Friday Afternoon Roundup - Toxic Assets, Administration Lies and Dining with Terrorists
In the US, the ugliness behind Obama is beginning to float to the surface. Suddenly ACORN, responsible for much of the voter fraud behind Obama and the big Democratic Congress expansion is under the microscope.
In an startling partisan shift, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. on Thursday proposed holding hearings on claims the liberal activist group ACORN engaged in a pattern of crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style “protection” racket.
Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat and fierce partisan, suggested a congressional probe after scathing testimony about the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) during a hearing on various voting issues related to the 2008 presidential election.
The testimony by Pittsburgh lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh accused the nonprofit group of violating tax, campaign-finance and other laws by, among other things, sharing with the Barack Obama campaign a list of the Democrat's maxed-out campaign donors so ACORN could use it to solicit them for a get-out-the-vote drive.
She also testified that the Democrat-allied group provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from targets of demonstrations through a shakedown it called the “muscle for the money” program.
If Conyers has suddenly switched sides, either ACORN is suddenly a threat to him, or the group is headed for so much hot water that even Conyers doesn't want anything to do with them.
Either way we're seeing both new revelations and new tensions as the Democratic majority splits apart into conflicting groups, creating greater friction, which can build up to bigger and bigger explosions.
Meanwhile Obama's AIG hypocrisy hit the mainstream news media. Obama had decided to calm public disgust with the huge nationalization bailouts by taking on a safe target, Wall Street executives who were his own contributors, and whose contributions he had repaid about a 1000 to 1. But being two faced and with David Axelrod pulling the Teleprompter in Chief's strings, he decided to make them a good temporary target for outrage... something that naturally would shore up his public support enough to keep spending hundreds of billions on Wall Street bailouts.
And then the whole thing began to unravel. Obama was busy demonstrating why he's kept tethered to a teleprompter in the first place, when he compared AIG to a suicide bomber on the radio, and then headed to Leno to promote his economic plan, with a joke about the Special Olympics.
But in the meantime Senator Dodd admitted that he had inserted an amendment protecting AIG executive bonuses, and blamed Obama's pet economic whiz kid, Timothy Geither. Suddenly CNN was asking, who knew about the bonuses and when did they know it.
While Media Matters was rushing to defend first Dodd and then Obama with explanations that became increasingly irrelevant, the media began at once covering and minimizing a scandal, that was actually created by Obama's people and rebounded on him.
Dodd is currently claiming that he had no idea what the legislation he wrote actually meant. Like most liars, Dodd managed to contradict himself over and over again.
Dodd said he was misled on the issue of bonuses for AIG executives. He claimed he would not have drafted key legislative changes allowing the bonuses to move forward if he knew the purpose of those changes.
This excuse leaves Dodd looking completely incompetent, since if he doesn't know what legislation he's drafting, shouldn't he admit senility and retire?
This accompanied a parade of other excuses, claiming that others had put the language in, that he had resisted it... which is rather odd since why would he resist it if he didn't know anything about it.
Despite Dodd blaming Obama's own administration for making him put it in, Obama was still free to go on Leno and talk about how shocked he was by the AIG bonuses, despite the minor detail that he had signed the bill containing the amendment. Something that no doubt had nothing to do with him being the second largest recipient of AIG money in the Senate.
All this leaves Obama and Dodd with a choice between pleading incompetence, in not knowing what the bills they drafted and signed say, or corruption.
And since one abuse of power follows another, the AIG bailout is naturally followed by the AIG bonus tax, a blatantly illegal abuse of the tax code as penalty aimed at perpetuating a political circus, against Obama's political donors\capitalist enemies of the state.
Two months in and it's painfully clear that Nixon had nothing on Obama. A point only driven further home when Obama's paranoid culture of secrecy and media control, caused him to receive a newspaper association's award in an event... closed to the press.
Obama White House bars press from press award ceremony
We are not making this up:
Barack Obama was elected commander in chief promising to run the most transparent presidential administration in American history.
This achievement and the overall promise of his historic administration caused the National Newspaper Publishers Assn. to name him "Newsmaker of the Year."
The president is to receive the award from the federation of black community newspapers in a White House ceremony this afternoon.
The Obama White House has closed the press award ceremony to the press.
From the president's official schedule:
"Later in the afternoon, the President and the First Lady will attend a reception with the National Newspaper Publisher Association in the State Dining Room, where they will be presented the Newsmaker of the Year award. This event is closed press."
Maybe they'll let the newspaper people pass the award through the fence.
-- Andrew Malcolm
It is truly hard to top.
But Obama hasn't just been doing Leno, he's doing Ahmadinejad too. While flagrantly ignoring America's allies in the Muslim world, or outright undermining them in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Pakistan...
Obama has a special message for Iran.
The man who could hardly be bothered to deal with Britain's Prime Minister, or give him the right region DVD's, is busy contorting himself into loops for Ahmadinejad.
Naturally Iran responded by promising to bring on the nukes by the end of the year.
Meanwhile buyer's remorse on Obama is spreading. Some of the Catholic and Evangelical figures who went out for Obama are now realizing that any promise of moderation on abortion was a lie. Unsurprising when you consider that Obama's biggest non-minority margin of victory was among unmarried women.
"Mexico City, conscience clause, Sebelius, embryonic stem cells... In each case, I have been asked by friends at Democratic or progressive-leaning think tanks not just to refrain from opposing these moves, but instead to support them in the name of a broader understanding of what it means to be pro-life. I mainly refused.
A broader understanding of pro-life that naturally wouldn't include the lives of unborn babies. A nice euphemism indeed. I'm sure David Axelrod is smirking somewhere.
Speaking of Pro-Life, in Religion of Peace news, we may be seeing the beginning of a new terror trend in Israel, with bulldozing attacks now supplemented by restaurant poisoning attacks.
The terrorist, Ihab Abu Rial, is a member of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a group associated with Fatah which is headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Abu Rial worked for three years at the “Grill Express” restaurant. Together with a fellow employee who was his accomplice, he planned to poison the restaurant’s clients in early 2008.
They planned to carry out the poisoning in the early afternoon on a Tuesday, a time at which the restaurant is usually packed with diners. The two intended to use a white, odorless poison, and tasteless powder with a slow-release component which would have been undetectable when slipped into the food, in order to maximize the number of diners hurt.
Sick, evil and inevitable.
Israel provides employment to far too many Arabs. The restaurant poisonings are a consequence of that, just as the bulldozer attacks are. And the constant pandering and support given to Fatah murderers, insures that they will only be strengthened to commit further atrocities.
This attack may have failed, but especially with news of it out, similar copycat attacks will follow. And sooner or later they will succeed. With the Religion of Peaceful Slaughter, there is no middle ground. Either you resist, or die and watch your loved ones die horribly as well.
Time and time again, Muslim populations in non-Muslim countries that become radicalized, become sources of domestic and international terrorism. The UK is currently facing the same situation and with the same combination of pandering and ineptness.
And people will die.
Britons should 'wake up before it is too late' or suffer another 7/7 terror attack, hate cleric Omar Bakri has warned.
In a sinister rant, the warped preacher threatened that ordinary Muslims living here would rise up and retaliate for the 'evil' acts of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'You want to declare war against us? We will declare Islam against you. It is time for you to wake up before it is too late.
And on that we can agree with Omar Bakri. It is time to wake up and choose a side. The only difference between Barki and the so called moderate Muslim leadership, is discretion not belief. In their view the likes of Bakri or Osama are moving too fast too soon. Which is lucky for us in a way, because this serves as a wake up call, a glimpse into the near future before the public is ready for it.
In Israel meanwhile the political chaos continues, with the formerly dominant Labor Party threatening to splinter into three parties. Meanwhile the Israeli Communist Party will be holding their own conference from hell in Tel Aviv University, dedicating to examining how Israel is evil and should be destroyed.
The decision to hold the congress on the campus of Tel Aviv University was no doubt made thanks to the presence of a large number of open self-declared communists on the faculty there. Among those to speak at the communist convocation will be communist Prof. Yoav Peled of TAU's political science department and Prof. Gadi Algazi , who is on the faculty of the history department at TAU. They are joined by the far-leftist anti-Israel Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal, of the TAU psychology department, best known for his pseudo-academic research "proving" that Jews are racists and opposed to peace, based on the drawings of Jewish school children.
Other comrades to be organizing the dictatorship of the proletariat at the Tel Aviv University gulag include Uri Ram, a sociologist from Ben Gurion University, who thinks Israel's very existence is a crime against humanity. The party hacks from the communist party will also be addressing the congress.
These days instead Canada is emerging as the beacon of sanity, banning Galloway from entering the country, as a terrorist supporter. (Also a giant cat impersonator)
Naturally Galloway will now claim Canada is run by the Jews. At a time when the UK throws open its doors to Hizbullah, Obama airs greeting to Ahmadinejad, Canada slams the door shut on a prominent Western terrorist puppet.
In the blogsphere roundup, Neocon Express comments on the Obama worship with an entire Barnes and Nobles section dedicated to "Obama Books"
Boker Tov Boulder passes on word from Caroline Glick that Scowcroft may be in line for Freeman's NIE post. As if there's a difference.
At ACT, Obama's diplomacy has opened the door for further Taliban demands
Via Lgstarr, a top Schumer aide may be headed to jail, instead of working his way up in politics. It's a start.
Shallow Thought takes on the raw UN deal
Citizen Warrior tackles the question, Are you an Islamophobe?
Bare Naked Islam, has the new Homeland Security Secretary replacing Muslim Terrorism with the more PC term, "Man Caused Disasters".
Meanwhile at Covertress, North Korea is asking for a discontinuation of humanitarian supplies.
This ends the week.