Who Vetted Obama?

The Washington Post reported that John McCain's vetting process for picking Governor Sarah Palin included an FBI background check. Other reports dispute this. But when did the FBI investigate Obama? Who vetted him? We are living witnesses to an incredible media double standard, whereby a Republican vice-presidential candidate's personal life is being torn apart, while the Democratic presidential candidate continues to get a free ride. Obama has a 30-year history of associating with unsavory characters, beginning with communist Frank Marshall Davis and continuing with Jeremiah Wright and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, which should disqualify him from getting a security clearance in the government that he wants to run.

But the media would rather talk about Republicans and sex. The leftist DailyKos website started digging into Palin's past and claimed that her fifth child wasn't really hers. The charge fell apart when pictures surfaced of the governor pregnant with the child. Nevertheless, the media, which have been so quick to ignore questions about Obama's background, joined in the inquiry into Palin's private family matters and forced the governor to disclose that one of their daughters is pregnant out of wedlock. This is what passes for investigative reporting these days.

A daughter's pregnancy, of course, has nothing to do with whether Palin is fit for the job of vice-president or even president and is entitled to a security clearance. But one's associations with communists who hate the United States might emerge as a cause for concern.

It is worth noting that the DailyKos site is the same site that a liberal blogger named Lee Stranahan says banned his comments about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards needing to answer reports that he had had an extramarital affair. Those reports, which came from the "tabloid" National Enquirer and not from any "respectable" major media outlet, turned out to be true.

It also turns out that the DailyKos got the leak from the Obama campaign of the candidate's alleged birth certificate, an announcement intended to put to rest all of the questions about whether Obama is a natural-born citizen and passes the basic constitutional requirement to be president. Is the document real? I have not seen any investigative reporters from the major media assigned to this story. Instead, they're sniffing around Palin's family, which is something they had no desire to do while John Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

In contrast to the Palin story, which will probably continue for weeks, the Obama birth certificate controversy has been left alone by the major media. They have simply assumed?because they favor his candidacy?that Obama, with a history of being moved from country to country under different names, is a legitimate U.S. citizen. A lawsuit has been filed challenging Obama's qualifications to be president and some bloggers say the birth certificate is a fraud. But it's not an issue for the major media. They would rather examine photos of Bristol Palin's tummy.

An FBI investigation of Obama might get at the truth about the Democratic candidate. But an FBI background check is something that the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has not been forced to undergo. How many people even know that? But whether the FBI investigated Palin is now becoming a controversy.

In contrast to the focus on Palin and her family, the Post on August 24 ran a 10,000-word piece about Barack Obama's growing-up years in Hawaii that completely ignored the role of his acknowledged mentor, communist Frank Marshall Davis. There was not one word devoted to an identified communist, who also stands accused of drug use, alcohol abuse, and child molesting, being in intimate contact with the Democratic presidential nominee for about nine years of his young life.

The author of that Post story, David Maraniss, told us that he didn't think Frank Marshall Davis was worth even one mention in that 10,000-word story. He even said that Obama's own book was incorrect in ascribing a significant role to Davis in mentoring the candidate. As the facts show, Davis became Obama's father-figure when his real father abandoned the family. The mystery is why Obama only referred to Davis as "Frank" in his book and concealed his true identity. But the Post doesn't want its readers to know anything about it. But we do have a right to know that Bristol Palin is pregnant.

It will be coming out that Obama's mentor, Davis, was the subject of an FBI investigation for 19 years and that his FBI file is 600 pages long. Davis was included in the FBI's "security index," meaning that he could be arrested and detained in the event of a national security emergency. But the young person he sent off to college, who would admittedly attend socialist conferences and pick Marxist professors as his friends, doesn't have to undergo an FBI background check and will run the FBI should he become president.

In contrast to the coverage of Palin, the major media have not highlighted that, for all of his "experience" in foreign affairs, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is an exposed and admitted plagiarist. I have watched countless hours of coverage of the campaign on the cable and broadcast networks and haven't seen one detailed story about Biden's history of plagiarism. But can you imagine the outcry if it came out that Palin, who graduated from college in journalism and became a sportscaster, had been caught plagiarizing?

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is already claiming to have found a skeleton in Palin's closet. An Obama spokesman, Mark Bubriski, charged that Palin once supported Pat Buchanan for president because she was spotted years ago wearing a Pat Buchanan button. And since Buchanan has been charged by some with being a "Nazi sympathizer," that means that Palin is tainted and has to explain herself. Buchanan, a commentator on MSNBC and columnist, has exposed this as nonsense. But he is not the main target, of course. It is Palin and McCain. It is a campaign dirty trick designed to smear the Republican ticket and hurt its chances with Jewish voters. Assuming that this is a legitimate topic, when will Obama explain his association with a Moscow-line Communist for nine years of his life? And his failure to come clean about that relationship in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father? This seems to be more serious than wearing a button.

For the record, it is reported that Palin actually supported Steve Forbes and wore the Buchanan button as a courtesy to the candidate when he visited Alaska. In a related development, pro-Israel bloggers claim to have seen photos and video of an Israeli flag on Palin's left lapel and an Israeli flag in her office. So it would appear that she is a supporter of Israel, the exact opposite of what the Obama campaign was trying to imply. Now that this is out of the way, how will Obama explain Davis? Or will he ever be asked to?

For its part, the Washington Post has assigned at least two reporters to dig up dirt on Palin. One controversy is that Palin is under investigation for trying to fire a state trooper who threatened members of her family. On two straight days, August 30 and 31, Post reporters James V. Grimaldi and Kimberly Kindy authored articles about whether this trooper should have been fired or not, and what role Palin played in the controversy.

Since trying to fire a trooper who threatened your family doesn't strike most people as improper or illegal, the Post now seems to be taking a new direction. The Tuesday paper carries a page one story about how, when Palin was mayor of a town in Alaska, she sought federal grants. Tomorrow it will be something else.

McCain has a blogger, Michael Goldfarb, who is supposed to be an attack dog when it comes to media misdeeds. He calls a report by Elisabeth Bumiller of the Times "fiction" and offers her a link to the McCain press line. This is said to be tough stuff from the McCain campaign. They obviously don't understand what they're up against.

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Obama Questioned by Invitation-Only Crowd

(New Philadelphia, Ohio) Yesterday, 300 selectees attended an invitation-only Obama campaign rally at Kent State University - Tuscarawas. Here's an excerpt from the news report.

Gabrielle Neavin, 24, a single mother and student at Kent State's Tuscarawas campus, introduced Obama, saying she works multiple jobs, has significant credit-card debt and worries about quality child care. ''I believe this man, Barack Obama, has an understanding of my struggles,'' Neavin said. ''I've heard he has a plan to help women like me.''

Generally, women who have children out of wedlock are destined for lives of need. Couple that with irresponsible use of credit and you've got a situation that is entirely based on behavior. It's ludicrous to expect the President of the United States to provide a fix for irresponsible behavior other than simple nanny-state giveaways which don't actually address the real problem.

By the way, one wonders how many new supporters will result from Obama's invitation-only event. I'm guessing the list of invitees contained nothing but Obama supporters.

Nevertheless, Obama followed Neavin by talking about how he was going to help her. Taxes will be cut, tuition credit will be made available for community service and affordable health care will be provided. And, two million jobs will be created in Ohio through rebuilding roads and bridges. Of course, he said nothing about personal responsibility for negligent behavior. Not did he mention how he could marry a tax cut with massive giveaways. Then, there's this.

Obama said the country is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. ''I think we should spend that money here -- in New Pennsylvania,'' he said, misstating the name of the city where he was speaking.

I take that to mean he wants to deprive the military for the sake of New Philadelphia. When Obama is with the military, he pledges his rock-solid support. When he is away from the military, he pledges to pilfer its resources.

Frankly, I don't think anyone should trust anything that Obama says. If you really want to know what the guy thinks, you have to look at his long-time associates because, generally speaking, he's flavor-of-the-day in what he says.

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Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age

New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers. In a videotaped interview this year on New York's all news cable channel NY1, a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious disclosures about Obama. Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama.

"I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him," Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. "The friend's name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas," Sutton said. "He is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama."

Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama's application to Harvard Law School? "He wrote to me about him," Sutton recalled. "And his introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?"

Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour's advice. "I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly," Sutton told NY1. Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or from whom he was raising money on Obama's behalf. A Sutton aide told Newsmax that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide additional comment for this story.

As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from Columbia University in New York and doing a stint as a community organizer in Chicago. The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became for the young Obama: "He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country."

The details of Obama's academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude. Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim, would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy of the Ivy League law schools.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax from his home in San Antonio, Texas, al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get "distorted." "I was determined I was never going to be in that situation," he said. "Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright - in drag! - and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack."

But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince Alwaleed. "I am not surprised to learn about this," said Niger Innis, spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). "It is clear that Barack Obama's ties to the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years." Innis is scheduled to address the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn at 7:43 PM Eastern time on Thursday.

Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel. A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President General Abdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.

He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star Michael Jackson. But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's disgraced former pastor. In a 1995 book, "The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered," he alleged that the United States was plotting genocide against black Americans.....

Much more here






Fiorina presser: Democrats for McCain

Earlier today, I attended a press conference held by Carly Fiorina to introduce the Citizens for McCain Coalition, a group of Democrats and independents who plan to vote for John McCain in November. Six prominent Democrats joined Fiorina for the conference, including a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, two elected Democrats, and a former Clinton-era ambassador to OPEC. One by one, they explained how the campaign of Barack Obama disillusioned them and drove them to support McCain.

* Ambassador Mark Erwin

* John Coale, former fundraiser for both Clintons

* Silver Salazar, Hispanic community leader in Colorado

* Brian Golden, former state representative from Boston and an Iraq War veteran

*Jennifer Lee, a Hillary Clinton campaign worker from California

* Cynthia Ruccia, women's rights activist and former Congressional candidate from Ohio.

This was an interesting concept, and it certainly could help the McCain campaign with centrists and independents, but the reasons these people have crossed the aisle won't necessarily thrilll the base. Most of them talked about the untested nature of Barack Obama, and how unhappy Coale, Lee, and Ruccia were specifically about the sexism of the Obama campaign and the Democrats in general.

While those topics won't give the base any problems at all, the rest of the reasons might. Most of them praised McCain's moderation, and one or two specifically mentioned immigration as a reason. On the other hand, Ambassador Erwin gave a great response to my question at the end about foreign policy and how Obama is hopelessly naive. It'll make a great soundbite.

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Trust Obama With State Secrets?

In view of the media uproar over whether GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was properly vetted, Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid has called on the media to investigate why Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was given a high-level intelligence briefing on Tuesday without an FBI investigation of his mysterious and controversial background.

In fact, Kincaid writes that, "Because of his 30-year association with people who hate the United States, including communist Frank Marshall Davis, anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, it is highly doubtful that Obama could get a security clearance in the U.S. government he wants to lead." But none of this seems to matter to the liberal media, he notes. Instead, Kincaid says the major media are fixated on such issues as Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and her husband's driving record.

Kincaid's column, "Bush Gives State Secrets to Obama," available today on the AIM website at www.aim.org, criticizes the Bush White House for giving Obama access to classified information without safeguards being put in place to prevent its release into the hands of foreign and hostile interests. "We are witnessing an incredibly strange situation in which Obama can avoid a background check and get access to national security information, but the people he appoints to high-level government positions?if he becomes president?may be subject to an FBI probe," Kincaid reports.

Kincaid argues that "simple common sense dictates that America's state secrets should not be given away willy-nilly to a security risk who just happens to be running for president and captured the nomination of a major political party."

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Biden Was Wrong On the Cold War

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has electrified many conservatives and strengthened John McCain's claim that his administration would be far more reform-minded than Barack Obama's. At the same time, it has triggered accusations that Gov. Palin is far too inexperienced to be vice president, and has little knowledge of national security issues.

Mrs. Palin's lack of mastery of national security issues is often contrasted with Mr. Obama's vice presidential pick, Joseph Biden Jr. Mr. Biden has served in the Senate since 1973, is currently chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and is often described as a "statesman." In fact, decade after decade and on important issue after important issue, Mr. Biden's judgment has been deeply flawed.

In the 1970s, Mr. Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government in its war against the North. Congress's cut-off of funds contributed to the fall of an American ally, helped communism advance, and led to mass death throughout the region. Mr. Biden also advocated defense cuts so massive that both Edmund Muskie and Walter Mondale, both leading liberal Democrats at the time, opposed them.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in a debate over funding the Contras, a group of Nicaraguan freedom fighters attempting to overthrow the Communist regime of Daniel Ortega. Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of President Ronald Reagan's efforts to fund the Contras. He also opposed Reagan's efforts to send military assistance to the pro-American government in El Salvador, which at the time was battling the FMLN, a Soviet-supported Marxist group.

Throughout his career, Mr. Biden has consistently opposed modernization of our strategic nuclear forces. He was a fierce opponent of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Biden voted against funding SDI, saying, "The president's continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft." Mr. Biden has remained a consistent critic of missile defense and even opposed the U.S. dropping out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was the co-signatory to the ABM Treaty) and the end of the Cold War.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and, we later learned, was much closer to attaining a nuclear weapon than we had believed. President George H.W. Bush sought war authorization from Congress. Mr. Biden voted against the first Gulf War, asking: "What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?"

In 2006, after having voted three years earlier to authorize President George W. Bush's war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Biden argued for the partition of Iraq, which would have led to its crack-up. Then in 2007, Mr. Biden opposed President Bush's troop surge in Iraq, calling it a "tragic mistake." It turned out to be quite the opposite. Without the surge, the Iraq war would have been lost, giving jihadists their most important victory ever.

On many of the most important and controversial issues of the last four decades, Mr. Biden has built a record based on bad assumptions, misguided analyses and flawed judgments. If he had his way, America would be significantly weaker, allies under siege would routinely be cut loose, and the enemies of the U.S. would be stronger.

There are few members of Congress whose record on national security matters can be judged, with the benefit of hindsight, to be as consistently bad as Joseph Biden's. It's true that Sarah Palin has precious little experience in national security affairs. But in this instance, no record beats a manifestly bad one.

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