinton to take the lead in the popular vote. Mr Obama, although publicly promising to abide by whatever the rules require, is said to be arguing that the delegates for the two states should be split evenly with Mrs Clinton.

A new poll yesterday indicated that the candidates are tied in Michigan but that Mrs Clinton leads Mr Obama by 55 per cent to 39 in Florida.

Mr McCain, meanwhile, is concentrating on raising money for the election and working out how to “maintain the visibility” of his candidacy while the spotlight will be on the Democratic race.

But although his February fundraising total of $12 million (£6 million) is dwarfed by the $80 million that was generated by the two Democratic candidates, Republicans say that Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama appear intent on spending their money driving up each other’s negatives — “and doing our work for us”.

Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove, who masterminded President Bush’s victory in 2004, are now acting as informal advisers on Mr McCain’s campaign, it was reported yesterday.

[Jag]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs

IN 52 SECS WHY BARACK OBAMA CANNOT WIN A GENERAL ELECTION

This should concern us all if it's real!
Jag

[Ryan Ruck]

Hey, that looks kinda familiar...

http://www.transasianaxis.com/vb/sho...&postcount=111



It should be reiterated often though!

[Jag]

Sure enough I've done it again, didn't check! I've now put a note on my cp, check, check, check. Thanks Ryan....

Jag

[samizdat]

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids...r315812455.jpg?



woe upon thee that laugh now...

[Jag]

Anti-Obama Pastor’s ‘Mac Daddy’ Video Tirade Sweeps Web

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=65024

Praise the Lord and God Bless America!!!!!
Jag

[Ryan Ruck]

Mccain Proposes New Global Coalition

Also urges closing Guantanamo Bay

John McCain called yesterday for a more cooperative foreign policy enshrined in a new League of Democracies and declared that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay should be closed. But he also drew a sharp line with his Democratic rivals on the Iraq war.

The speech, tinged with personal reflection about the costs of war, did not offer new initiatives as much as it outlined McCain's view of the world. That outlook seems more multilateral than what critics call President Bush's go-it-alone approach to the world, which culminated in the invasion of Iraq with only the British by America's side among major allies.

McCain proposed a new organization, the League of Democracies, to "harness the vast influence of more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests."

"Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed," the presumptive Republican nominee told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. "We need to listen - we need to listen - to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies."

McCain, who sees foreign policy and national security as a strength against the eventual Democratic nominee, directly addressed the proposals of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to withdraw US troops by the middle of 2009.

"It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal," McCain said, drawing sustained applause.

The Democrats, he warned, "are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date."

The Democratic National Committee said McCain, in what his campaign had billed as a major policy speech, repackaged old rhetoric and did not offer a way forward in Iraq.

"John McCain is determined to carry out four more years of George Bush's failed policies, including an open-ended war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars while making us less safe," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a written statement.

Clinton issued a statement that read in part: "Like President Bush, Senator McCain wants to keep us tied to another country's civil war."

In the speech, McCain agreed with many Democrats on the need to explicitly ban torture - an issue on which he has broken with the Bush administration - so America can be a "model citizen."

"We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are at the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured," he said, drawing scattered applause. "I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control."

McCain described himself as a "realistic idealist" about the threats the United States faces in the world.

"Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war," McCain said.

[Jag]

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...arch-with.html

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Wright & Obama Helped Organize March With Louis Farrakhan




Earlier this week it was reported that Barack Obama marched with Louis Farrakhan in Washington DC:

Obama took time off from attending campaign coffees to attend October's Million Man March in Washington, D.C. His experiences there only reinforced his reasons for jumping into politics.

But that's not all...
In 1995, Barack Obama helped organize the Million Man March in Washington with anti-Semite and America-hating racist Louis Farrakhan:

In 1995, along with other prominent black leaders such as Al Sharpton and Barack Obama, Farrakhan helped lead the Million Man March on Washington. A second march, called the Millions More Movement, took place in 2005.

And... His "father figure" and mentor Jeremiah Wright, a former Muslim and black nationalist, joined him:

Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington.

Michael Goldfarb has more on the Million Man March and Obama.

By the way: It looks like the Trinity United Church of Christ pulled its latest edition of the Trumpet Magazine off the internet.

MORE... Victor Davis Hanson has more on Obama's Wright problem today at Pajamas Media:

Obama’s evocation of “context” is the new/old defense that one suddenly hears to excuse extremist language against whites, moderate African-Americans, Italians, Jews, America, Israel, the WW II generation, etc. as in:

(1) The Wright slurs were just snippets; or
(2) Came in a context of historic oppression; or
(3) Were part of unique protocols of expression in black churches; or
(4) Were more than balanced by prior good works; or
(5) Were just rhetorical flourishes and hardly offensive; or
(6) The right-wing noise machine is using the Wright sound-bites for the political embarrassment of a Democratic candidate rather than due to genuine anger over his racism.

While some of these mitigations in theory might have some merit, what the Wright defenders—most prominently Sen. Obama himself—don’t realize is that the classical liberal tradition always argued that absolute standards trumped relativism and that situational ethics were never an excuse for extremism.

YIKES!!!!!
Jag

[samizdat]

So what's the deal- condi or keyes??

[samizdat]

"Are you sure you paid enough?"

[Jag]

Jeremiah Wright Sounds Off At Eulogy for Chicago Judge

by FOXNews.com
Sunday, April 13, 2008

Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America’s founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons.

Barack Obama’s retiring pastor delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, where his late uncle had been the pastor, about overcoming trouble. The public appearance was his first since news broke that the Democratic presidential candidate’s pastor frequently rails on the United States.

“Some troubles that come up in your life come up out of nowhere,” Wright said. At the end of the two-hour-plus service, about two dozen ministers gathered around Wright and his daughter to pray for them. One of the ministers asked God to give Wright courage as “the world tries to demonize him.”

Though Wright said nothing about Obama or the uproar itself, he alluded to the controversy while briefly back in the pulpit Saturday to deliver a eulogy for a late congregant of Trinity United Church of Christ — former appellate judge R. Eugene Pincham.

Wright, who is on sabbatical before retiring from Trinity United, said America’s mistreatment of blacks is the result of the founding fathers, who “planted slavery and white supremacy in the DNA of this republic.”

First reported by The Chicago Sun Times, Wright told mourners at the funeral that Thomas Jefferson, who partook in “pedophilia,” would also be considered unpatriotic these days because he wrote, “God would punish America for the sin of slavery.” He also quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said that the U.S. has a “congenital birth defect.”

Speaking of the seven lessons Pincham taught him, Wright said the judge’s faith “was not the jingoistic, chauvinistic ‘you’re either with us or against us’ demonizing kind of faith.”


“FOX News can’t understand that,” Wright said to rousing cheers and applause. “[Bill] O’Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity’s stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe. [Pincham’s] faith was a faith in a God who loved the whole world not just one country or one creed.”

Click here to hear Rev. Wright’s sermon.


Hell has no fury like FOX News when they go after someone...O'Reilly is mad
Jag

[Ryan Ruck]

"Are you sure you paid enough?"

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down!

The resemblance is uncanny!

Hell has no fury like FOX News when they go after someone...O'Reilly is mad
Jag

Hehe, O'Reilly can't be out-blowharded!

[Brian Baldwin]

Poll Finds McCain Winning Over Voters From All Parties

Republicans are no longer underdogs in the race for the White House. To pull that off, John McCain has attracted disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall.
Partly thanks to an increasingly likable image, the Republican presidential candidate has pulled even with the two Democrats still brawling for their party’s nomination, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo news poll released Thursday. Just five months ago — before either party had winnowed its field — the survey showed people preferred sending an unnamed Democrat over a Republican to the White House by 13 percentage points.
Of those who have moved toward McCain, about two-thirds voted for President Bush in 2004 but are now unhappy with him, including many independents who lean Republican. The remaining one-third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.
Also helping the Arizona senator close the gap: Peoples’ opinions of Hillary Rodham Clinton have soured slightly, while their views of Barack Obama have improved though less impressively than McCain’s.
The survey suggests that those switching to McCain are largely attuned to his personal qualities and McCain may be benefiting as the two Democrats snipe at each other during their prolonged nomination fight.
David Mason of Richmond, Va., is typical of the voters McCain has gained since last November, when the 46-year-old personal trainer was undecided. Mason calls himself an independent and voted in 2004 for President Bush, whom he considers a strong leader but a disappointment due to the “no-win situation” in Iraq.
“It’s not that I’m that much in favor of McCain, it’s the other two are turning me off,” Mason said of Clinton and Obama, the senators from New York and Illinois, in explaining his move toward McCain. As for the Republican’s experiences as a Vietnam War prisoner and in the Senate, Mason said, “All he’s been through is an asset.”
By tracking the same group of roughly 2,000 people throughout the campaign, the AP-Yahoo poll can gauge how individual views are evolving. What’s clear is that some Republican-leaning voters who backed Bush in 2004 but lost enthusiasm for him are returning to the GOP fold — along with a smaller but significant number of Democrats who have come to dislike their party’s two contenders.
The findings of the survey, conducted by Knowledge Networks, provide a preview of one of this fall’s battlegrounds. Though some unhappy Republicans will doubtless stay with McCain, both groups are teeming with centrist swing voters who will be targeted by both parties.
The poll shows that McCain’s appeal has grown since November by more than the Democrats’ has dwindled. McCain gets about 10 percentage points more now than a generic Republican candidate got last fall; Obama and Clinton get about 5 points less than a nameless Democrat got then.
Underlining McCain’s burgeoning popularity, in November about four in 10 considered McCain likeable, decisive, strong and honest while about half do now. Obama is seen as more likeable and stronger now but his numbers for honesty and decisiveness have remained flat, while Clinton’s scores for likeability and honesty have dropped slightly.
“You can’t trust Hillary and Obama’s too young,” said Pauline Holsinger, 60, a janitorial worker in Pensacola, Fla., now backing McCain who preferred an unnamed Democrat last fall. “I like him better, he’s more knowledgeable about the war” in Iraq.
Voters at this stage in a campaign commonly focus more on candidates’ personal qualities. That usually changes as the general election approaches and they pay more attention to issues and partisan loyalty — meaning that McCain’s prospects could fade at a time when the public is deeply unhappy with the war, the staggering economy and Bush.
For now, more than one in 10 who weren’t backing the unnamed Republican candidate in last November’s survey are supporting McCain, a shift partly offset by a smaller number of former undecideds now embracing Obama or Clinton. Of those now backing McCain, about one-third did not support the generic GOP candidate last November.
Among the unhappy Bush supporters whom McCain has lured back to his campaign, about half say they are conservative, yet their views on issues are more moderate than many in the party, with some opposing the war in Iraq. They have favorable but not intensely enthusiastic views of McCain — for example, two-thirds find him likeable while far fewer find him compassionate or refreshing.
“He’s known, he’s a veteran,” said David Tucker, a retired Air Force technician from Alexandria, La., and Bush voter who was undecided last November but has ruled out Obama and Clinton. “I understand him better.”
Most of the Democratic-leaning voters now supporting McCain backed Democrat John Kerry in 2004. They are moderates who disapprove of Bush and the war in Iraq, but find McCain likeable, much more so than they did last November.
“He is more open-minded” than Obama and Clinton, said Darlene Heins, 46, a Democrat from North Brunswick, N.J., who has moved from undecided to backing McCain. “He directly answers questions, which tells me he’s listening.”
Many McCain-backing Democrats express one consistent concern about McCain — his age.
“Let’s face it, we’re not getting any younger,” said retired accountant Sheldon Rothman of Queens, N.Y., who like McCain is 71. “There are too many imponderables when you get to that age, especially with the stress of the presidency.”
Whether those now switching to McCain will stay that way once the Democrats choose a candidate is what the fall campaign will be about.
“McCain has a history of doing well with independent voters,” said GOP pollster David Winston. He said voters’ preference for an unnamed Democratic candidate but McCain’s strong performance against Obama and Clinton means “Democrats have an advantage their candidates are not taking advantage of.”
Democratic pollster Alan Secrest said the contrasting numbers mean that while the voters’ overall mood favors Democrats, they are still taking the measure of Clinton and Obama.
“The Democrats will have to earn their way this fall,” he said.
The AP-Yahoo survey of 1,844 adults was conducted from April 2-14 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Included were interviews with 863 Democrats, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.3 points, and 668 Republicans, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 points.
The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

[Ryan Ruck]

John McCain 'Would Confront Russia And China'

A John McCain presidency would take to a more forceful approach to Russia and China, according to senior foreign policy advisers to the Republican candidate.

The Arizona senator has already signalled that he intends to confront Russian president Vladimir Putin more directly than George W Bush if he wins the White House in November.

In a recent foreign policy speech, Mr McCain advocated removing Russia from the G8 group of major industrialised powers, while this week he announced he would not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if he were in office because of China's suppression of Tibetan protest.

His experience of foreign affairs is one reason why the 71-year-old Vietnam war veteran has drawn level with both his potential Democratic rivals, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in opinion polls, suggesting the public may accept his more muscular approach to the world.

Robert Kagan, who wrote much of the speech delivered in Los Angeles, told the Daily Telegraph: "Russia will loom large for both Europe and the US, and John McCain has been ahead of the curve and has seen this coming down the road.

"We have made the mistake of being too passive as Putin has consolidated his autocracy. There have been key moments when he took away power of opposition parties, suppressed the media and arrested key figures, which were greeted with relative silence in the West.

"Because Putin feels he has to maintain the trappings of democracy there are opportunities to be stronger but the West hasn't done that."

At the recent Nato summit, Mr Putin succeeded in bullying Western European nations to reject applications by Georgia and Ukraine to join the alliance. The failure of their bids, championed by President Bush, was a major coup for Mr Putin.

The Russian leader hands over to his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev next month but will immediately become prime minister and is expected to continue to run the government.

Mr Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a leading member of Washington's Right-wing foreign policy community, was an early advocate of removing Saddam Hussein, though he was critical of the Pentagon's handling of the war in Iraq.

He is strongly critical of Mr Putin's "increasing autocracy", arguing that a concerted Western approach to Russia, led by the United States, can produce results, as it did over the declaration of independence by Kosovo, which Moscow was forced to accept.

Mr Kagan's approach has however reportedly put him at odds with other McCain advisers such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who the New York Times reported this week was disturbed by the candidate's hardline attitude to Russia in his March 26 speech.

In that address, Mr McCain, who has two decades of foreign policy experience in the US senate, described himself as a "realistic idealist". He said he would abandon the unilateralism that led Mr Bush to invade Iraq with limited approval from other states but adopt a tough stance when called for.

Mr Kagan rejects the tag of "neo-conservative" that is often attached to him.

But along with other advisers, such as Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he would likely argue that American values such as democracy should steer foreign policy if they were advising a McCain administration.

Both men argue that China, like Russia, should be more robustly criticized for its human rights abuses.

While continuing a "multi-faceted approach" to Beijing, Mr Boot said the US needs "to be forthright on their human rights abuses and not shrink from condemning what they are doing in Tibet for example, or from trying to help Chinese dissidents to stay out of jail".

"There isn't an easy answer to China or Russia because have to cooperate on some issues but will clash on others. But our attempts to cut deals with Putin haven't really accomplished very much and has emboldened him to become more truculent," he said.

[Ryan Ruck]

Obama's Mother and Food Stamps, A Poor Upbringing?

Following Obama's recent dumb comment about small town Americans clinging to guns and religion, he defended himself by claiming that the notion of elitist is absurd because of his poor upbringing. He claimed that his mother was on food stamps, so how could he be an elitist in his upbringing? For a while, that bothered me a good deal. Why? We all know that Obama has repeatedly lied in the past on certain issues, and will do again in order to get by. Do we dare to take his word at face value?

Read on...

The real issue here is about his upbringing, and whether it was in fact a poor one. I did a little amateur research on the Internet (may God bless Al Gore, the "inventor" of Internet! Just kidding) to find out more about his mother living on food stamps. What kind of circumstances did lead his mother to apply for welfare checks?

Here is the Time article written by Joe Klein in 2006, long before Obama decided to run for president. Back then, he was seen as the rising star within Democratic Party, and he didn't worry about critics breathing down his neck.

Here is the key excrept from the article:

"For example, I was going to a fancy prep school, and my mother was on food stamps while she was getting her Ph.D."

This is what Obama said. He went to a fancy private school, and his mother was studying for a Ph.D. So, please do tell me was his upbringing a poor one? Please. I'm begging, no, make it daring, you to tell me otherwise.

What kind of fancy private school did he attend? Punahou Academy in Honolulu, Hawaii. The tuition at that school today costs over $15,000. I don't know how much it was back in Obama's days, but I gather it was an expensive school. So, how could he attend this school if his mother were on food stamps? Where did his mother get that kind of money? Scholarship? I don't know.

But that's not the real issue here, again I do emphasize Obama's claim that he grew up in a poor household. I suppose it depends on what definition of poor you use. If Obama didn't get his favorite toy, did that mean he is automatically poor? Of course not. Equally valid is the fact her mother was studying for her Ph.D, that meant she had money to pay for tuition and fees. Did that mean she wasn't actually poor as Obama may have claimed though for a while they did live on food stamps?

The real truth here is that Obama lied to us. He owes us an honest explanation of his upbringing. It may be that his mother and Obama did face tough times, but to claim that they were poor is really stretching the truth, don't you all think so? Obama is indeed an elitist for two reasons: he attended a "fancy prep school" and his mother studied to receive her Ph.D. He grew up in a well educated and liberal household. If at any point during his childhood, he did not entertain the notion of elitist, fine, but right now, he is acting like an elitist, period.

So, Senator Obama, will you please step up and tell us the truth for once in your life, please? No? Okay, but don't expect me to vote for you. Bye.

[Ryan Ruck]

Funny how McCain would rather attack Conservatives trying to support him and rally others to support him rather than attack the person who made these comments in the first place as well as the Dem presidential candidate that is his buddy.

McCain Says N.C. Republicans Out Of Touch Over Ad

Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain accused North Carolina's Republican Party of being "out of touch with reality" over its refusal to pull an advertisement criticizing Democrat Barack Obama.

In an NBC interview aired on Friday, the Arizona senator said he has done all he can to persuade the state party to cancel the television ad that criticizes Obama as "too extreme" because of controversial remarks made by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"They're not listening to me because they're out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable," McCain told NBC's "Today" Show.

"I've done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue," he added.

Asked if the state party's unwillingness to heed his call raised questions about his leadership, McCain replied: "I don't know exactly how to respond to that."

North Carolina is one of two states holding the next crucial Democratic primaries on May 6 in the tight race between Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to oppose McCain in the November presidential election.

Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black U.S. president, has come under fire for attending Wright's church in Chicago where the fiery black preacher made a number of racially charged statements about the United States.

Wright, who is now retired, said in a PBS interview that people are trying to paint him as "some kind of fanatic."

The McCain campaign said it had been assured that North Carolina Republicans would withdraw the TV ad, scheduled to air early next week.

But the state party served notice that the ad would air. On Friday, a YouTube.com version appeared on the party's Web site at www.ncgop.org with an invitation for visitors to contribute money.

[Ryan Ruck]

Another Obama Marxist

Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign. And they seem to feel the warmth. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon, and Americans are "laying the foundations for a revolutionary change." A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama's behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy towards Columbia would change. Frank Marshall Davis, a dear Obama friend and mentor was as a member of the Communist Party USA. Barack Obama just seems to attract Marxists.

If the people he surrounds himself with are any indication of his core beliefs, a higher capital gains tax to punish the rich, even if it diminishes actual tax revenue, may be only the beginning. Obama's Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare.

The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.

After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Socialist Viewpoint (info@socialistviewpoint.org

The product of a Harvard education, Sam is an admirer of anti-American academic Noam Chomsky, a hypocrite and fraud masquerading as a political philosopher. Mr. Chomsky, perhaps admired by Obama as by his official blogger, is fond of visiting dictators and terrorists and giving speeches blaming all the worlds' ills on America. All while accepting money from military conteacts at MIT. Chomsky was an ardent supporter of Pol Pot, and to this day denies a holocaust occurred in Cambodia (1.67 million died). He is unrepentant about the horrors his vile ideology encouraged and supports Hamas and Hezbollah with the same willful blindness today.

In an article in the Harvard Crimson, Sam writes of his hero:

For me, hearing Chomsky speak for the first time was a life-changing experience. His ability to take preconceptions and destroy them-to completely remodel one's understanding of reality with cold, hard facts-blew me away. When I left what was then the ARCO Forum last fall, I felt as though I had been through the Matrix and back. Chomsky really has this effect because he bombards you with evidence and logic, not empty rhetoric. It is nearly impossible to hear him or read him-once you've actually checked his facts yourself (he even cites page numbers in public addresses)-and deny what he's saying.

For anyone who has actually endured one of Chomsky's muddled rants or tried to verify the claims in his books, young Sam's praise is comical; and a clear indication he has never actually read one. You find very quickly Chomsky is not overly concerned with "facts," as he fabricates them with abandon. He cites page numbers, to his own books, which recycle themselves with astonishing success. Hardly an example of a towering intellect, his tired canards are sufficient to impress the worshipful Sam Graham-Felsen, and endear himself to the same leftist academics that so easily embraced dictators such Ho Chi Min and Pol Pot, idolize Chavez and Castro and legitimized terrorists like Yasser Arafat. Chomsky is the master of post-modern moral relativism, quick to excuse atrocity with obfuscation.

On the day after 9-11, Chomsky wrote:

"The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people."

It may be simple self-aggrandizing hypocrisy that inspires Mr. Chomsky's comments, though I suspect, more likely he mistakes the accolades of twenty year old activists as confirmation of his own genius. He plays what works with the crowd. Here are some other nihilistic gems gleaned from his pedantic and incomprehensible writing:

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged."

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."

"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media. "

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."

"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."

Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama's blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate's choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin.

Sam is young and has much to learn, so we can forgive his silly hagiographies, the ones about Chomsky and the ones about Obama. His hero worship is eager and emotional and completely without substance, much as Obama's campaign promises are without substance. Obama is a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky mold, and knows where to get people like Sam who have energy and drive. His staff is nothing if not energetic. He even cut his activist teeth in Chicago, the stomping grounds of Alinsky and so many others in the "progressive" community. One wonders why the windy city still has a murder rate higher than Baghdad, after so many years of enlightened activism.

The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate. We are supposed to believe that ideologues who distain America and Americans can improve the system that has brought humanity more prosperity and well-being than any nation before it. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths, they tell us we are great, and then insist we must change because we are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world. That alone should anger the electorate enough to defeat them. The change Obama will bring will not be the change America needs or expects. It will be the change of naive adolescents, which think Noam Chomsky wise.

We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name-socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for.
- The Socialist Viewpoint