Sunday, May 25, 2008

Obama up to his neck in the Illinois corruption now on trial in court

The first case of many to go to trial resulting from the Operation Board Game investigation is being referred to as the "biggest political corruption trial" since former Illinois Governor George Ryan's trial two years ago, in the Chicago media. In this case, the Syrian-born immigrant, Tony Rezko, is facing 24 total counts of wire and mail fraud, aiding and abetting a solicitation of bribery, money laundering and attempted extortion. Rezko supported Republican George Ryan in his campaign for Governor......

There was no mystery about how Rezko gained control over the Teacher's Retirement System board and the Health Facilities Planning Board to pressure companies and individuals hoping to get state business for kickbacks, Schar told the jury. "The answer to that question is access and clout and it stems from Rezko's ability to raise a lot of money," Schar said. "He is one of the top fundraisers for Gov. Rod Blagojevich," he noted.

Rezko gained power over the Planning Board by stacking it with members whose vote he could control, Schar said. The chairman was reappointed after delivering a $1,000 contribution to Rezko for Blagojevich and two others contributed $25,000 before getting appointed.

Tony Rezko is a private citizen. Therefore, the evidence presented in the trial focused on his influence over officials in getting members appointed to the Boards. Prosecutors did not discuss how the legislation got passed that enabled the Planning Board to be set up in a way that allowed for the appointment of members to rig the votes to begin with.

That part of the scheme will likely be detailed in future indictments, probably starting with Blagojevich. Blagojevich signed the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act with an effective date of June 27, 2003. However, before he could sign the act, a bill had to be passed by the Illinois House and Senate. As discussed fully in Curtain Time Part II, Obama was the inside guy in the senate who pushed through the legislation that resulted in the Act.

Obama was appointed chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. The minute the bill was introduced, it was referred to his committee for review. The sponsors of the bill also served on this committee with Obama. Within a month, Chairman Obama sent word to the full senate that the legislation should be passed.

On May 31, 2003, Senate Bill 1332 passed and specified that the "Board shall be appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate." The legislation reduced the number of members from 15 to 9, paving the way for the appointment of a five-bloc majority to rig the votes. The corrupt members appointed included three doctors who contributed to Obama. Michel Malek gave Obama $10,000 on June 30, 2003 and donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003. Malek also gave Obama another $500 in September 2003.

Fortunee Massuda donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003, and gave a total of $2,000 to Obama on different dates. After he was appointed, Dr Imad Almanaseer contributed a total of $3,000 to Obama. Almanaseer did not give money to Blagojevich....

Only two pay-to-play schemes succeeded before the Feds swooped in and shut them all down. Blagojevich did not receive the $1.5 million from the Planning Board deal because the hospital was never built.

But Obama received $20,000 from the first kickback paid in the pension fund scheme and the straw donors used to funnel the $10,000 payments, Elie Maloof and Joseph Aramanda, also made $1,000 contributions to Obama's failed run for Congress in 2000. In addition, Aramanda gave $500 to Obama's senate campaign on June 30, 2003. In the summer of 2005, Aramanda's son landed an intern position in Obama's Washington office.

Obama also received contributions for his senate campaign from the two persons appointed to rig the vote on the pension fund board. On June 30, 2003, Jack Carriglio contributed $1,000, and the other appointee, Anthony Abboud, donated $500 on June 30, 2003, $250 on March 5, 2004, and $1,000 on June 25, 2004. The person chosen to funnel the kickback in a future scheme, Michael Winter, donated $3,000 to Obama on June 30, 2003.

All these people are also cooperating in exchange for immunity or lesser prison sentences but prosecutors pointed out during closing arguments that people who entered into agreements with the government are required to tell the truth or all deals are off.

During the Rezko trial the jury saw an exhibit that credited Rezko with raising $1.44 million for Blagojevich. In his closing argument, Rezko's attorney, Joe Duffy, told the jury: "The evidence shows Rezko spent more time in 2003-2004 fundraising for St Jude's Children's Hospital, George W Bush and Barack Obama, then he did for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich."

During his opening statement in the trial, Duffy also pointed out that Rezko had raised money for many politicians and specifically named Obama. The fact is, in addition to being his real estate fairy for the $2 million mansion, Rezko is Obama's political Godfather. His career in politics was launched on July 31, 1995, with contributions of $2,000 from Rezko for the Illinois senate campaign. Obama only raised about $100,000 for that race, with roughly $15,000 coming from Rezko.

After Rezko was indicted in October 2006, Obama claimed Rezko only raised $50,000 or $60,000 over his political career. This is the story he gave in the media for more than a year. But the total amount revealed during interviews with the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune on March 14, 2008, added up to a quarter million.

Several of the people who led Obama's corrupt finance committee for the US senate race with Rezko, and collected all the contributions from the people involved in the pay-to-pay schemes, are now running the show for his presidential campaign.

For reasons discussed in Parts I through V of Curtain Time, Obama's downfall will be what he claims was a "boneheaded" mistake in entering into real estate deal with Rezko in June 2005, less than a month after Rezko received a $3.5 million loan from the Iraqi-born billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi, who ended up with Riverside Park, a $2.5 billion 62-acre development project in Chicago.

However, judging from the indictments in Board Games unsealed so far, Obama's legal culpability at this point anyways, stems from his involvement in setting up and receiving money from the pay-to-play schemes.

Much more here





Obama's "Ohio River Valley" Problem

If you have given any attention to the punditry regarding the Democratic primary contests you have probably heard about Obama's so-called "Appalachia Problem." The premise is simple: Obama does not do well with hill people, particularly in places like West Virginia and Kentucky. As a result dire election results from such areas can be safely discounted. Move along.nothing to see here. The (mostly) unspoken subtext is less subtle. "These are nothing but toothless, racist hillbillies. Can't you hear the banjos?"

The "Appalachia" meme is being pushed by those who want to hide the extent of Obama's difficulties in rural America. By calling it an "Appalachia problem" you can attempt to inoculate against the idea of a more general rural problem for Obama. If one, for example, were to discover an "Ohio River Valley Problem," well it becomes harder to demonize such voters. Whatever images come to mind when you think of the Ohio River Valley and its people, it isn't scary inbred white trash. In fact, most rural Americans would think of these folks as being like themselves in most important ways.

When you look at primary results across that part of the country it becomes clear that Obama does indeed have an "Ohio River Valley" problem. Here are the results by county in those places bordering the Ohio river:

Ohio

Clinton win by 30% or more: Brown, Adams, Scioto, Lawrence, Gallia, Meigs, Washington, Monroe, Belmont, Jefferson, Carroll, Harrison, Guernsey, Noble, Morgan, Vinton, Jackson, Pike, Highland

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Clinton, Warren, Butler

Clinton win by less that 10%: Athens

Obama win: Hamilton

Indiana

Clinton win by 30% or more: Dearborn, Ohio, Switzerland, Franklin, Ripley, Jefferson, Jennings, Clark, Scott, Floyd, Harrison, Washington, Crawford, Perry, Orange, Pike, Gibson

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Spencer, Dubois, Warrick, Posey

Clinton win by less than 10%: Vanderburgh

Obama win: None

Illinois

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Gallatin, Hardin, Pope, Johnson, Union

Clinton win by less than 10% White, Hamilton, Saline, Massac

Obama win: Alexander, Pulaski

Kentucky

Clinton win by 30% or more: Carlisle, Graves, Ballard, McCracken, Marshall, Livingston, Crittenden, Lyon, Caldwell, Webster, Union, Henderson, McLean, Daviess, Ohio, Hancock, Breckinridge, Grayson, Meade, Bullitt, Spencer, Henry, Trimble, Carroll, Gallatin, Owen, Grant, Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Pendleton, Bracken, Robertson, Mason, Fleming, Lewis, Rowan, Greenup, Boyd, Carter, Lawrence

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Hardin, Shelby, Oldham

Obama win: Jefferson

West Virginia

Clinton win by 30% or more: Wayne, Mingo, Lincoln, Cabell, Putnam, Mason, Jackson, Roane, Wirt, Wood, Ritchie, Pleasants, Tyler, Doddridge, Wetzel, Marshall, Brooke, Hancock, Marion, Harrison

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Kanawha, Ohio, Monongalia

Obama win: None

Pennsylvania

Clinton win by 30% or more: Greene, Washington, Beaver, Lawrence, Armstrong, Westmoreland

Clinton win by 10%-29%: Butler

Clinton win by less than 10%: Allegheny

Obama win: None

So, of the 133 counties in the Ohio River Valley, Obama managed to win 4 (or 3%.) Obama lost 103 (77%) counties by more than 30 percentage points. Obama lost by at least 10 percentage points in 122 (92%) counties. So the next time someone tries to sell you on the "Appalachia" meme, feel free to laugh in their face.

Source





OBAMA THE COMMUNIST

It just doesn't stop. There is nothing good in this man's resume. Word. In a recent interview, Obama called his mother "the dominant figure in my formative years. The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics." Remember Obama's mother was a communist. The Asia Times reported here:
"Friends describe her as a "fellow traveler", that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero's student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation. "

Today, on Capital Hill, two veterans of investigations into Communist influence on the U.S. political process will hold a briefing to release two new explosive reports on Barack Obama's ties with extreme anti-American elements, including agents of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA. The reports will shed important new light on Barack Obama's mysterious past.
"Communism in Hawaii and the Obama Connection" by Herbert Romerstein,

Herbert Romerstein, an author and investigative journalist, served as an investigator for the much-feared U. S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, the House Committee on Internal Security, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was head of the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation for the United States Information Agency. One of his recent books is the acclaimed THE VENONA SECRETS: EXPOSING SOVIET ESPIONAGE AND AMERICA'S TRAITORS.

and
"Communism in Chicago and the Obama Connection" by Cliff Kincaid.

Cliff Kincaid is an investigative journalist who specializes in analyzing the effects of communist and terrorist influence on the U.S. media. He is founder and president of America's Survival, Inc., and editor of Accuracy in Media's AIM Report. He is the author or coauthor of nine books, including WHY YOU CAN'T TRUST THE NEWS, and was instrumental in denying access to the U.S. media market to the Islamic terrorist Al-Jazeera television channel.

The reports are based on direct fact-finding and special access to historical, congressional, and investigatory documents.

Source





Does Obama support "Education reparations"?

Is the emerging debate about the relationship between Senator Obama and former Weather Underground leader and now Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers simply about the past?

I believe that that is not the only question at stake - at stake is the possibility that Bill Ayers continues to play a significant role in influencing the candidacy and potentially the presidency of Barack Obama, in particular on vital questions of educational policy. In particular, as this blog post will explain, at least one advisor on education policy to the Obama campaign advocates a form of reparations to black and other minority Americans for hundreds of years of alleged "education debt" owed them by white Americans. And Bill Ayers is an advocate of the same policy....

Fast forward, then, to the current scene. What is the state of Senator Obama's education policy? No major statement of education policy has been issued by the campaign. But Senator Obama did name as his education advisor Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a prominent national figure in education who teaches at Stanford University's School of Education. Darling-Hammond has not, as far as I can determine, issued any official blueprint or proposal for education policy on behalf of the candidate. However, on April 23 she did issue such a blueprint for an independent entity called the Forum for Education and Democracy (FED). Presumably she had some kind of tacit approval from the Obama camp to go ahead with that very public pronouncement. Thus, it is worth considering that FED blueprint as it may be influential in the thinking of Senator Obama.

When one does look at the FED blueprint I think we begin to see the fingerprints of Bill Ayers and of the Ayers' world view. It is not a pretty picture. The blueprint makes four recommendations for federal policy....

What does the FED report say needs to happen to right the allegedly sinking ship of America's K-12 schools? Well, back to that four point program:

Priority #1: Repay the "education debt"

And, what, you might ask, is the "education debt"? According to Professor Darling-Hammond it is a concept invented by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, of the University of Wisconsin and a "convenor" together with Professor Darling-Hammond of the FED. It is aimed at replacing the concept that has dominated much education reform discussion in recent years called the "achievement gap." As Darling-Hammond has written:


"[T]he problem we face is less an 'achievement gap' than an educational debt that has accumulated over centuries of denied access to education and employment, reinforced by deepening poverty and resource inequalities in schools. Until American society confronts the accumulated educational debt owed to these students and takes responsibility for the inferior resources they receive, [Gloria] Ladson-Billings argues, children of color and of poverty will continue to be left behind." (Emphasis added.)

With that reference to centuries of denied access, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings appear to be analogizing their concern about education resources, or the lack thereof, to the demand by some in the black community to reparations for 400 years of slavery and discrimination. In fact, in her major article exploring the concept of educational debt (Educational Researcher, Oct. 2005), Ladson-Billings came close to making the analogy explicit:

"What is it that we might owe to citizens who historically have been excluded from social benefits and opportunities? Randall Robinson (2000) states: 'No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch. (p. 74)'"

The book by Randall Robinson to which she refers is The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, which is an extended argument for reparations to be paid by America to blacks for the impact of slavery and discrimination.

Ladson-Billings also made this argument in her Presidential Address to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2006. AERA is in the news lately because Bill Ayers was recently elected as its Vice President of Curriculum Studies. Ladson-Billings is a specialist in "critical race theory" and "culturally relevant pedagogy."

Perhaps even more strikingly, Darling-Hammond has argued that there is in America "a growing number of 'apartheid' schools that serve racial/ethnic minority students exclusively-schools that have little political clout and are extraordinarily impoverished." Presumably it was at an apartheid school that the young Hispanic students I encountered at Cal State Pomona figured out how to get into some of the world's best 4 year colleges.

I want to point out here that I actually believe, as a legal scholar, that there is, in fact, some credible basis to argue that the current black American population, almost all of whom are descendants of slaves, and many of whom continue to suffer from the legacy of that experience as well the many years of discrimination that followed the end of slavery, should receive financial compensation for the impact of that experience. However, the argument faces significant hurdles, some legal, some intellectual and many that are political.

To extend the argument, as Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings do, to a broad call for the repayment of an alleged educational debt, strains credulity if not worse. The logic of the argument itself escapes me. It obviously would not easily apply to many in the school system who suffer the same resource inequities as black students.

And for Senator Obama to call for such a race-driven approach to a national education policy would obviously unleash a backlash that at a minimum would be a distraction in his campaign but, in the context of his large losses in states like Kentucky and West Virginia together with the Reverend Wright controversy, could very well sink his campaign altogether.

And yet, there was Professor Darling-Hammond, at the same National Press Club venue as Rev. Wright, calling for - as point number one of a four point plan - for repayment of the educational debt. And what of the other three points of the FED plan? Well, of course,

#2 was a multi billion dollar "Marshall Plan" for our schools - no doubt to pay down the debt (or is it on top of the repayment of the debt?);

#3 was more money to support research and innovation (hey, who can be against learning more about learning? but there is plenty of doubt about the research methods used by the "social justice" milieu in the education world and for a taste of the problems I highly recommend this book review by Nathan Glazer: The "Crits" Capture Presidential Power: Top education researchers denounce scientific research" Education Next, Winter 2007, a review of a book co-edited by Ladson-Billings with a chapter by Bill Ayers); and, to top it off,

#4: Engaging and educating local communities (which sounds a lot like the Local Schools reform effort that Obama, Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge tried to save in Chicago).

This suggests to me that some advisors in and around the Obama camp may have their own agendas with respect to education policy, perhaps at odds with the beliefs of the Senator himself, perhaps not. We do not know. But we should certainly ask and the campaign should explain.

On Bill Ayers' website he has posted a book review by his brother Rick Ayers, who teaches in (where else?) a Berkeley, California public school. Rick Ayers writes: "As Wisconsin education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings has pointed out, we should not define the problem as an 'achievement gap' as much as an educational debt that has accumulated as a result of centuries of denial of access to education and employment – which is exacerbated by deepening poverty and the lack of funding for schools."

More fundamentally, Bill Ayers world view is rooted in what I consider a racialist, if not racist, view of American politics.

[I use the first term - racialism - to describe ideas or perspectives that use race-based approaches which I think overstate the race component but that do not really rise to the level of racism. I have a hard time, for example, concluding that someone like Reverend Wright is, at heart, a racist in the sense that, let’s say, George Wallace was. But he certainly uses race in a divisive way that I think overstates the role of race. That is what I consider “racialism” as opposed to racism. There is, of course, the danger that one can go so far in that direction or view the world that way for so long that actual racism takes hold – perhaps Louis Farrakhan is an example, though I do not spend much time paying much attention to him. Maybe one way of getting at this issue is that while a white person can actually show up at the church of Reverend Wright it would not have been possible for a black person to show up at certain churches in the American south in the 1960s and expect to get home safely.]

Since the days of Weather Underground Ayers has advocated a viewpoint that argues that the fundamental issue in American life is "white skin privilege" - that white Americans benefit from being white at the expense of blacks. As Ayers' wife Bernardine Dohrn wrote in the introduction to a 2002 book she co-authored with Ayers and their fellow Weather Underground member Jeff Jones: "One cannot talk separately about class, gender, culture, immigration, ethnicity, or biology without being intertwined with race, as Katrina and the systematic destruction of a major black U.S. city reinforms us. We were waking up [in the late 1960s]. What to do once we had knowledge of the dimensions of white skin privilege? How to destroy white supremacy? Well, that is another matter. And as burning today as it was then."

Ayers himself wrote on his website in a January 19, 2008 essay on school reform: "The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. 'Across the US,' the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, 'a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.' This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood 'racial achievement gap,' and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy....Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up." (Emphasis added.)

At a certain stage in American history it might have made some kind of desperate sense to make this kind of argument, perhaps prior to 1865 or 1965, but in 2008? Even then it was possible and there were examples of multi-racial efforts to fight for justice and equality for all Americans.

Of course, today when millions of white workers suffer conditions little different from those of inner city blacks it borders on the absurd to make such an argument. Nor is it clear that throwing more money at our public schools is the real solution. Yet it seems to be the kind of argument that is behind the new race-based approach argued by those in favor of paying off centuries of "educational debt." The unanswered question today is whether or not Barack Obama subscribes to such a narrow and potentially destructive social perspective.

Source




Obama's Empty Words on Supporting Israel

Barack Obama on the campaign trail has been trying to defuse concerns among pro-Israel Americans regarding his sincerity and the level of support he feels for the American -Israel relationship. One line that he uses on the stump is a promise of an "unshakeable commitment to Israel" if he is elected .

Of course, this flies in the face of statements made by his Pastor, a man who he has called his "moral compass', "sounding board" and "confidant" of two decades; as well as a raft of his foreign policy advisers who have issued very problematic statements not only towards Israel but also towards American Jews. Let's put these aside though and examine Senator Obama's own words - not the one he has started using on the stump now - but ones he has spoken in the recent past toward another nation he once promised whole-hearted support to; Iraq. In 2004, according to the Boston Globe, he stated:
...that the United States had an "absolute obligation " to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success. He stated that failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster and would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.

That was a commitment to the Iraqi people -- an "absolute" promise that we would hold paramount our obligation to provide them security, to protect them from the ravages that would flow from a failed state. Yet a mere three years later he was ready to throw them to the wolves, genocide be damned.. The AP reported it this way in July 2007:
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there."

Barack Obama has also said that "...nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism than I have". To which, ABC News journalist Jake Tapper asked "Really? No one? Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz? No one? Wow."

Hmmm..do we find any evidence of this in Barack Obama's past? Did he try to dissuade Pastor Wright from bestowing an award on Louis Farrakhan, one of the most notorious anti-Semites in America? Has he shown any movement in the Senate to deal with the issue of foreign aid to the Palestinians, whose texbooks and media regularly espouse anti-Semitism? The Muslim world is rife with anti-Semitism and petrocrats and theocrats are using billions of dollars to promote and spread that virus.

Yet Barack Obama has also made promises to them. To convene a summit, to listen to their "grievances". Apparently, one of their grievances is not just the existence of Israel, but also the existence of Jews (and Christians and Hindus). He wants to, to use the vernacualr, hear them out. He has also indicated that he has served as a bridge to reconcile the Jewish and African-American communities and that he hopes, as President, he can facilitate such a rapprochement, that he has been the foxholes with his Jewish friends, presumably fighting anti-Semitism.

Have we seen any evidence that he has ever attempted to do so in his past 20 years of activism? There are myriad organizations that have attempted to heal the wounds, to abolish the friction, to close the chasm that has too long existed between the African-American and Jewish communities. Has he been a member of any such organizations, an active member? URLs, please-not just assertions from Chicago campaign supporters. Conversely, there has been an abundance of news item highlighting his ties to the Pro-palestinian, and anti-Israel, community over the years .

The Woods Foundation, where he sat on the very smll board of directors, extended thousands and thosuands of dollars in grant money to pro-Palestinian groups that promoted anti-Israel views. Did the Woods Foundation spend any money to improve relations between Jews and African-Americans? Which foxholes were Barack Obama in with his Jewish supporters? Can he expand on merely listing some Jewish friends from Chicago, some of whom-by the way-are not necessarily in the forefront of pro-Israel activities? Time for the candidate to back up his assertions with some hard facts.

Source





What? Obamessiah now sells himself to rural Pennsylvania as the pro-gun candidate?

Post below recycled from Michelle Malkin. See the original for links

The gall of this man. Here's a clip from my post from Thursday, where's he's talking tough on guns for urban Democrats in Philly and Pittsburgh:
"I am not in favor of concealed weapons," Obama said. "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.

But then Politico looked at Obama's strategy to woo blue-collar pro-gun voters in rural PA:
Barack Obama did not hunt or fish as a child. He lives in a big city. And as an Illinois state legislator and a U.S. senator, he consistently backed gun control legislation. But he is nevertheless making a play for pro-gun voters in rural Pennsylvania. By highlighting his background in constitutional law and downplaying his voting record, Obama is engaging in a quiet but targeted drive to win over an important constituency that on the surface might seem hostile to his views.

You know, sometimes I start to suspect that liberals think we're stupid. `Yeah, I'm tough on guns, and.a great fan of the Second Amendment! Hope! Change! Arugula!' Alas, apparently, we're not:
Melody Zullinger, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs who received the Obama campaign e-mail on his gun record, said Obama sounds like he is "speaking out of both sides of his mouth." "I was at one of our county meetings last night and I mentioned this to [federation members]," Zullinger said Friday of the Obama outreach. "Everyone basically blew it off and weren't buying it."

They also quote a pro-gun Democratic state legislator who's all ga-ga for Obama and trying to tell everyone who'll listen what a great Second Amendment advocate Obama is. His name's Dan Surra, and I'll bet this really hurts his credibility. His constituents now know that his long commitment to gun rights is for sale when the Obamessiah turns on the charm.

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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