Obama 3:16 Video Embed Fixed

Dean here checking in from BwD. Just a head’s up to all you independants, undecideds and even some of you McCain hold-outs clinging to your shrinking electoral chances out there. Instead of "trick or treaters" at Halloween you’re getting this. And when Obama wins and they find out you didn’t believe, they’ll be back for Christmas, er, Holiday caroling.

It’s like Up With People meets Children of the Damned…. only more disturbing. These indoctrinated skulls full of mush will be footin’ the bill for all the non-sense that has been accumulating for years now so we hope they really do enjoy their multi-cultrual tableau campfire sing-a-long.


He’s gonna change it, he’s gonna rearrange it. She’s got B. Hussein Obama eyes.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, they've taken down the Obama Youth video a couple of times now in the past 24 hours responding to complaints from viewers of ruptured eardrums and bleeding eyes. Seriously, I'll try to have it back up but in the mean time, here is a video from some mysterious land overseas from which Obama Youth copied the template.

UPDATE 2: B-Daddy reposted youtube embed, should work now.

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All Hail Obama For Your Intervention in Passing the Bail Out Bill

I thought I would write about His Oneness' role in helping Nancy Pelosi get the $700 billion bail out bill passed earlier today.

Speaking in Colorado, picture at left, he is telling people to stay calm.

And that's a wrap.

On a side note, is he looking angrier and angrier, everyday? Seems like the better his poll numbers the more partisan he sounds and the angrier he looks.

I think McCain wasted a great opportunity to present a principled alternative approach. Too bad. Dick Morris agrees with me, or maybe the other way around.

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Reviewing the Bidding

Although Obama paints himself as a moderate who will "heal the nation," a review of his record and statements a pattern of partisanship and positions that most voters would find objectionable.

Denying workers the right to vote on whether they want a union. Fact check here.

Increased taxes. Obama would raise capital gains taxes, even if it meant less revenue for the government, "as a matter of fairness." He has said he would let the Bush tax cuts expire, but push through his plans to cut taxes for those making under $75,000 per year, more class warfare. Obama would increase social security taxes on those making over $250,000, from his web site, which I refuse to link.

Vast expansion of the role of government in health care. Not much debated yet, but Obama proposes bringing Medicare-like system to the uninsured under 65. But Medicare is rampant with fraud, nice recent examples here and here. The annual cost of Medicare fraud is estimated at $10 billion. Fact check here.

Fixed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. In spite of the surge's admitted success, Obama still says he wouldn't have voted for it. Why, because he says it distracts from the "real war on terror." But for terrorists themselves, Iraq is the central front.

Naivete on foreign policy: Willing to have Presidential meetings with the world's loonies, like Ahmadinejad, without preconditions. Debate discussion at Gateway Pundit. As I commented on that article, Preconditions are necessary for THE PRESIDENT to meet with these rogues. Obama tries to conflate lower level meetings, which need not have preconditions with the presidential one, which must. Lacking this basic understanding of diplomacy, how can he be trusted to lead? Obama's own words on YouTube here.

Instinctive opposition to all restrictions on abortion, extending to survivors of abortion. Plus, I just have to ask this of any supporters of unrestricted abortion rights that might stumble in here. Under what moral code is it justifiable to abort (i.e. kill) a baby at 8 months into the pregnancy while in the womb, but if that same baby were delivered prematurely, it is a crime to kill it after birth?

Just a reminder on the importance of this election.

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Root Cause of Current Crisis

If you don't have time to view this whole video clip, I will summarize. The root cause of the current crisis is the spread of bad mortgage debt through the financial system. This debt flowed because Fannie Mae securitised high risk mortgages and sold them to Wall Street and banks. Fraud in the valuation of these securities also played a role, resulting in the sacking of the Harold Raines, the head of Fannie Mae. The political push that allowed this to happen was the Community Reinvestment Act which turned every mortgage institution in the country into a predatory lender. Obama has much closer ties to the problem than John McCain who made early attempts to correct the problem. This all sounds very dry, but the video is highly entertaining.

H/T Drudge.

Programming Alert

No blogging on Obama tonight, I chose to spend my time masochistically watching USC come unraveled in Corvallis. My post on that event will publish on BwD, a little after midnight PDT. On the theme of masochism, I also had a little Calculus tutoring to do.

Wrong-footed...Again

Team Barry appears to have been caught off guard by John McCain's announcement today that he was suspending his campaign to work on solving the financial crisis. Meanwhile, Harry Reid has painted Obama's campaign into a tough position. According to Roger Hedgecock, yesterday, Harry Reid was calling on John McCain to return to Washington to ensure that enough Republican votes get delivered to pass the administration's bail out package. I couldn't find the link to the direct quote, but here is Harry making this clear through surrogates. Now, Harry is backtracking with statements like "We need leadership, not a campaign photo op."

The problem for Obama is that McCain has again grabbed the headlines and taken a leadership role. I am praying for McCain to come to his senses and offer a package that breaks sharply with Bush socialism and embodies free market principles. That would be both best for the nation, see yesterday's post and burnish his credentials as the "maverick" and better able to bring real change. Also, it would put Obama in the tough position of being on the side of Bush on an important issue.

Meanwhile Obama looks churlish for saying the debates must go on. Further, his statements that Presidents must be able to work on more than one thing at a time looks out of touch. Both candidates are senators, and the action right now is in Congress, so to suggest that the campaign and debates must go on, plays to Obama's weakness, that he is all talk and no action. This is also a tough sell after Biden's comments that Bush should emulate Roosevelt and get on TV to talk about the 1929 stock market crash. (But Joe is in a lot of trouble with Suit already, or maybe not; there is a theory that he gaffes so often, it's not newsworthy or damaging to Obama.)

Meanwhile, we have normally sensible Republicans like KT, pushing for passage of this bail out on the theory that there is no other way out and it won't really cost that much. Some action is needed, after all the government created this problem in the first place through low interest rates, Fannie Mae's practices, and the push to give home loans to the unqualified. But the massiveness of the intervention and the nationalization of an entire industry are incompatible with finding long term solutions.

I finally found the quote I was looking for. Here is Obama answering a question on the debates and the crisis sans teleprompter:

QUESTION: Do you plan on attending the debate on Friday? And is Senator McCain playing politics with this by saying (OFF-MIKE) not go to this debate?

OBAMA: Well, let me say this. Just to go through the chronology today, I called him this morning with the intent of issuing a joint statement. I got called back around 2:30. We had a conversation. I made the suggestion to him. He agreed to that suggestion.

He then suggested, in addition, that we need to have a meeting in Washington with the congressional leaders and potentially the president. And what I told him is, well, why don't we get the joint statement out first to enunciate the principles that both of us agree to and to send a clear signal to the members of Congress that this, in fact, is something that should not be bogged down by partisan politics?

And, now, when I got back to the hotel, he had gone on television to announce what he intended to do. I believe that our staffs are still working on this joint statement.

I -- I think the important principle at this point is to send a clear signal to members of Congress, as well as the country, that this is a serious problem that has to be solved and not -- should not be subject to the usual partisan politics.

With respect to the debates, it's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is -- it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once.

I think there's no reason why we can't be constructive in helping to solve this problem, and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country. So, in my mind, actually, it's more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy, as well as dealing with some of the issues of foreign policy that were initially the subject of the debate.

What the heck did he just say? I listened to it first, now I see it in writing, it's scary. Tell us your position, say something intelligible, convince us you're not an empty suit. Also hat tip to Roger Hedgecock, who points out that neither McCain nor Obama will be President in 40 days.

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Why I Was a Teenage Libertarian - Updated

Here are some statements from Barack Obama and John McCain on the proposed $700 billion bail out of financial firms.

As he has said before, [Candidate X] said five principles must be included: greater accountability and independent oversight; a path for taxpayers to recoup the money; transparency in decisions on which companies to help; a cap on the executive pay of those companies that take part and no earmarks in the plan for any specific businesses.

Adding some specificity to proposals he has already made, [Candidate Y], the [Republican or Democratic] presidential nominee, called for a payback plan for taxpayers if the bailout succeeds; a bipartisan board to oversee the bailout; limits on any federal money going to compensate Wall Street executives; and aid to homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgages.

So it's crunch time, the first test of leadership, both candidates are campaigning on their vision of change and we get THIS? You can decipher which candidate is which by clicking the embedded links. And even if you guess right, so what, what's the difference? As I disclosed earlier, this year I changed party registration from Libertarian to Republican, but b.s. like this makes me wonder why.

KT will scold me, saying something has to be done. And I am sympathetic to avoiding a total meltdown. But a big fat giveaway? Come on. How about using this country's existing bankruptcy laws to let these firms keep operating while they shed debt and overpaid CEOs. Maybe an emergency review of those laws, rather a government give away would prevent the taxpayers from getting soaked. And for a long term reform, we need some transparency about the value of assets on the books in our accounting standards. Nobody knows the value of credit default derivatives. People don't even know who owns their mortgages.

At least Joe Biden is making things entertaining with his inability to know when to stop, as KT predicted he would. Newsweek's Andrew Romano gets credit for the week's best headline, "Biden Fires Up The Gaffe-O-Matic."


Update #1:

Ron Paul does a great job of explaining this mess. His key points are that prolonged, artificially low interest rates combined with government intervention into the housing market created a real estate bubble that is now bursting. Continuing to prop up the market only prolongs the pain and increases moral hazard. Ron Paul is at his cogent best, calmly and rationally explaining this issue in terms that I believe will even resonate with KT.

I liked John McCain's initial gut reaction that AIG should not be bailed out. I trust his gut instincts and wish he would go with them more often.

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Obama Lies About His Abortion Record

A new ad from Team Barry calls the claim that he tried to thwart the Born Alive Infants Protection Act a "despicable lie." Unfortunately, it is Obama who is lying. The woman pictured at right, Gianna Jessen, survived an abortion in the 1970's. She appears in an ad chastising Senator Obama for voting in a way that would have left her for dead. More details here. In fact, when he was an Illinois State Senator, Obama actively opposed the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act." Obama claims his opposition was due to the act not protecting doctors and nurses practicing abortions. But that is a lie, as the act included the same language that is now in the similarly named federal bill.

Obama is also trying to hide his support for abortions in general, including federal funding. His defenders in the New York Times have decried an issues ad aimed at his record of supporting taxpayer funding of abortions and overturning state restrictions on abortions, calling it Swift Boat campaigning. You can debate the merits of campaign finance law, but not the truth of Obama's extreme pro-abortion positions. Over at "Between Two Worlds" you can see a video of Obama promising to pass the "Freedom of Choice Act." If you read the proposed bill you might reasonably ask, "Where is the taxpayer funding of abortions in there?" In two places. First, the bill calls abortion a "matter of reproductive health." If enacted, such language would require all providers of Medicaid, Medi-Cal or other taxpayer funded health care for the poor to also provide abortions, as a matter of non-discrimination. Second, the bill makes abortion a fundamental right codified into law. When someone gets rights like these (such as the right to a lawyer for the accused), we all know who foots the bill. That's right boys and girls, the taxpayers. Also, the language of the bill explicitly overrides every state law restricting abortion and makes them subordinate to this proposed federal law.

Whenever his record is brought to light, Obama plays hardball on the abortion issue. He wouldn't be counter-attacking with such vehemence if his team didn't think his record on this issue wasn't such a lose. I think he could lose Pennsylvania on this issue, for example, and that might be game over.

Finally, your heart has to go out to Gianna Jessen, who sufferes from cerebral palsey as a result of the botched attempt on her life. I would like to leave you with her response to Obama's counterattack on her:

Jessen responded to the ad and told LifeNews.com: "Obama is clearly blinded by political ambition given his attack on me this week."

"All I asked of him was to do the right thing: support medical care and protection for babies who survive abortion – as I did 31 years ago," she said. "He voted against such protection and care four times even though the U.S. Senate voted 98-0 in favor of a bill identical to the one Obama opposed."

"In the words of his own false and misleading ad, his position is downright vile," Jessen continued."Obama said at the recent Saddleback Forum that the question of when babies should get human rights was above his pay grade. Such vacillation and cowardice would have left me to die if his policies were in place when I was born. Thank God they were not," she said.

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Demagoguery and Seizing on Current Fears

Obama put out a bald faced lie today in Florida:

“If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week,”

This is demagoguery of the worst sort, for two reasons. First, neither John McCain nor George Bush ever proposed putting all Social Security contributions into the stock market, only a portion. Second, even if someone had done been allowed to invest their Social Security taxes in the stock market over the past 30 years, they would still be receiving superior returns to those the government provides. Some facts:

At the beginning of 1975 the S&P 500 Index was at 68.56. Since that time the S&P 500 Index has experienced an impressive growth rate to its current level around 1500. During that time the S&P 500 Index has had 25 years of positive gains and 7 years of negative returns.

The S&P 500 closed at 1255 on Friday, despite a week of panic, so the historic rate of return from 1975 is 8.8%. (That article must have been written early this year.) This is what a diversified portfolio of stocks can be expected to earn over many years. It is scandalous that Obama is peddling the myth that this is somehow risky, the greater risk for most workers not near retirement would to not be in the market. Meanwhile Social Security is offering a rate of return of less than 2%.

Further, Social Security obligations can not be sustained without change. Obama has joined Pelosi and Reid in opposing any change to a system that we can state to a certainty is on a path to bankruptcy. From David Ignatius in the WaPo

Pelosi describes with relish her strategy for trouncing Bush's plan to privatize Social Security -- which was to blast it mercilessly, without offering an alternative. The implicit message is that negotiation and compromise are for losers. The reality that Social Security is facing bankruptcy seems not to interest either Pelosi or Reid.

Nor Obama for that matter. So much for hope and change. This is relevant to the current crisis; do we really need four or eight years of failing to deal with impending crises? Because the current financial mess, bad as it may seem, pales in comparison to the $44 trillion in unfunded liabilities in the Social Security system over the next 75 years. And for some reason, young people are the ones supporting The One. I guess there is some irony there, as they will be the ones to pay the bill.


P.S. If you want to determine the historical rate of return for the S&P 500 (or any other index) for any period of your choosing, use R=(ln(final value/initial value))/T, where R is the rate of return as a decimal (you need to multiply by 100 to get per cent) and T is the period of time in years that you are examining. I challenge the reader to find a 30 year period where the rate of return is less than the best we can expect of Social Security (2%).

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Bringing Us Together - By Stoking Racial Tensions

Rush Limbaugh has ripped Obama for stoking racial tensions with a Spanish language ad that accuses of McCain being a racist just like Limbaugh with identical views on immigration. [Pause for Rush fans to pick themselves up off the floor and stop laughing.] Rush is fully capable of defending himself and does very well in his WSJ opinion piece. I had to give a couple great quotes from Rush:

"...Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before."

"Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society."

However, I noticed another angle in the transcript of this ad (from Hot Air):

“Don’t forget that John McCain abandoned us rather than confront the leaders of the Republican Party. Many of us were born here, and others came to work and achieve a better life for their families — not to commit crimes or drain the system like many of John McCain’s friends claim. Let’s not be fooled by political tricks from John McCain and the Republicans. Vote so they respect us. Vote for a change.”

Notice how the ad conflates those, presumably of Mexican origin, who were born here with those who "came to work and achieve" after BREAKING THE LAW. (Props to Dean at BwD for repeatedly pointing out media idiocy on this meme.) Then, with these two groups rhetorically one happy family, the punch line is "Let's not be fooled... Vote for a change." Obama's campaign is knowingly encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for him. Further, he is condoning illegal immigration. If Team McCain could get some message discipline going, they could hammer Obama for almost a week for this crap. Bilbray won that special election in 2006 after Francine Busby got caught on tape apparently saying to an immigrant without papers, "You can all help--you don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help." This turned what was thought to be a close election into a blow out (and not for Busby).

Also, Obama aspires to hold the highest office in the land, whose oath of office requires not just respect for, but active defense of the constitution. That same constitution calls on the Executive Branch to enforce the laws of this nation passed by the Congress. But words only mean what The One wants them to mean.

H/T: Hot Air

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