Is Obama on Drugs?

Seriously, is Obama on drugs? . Dr Jack Wheeler just called for Obama to be drug tested. I think he's right and no, I am not referring to the Sinclair's sex and drug allegations.The mental mistakes Obama has been serially making are so serious a neuroscientist thinks they are consistent with the kind caused by chronic use of either amphetamines or cocaine. Wheeler makes no accusations - just says the suspicion must be allayed. We drug test employees in the work place. Shouldn't presidential candidates be held to the same basic vetting process. I mean really.

Obambi has been gaffe-ridden for some time. Another beauty occurred on May 8, 2007: In a campaign speech, he said 10,000 people had died in a tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas a few days earlier. The death toll was 12.

In the past few weeks, however, the O-gaffes have been proliferating. On April 28 in Wilmington, North Carolina, he thought the month was "March" and that it was "nine months to November."

On May 13 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he claimed the war in Iraq was responsible for a shortage of interpreters in Afghanistan: "We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it is harder for us to use them in Afghanistan." Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. Afghans don't, speaking Pushtu, Dari, and various tribal languages.

On May 16 in a press conference, he claimed, "When Kennedy met Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war." The two met in Vienna in June, 1961. The Cuba Missile Crisis, which Obambi claimed was resolved by the meeting, was in October 1962.

On May 18 in an interview to the Lexington (Ky) Herald-Leader, he said: "I'm not very well known" in Kentucky compared to Hillary because of her husband and "her coming from a nearby state of Arkansas." Illinois - the state he's a senator of - borders Kentucky; Arkansas does not (Tennessee's in between).

The champion O-gaffe was committed on May 9 in Beaverton, Oregon. You have to see it to believe he actually said that during his campaign, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii."

No matter how exhausted from campaigning you are, you don't make a mistake like that under any normal circumstances. Saying there are 57 states - actually 58, or is it 59? - is such an egregiously stupid error that it is evidence of brain malfunction.

A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine. "His campaign's almost impossibly high level of activity, mental and physical, unrelenting day after day for month upon month is incredibly hard to maintain," he says. "The temptation to maintain it psycho-pharmacologically is great, especially for someone with a history of drug use. The drugs of choice would be amphetamines or cocaine, which can cause amazing mistakes, errors of incredible stupidity."

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obambi admitted his drug use when young: "Pot (marijuana) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin), though." Teen-age drug use isn't, of course, evidence for its use in one's 40s. But when someone who may be elected President of the United States starts behaving suspiciously, then it's justified to ask that those suspicions be allayed.....

It's worth noting here the correlation between narcissism and stimulant drug abuse. Obambi exhibits an almost pathological narcissism, an ego wildly out of proportion to anything he has actually accomplished in his life. Someone with this personality defect is drawn to irrationally risky behavior because of a conviction of invulnerability, or superhuman superiority. Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had such a syndrome. He chose to express it with hookers, but it's more common to see it expressed with drugs, cocaine in particular.

No accusations are being made here. To The Point is not accusing Barack Hussein Obama of illegal drug use. It is saying that he is behaving of late in such a way to cause suspicion that he might. That suspicion must be put to rest. Barack Hussein Obama's hair must be tested for drugs. If he refuses, it will add to the suspicion - as will every inexplicably stupid blunder he makes from now on.

More here







Leftist British foreign minister dubious about Obama

David Miliband has raised questions over Barack Obama's policy on Iran, which officials in Washington and Europe fear threatens to undermine the tough stance adopted by the West towards Tehran over recent years. The Foreign Secretary, on his visit to the US this week, has held talks with all three presidential campaigns, including those of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. But when he met Mr Obama's team of foreign policy advisers on Wednesday, Mr Miliband is understood to have queried the presumptive Democratic nominee's declared willingness to meet leaders from rogue states such as Iran.

They also discussed trade - with Mr Obama advisers saying that they still intended to renegotiate deals such as Nafta - and how much European support there would be for a US military surge in Afghanistan.

British intelligence chiefs are understood to have identified Iranian nuclear proliferation as the second greatest security threat, behind Islamic terrorism but ahead of renewed aggression from Russia. There is also deep concern about Iran's support for Iraqi Shia militias or terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. "The role of Iran as a source of instability in the region is undoubtedly a concern," Mr Miliband said this week. "No one can watch armed militias coming on to the streets in defiance of UN resolutions with equanimity."

Exact accounts of the conversation with Mr Obama differ and there is certainly acute anxiety on the part of the British not to be seen as stoking political controversy in America's presidential elections. In the past week Mr McCain has repeatedly hammered Mr Obama for what he claims is a "naive" commitment to hold direct talks with foreign dictators.

In a televised debate last summer, Mr Obama was asked if he would be willing to meet the leaders of countries such as Iran and Cuba without preconditions during his first year in office. He replied: "I would." But this week he appeared to pull back, saying he would still be willing to meet Iranian leaders but not before what he described as "preparations" - and not necessarily with President Ahmadinejad. Nevertheless, Mr Obama says that "tough but engaged diplomacy" - of the type carried out by President Kennedy or President Reagan with the Soviet Union - would represent "a different approach, a different philosophy" to the "failed Iran policy" of the current administration.

Mr Miliband, in a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reiterated Britain's support for the united front on Iran adopted by the US and its European allies, which he believes is beginning to pay dividends. "Our position, jointly, has always been that as long as Iran exercises responsibilities, then it will be able to forge a more productive and positive relationship with the international community," Mr Miliband said.

An aide later told The Times that the Foreign Secretary was being very careful to avoid direct criticism of any presidential candidate's positions. But the same source added: "We know Obama wants to engage more, but we don't know what route he will take or what he means by `no pre-conditions'. It has not unravelled yet and, when it does, we will be able to see where it converges or conflicts with what we're doing." A Foreign Office spokesman later said: "I just want to stress that David Miliband is not confused about Obama's policy. It would be quite wrong to say that."

Mr McCain's foreign policy chief, Randy Scheunemann, would not comment on his own meetings with Mr Miliband. But he said: "Obama's position is obviously different to that of Britain and France. Otherwise Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy would have already met the President of Iran without conditions.

Although Britain - unlike the US - maintains diplomatic relations with Iran, the West has been more or less united in seeking to isolate the Iranian leadership. The US, Britain, France and to some extent Germany have pressed for tighter sanctions against Iran, including measures directed against the country's ruling elite, for failing to comply with UN resolutions calling for a halt to its uranium enrichment programme.

British intelligence chiefs are understood to have identified Iranian nuclear proliferation as the second greatest security threat, behind Islamic terrorism but ahead of renewed aggression from Russia. There is also deep concern about Iran's support for Iraqi Shia militias or terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. "The role of Iran as a source of instability in the region is undoubtedly a concern," Mr Miliband said this week. "No one can watch armed militias coming on to the streets in defiance of UN resolutions with equanimity."

Source





The press, Obama, and Wright

This election season would not be the first time that the media which shares the leftist views of a candidate has airbrushed his image and missed his considerable deficits. Sosays Michael Barone, who observes that even if the media tell us there's no consequence to Obama respecting the Wright story, there will be:

Most reporters are liberals, whose circles of friends and acquaintances have included people with views not dissimilar to those of Wright or William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber with whom Obama served on a nonprofit board and at whose house his state Senate candidacy was launched. Such reporters don't find these views utterly repugnant or particularly noteworthy. But most American voters do. And they wonder whether a candidate who associates with such people agrees with them - or disbelieve him when he says he doesn't. Though most in the press won't admit it, that's a problem - for the Obama candidacy and for the whole Democratic Party once it nominates him.

Please, DNC do not listen to this. Listen only to CNN,MSNBC and Newsweek. Have they ever steered you wrong?

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Obama is descended from blacks who maintained an Arab identity

Post below excerpted from Kenneth E. Lamb. See the original for links

Sen. Obama's autobiography is filled with "composite" characters, rearranged timelines, and fantasy events that never occurred. I read that twice in the Washington Post - read Richard Cohen's columns of Jan. 1, 2008, and March 27, 2007, for yourself.

There are more articles than that, by more authors than just Mr. Cohen, but I wanted to get started by saying that what follows isn't just something I'm pulling out of thin air. What follows is serious, documented, and not at all what those who want to write history about the election of the first so-called "African-American" president, want in the least to admit is true - and why its truth matters more than their desire to ignore the truth for the sake of their desire to write history.

While his shrill wife objects, the truth is that Sen. Obama's life, as he wrote about himself in his autobiography, is, in fact, nothing but a fairy tale. Again, don't take my word for it - read Mr. Cohen's, and others, articles about it.

Why is the fact that Mr. Obama is only 6.25% African Negro not reported? Because to acknowledge it is to report this devastating truth about him: Mr. Obama is not legally African-American. It is impossible for him to be, in truth, America's first African-American president.

But no matter what he craves, no matter what he has used to propel himself through life, no matter the racist presumption of seeing his skin and without question calling him black, the hard, cold, genetically inarguable reality remains: he is not an African-American.

Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian, that from his mother. What those who want Mr. Obama to write history by becoming "America's first African-American president" ignore is that his father was ethnically Arabic, with only 1 relative ethnically African Negro - a maternal great-grandparent (Sen. Obama's great-great grandparent, thus the 6.25% ethnic contribution to the senator's ethnic composition.). That means that Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side. He is 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. Put another way, his father could honestly claim African-American ethnic classification. He was the last generation able to do so.

Sen. Obama could honestly say, "My father was African-American." Racist presumptions led an Ivy League admissions committee, and lazy "newspapers of record" factcheckers, to presume that if his father is African-American, then Sen. Obama must be African-American also. But it doesn't work that way. Racist presumptions coupled with sloppy vetting don't turn a lie into the truth. Sen. Obama is one generation too far removed from the ethnic African Negro input to make the same claim as his father, Harvard's Admission's stamp of approval notwithstanding. As you can see for yourself, Sen. Obama's African-American ethnic claim, when properly researched and documented, is a lie.

The question no one wants to answer - particularly Mr. Obama and his supporters, is, "Why do you think he has an Arabic name? Why does his father have an Arabic name? Why does every ancestor on his father's side have an Arabic name?" The answer is obvious: They have Arabic names because his father's side of the family tree is Arabic. Need proof? Research the Kenyan records for yourself. You will find that his father was officially classified as "Arab African" by the Kenyan government.

But in America's current political climate, that truth is heresy; that truth is "an inconvenient truth." It is the political equivalent in our time to what Galileo's scientific pronouncements were in his time: it is true, but nobody wants to know the truth because the lie is so much more comforting. That is why detractors of this truth will do everything to denounce it, except submit to the discipline of actually researching it. There's a reason for that: it proves he is not sufficiently Negro to earn classification under American law as an African-American.

Here is the truth about Mr. Obama's name, and his father's ancestors: True Negro tribal members of western Kenya where his father was born have Christian names, not Arabic. His father's decision to name him with an Arabic name is a matter of his father establishing his ethnic identity in Africa - it is done deliberately to separate him from the African tribes. He may live among them, but he is not one of them. His father's message is that he is Arabic, not Negro.

Many will find these truths unsettling. I'm often asked, "But I thought his father was Kenyan. How could Mr. Obama not be African-American, how could his ethnic composition be so Arabic?" The definitive clue to that answer is to look at his name, his father's name, and the names of all his ancestors on his father's side. They are all Arabic.

Researching his roots reveal that on his father's side, he is descended from Arab slave traders. They operated under an extended grant from Queen Victoria, who gave them the right to continue the slave trade in exchange for helping the British defeat the Madhi Army in southern Sudan and the Upper Nile region. Funny how circular is history; now the British again face the Madhi Army, albeit this time Shiite, not Sunni, as in nineteenth century Sudan.

But telling America's black community that while their ancestors were breaking the shackles of slavery, Mr. Obama's ancestors were placing those shackles upon their wrists would hardly play as an Oprah Winfrey best-seller.

Mr. Obama has struggled all his life trying to prove that he is black enough to be called black. The truth is that if Mr. Obama is elected, his primary ethnic composition is Caucasian, but of course, that carries no cachet. So if we look at his next predominant ethnic component, Mr. Obama would be America's first Arab-American president. The truth is that his name says it all.





Michelle Obama "Whitey" Tape?

Larry Johnson of Plame Game fame claims - through 'sources' that a tape of Michelle Obama getting all "Chris Rock" during a diatribe at the UCC is in existence.

"Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I've also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I'm told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It's a ticking time bomb.

And I've learned that a right-wing Republican billionaire has put a $1 million bounty on the video. He doesn't want John McCain to win, like a number of conservatives, and thinks Obama is a pathetically weak candidate. The billionaire wants that video released now.

Obama, speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America" showed fear through his name-calling: "If they think that they're gonna try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because, that I find unacceptable. . The notion that you start attacking my wife or my family - you know, Michelle is the most honest, the best person I know. She is one of the most caring people I know. She loves this country. And for them to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is . just low class."

Does Obama have a copy of the "whitey" video? We know that he knows that his wife knows. The video really does exist. If we have to wait until October to see it, Obama might explode before then from the tension."

I don't know if one exists but the bad news for Michelle is that most people wouldn't be surprised if one existed after seeing the evidence so far. That's a bad rep!

Source

(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.)

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

Obama's Troubling Instincts

By KARL ROVE

Barack Obama is ambling rather than sprinting across the primary-season finish line. It's not just his failure to connect with blue-collar Democrats. He has added to his problems with ill-informed replies on critical foreign policy questions.

On Sunday at a stop in Oregon, Sen. Obama was dismissive of the threats posed by Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria. That's the same Iran whose Quds Force is arming and training insurgents and illegal militias in Iraq to kill American soldiers; that is supporting Hezbollah and Hamas in violent attacks on Lebanon and Israel; and that is racing to develop a nuclear weapon while threatening the "annihilation" of Israel. By Monday in Montana, Mr. Obama recognized his error. He abruptly changed course, admitting that Iran represents a threat to the region and U.S. interests. Voters need to ask if Sunday's comments, not Monday's correction, aren't the best evidence of his true thinking.

Is Mr. Obama's first instinct to dismiss North Korea, the world's worst nuclear proliferator, as an insignificant threat? Is his immediate reaction to treat Venezuela as a wayward child, rather than as an adversary willing to destabilize the hemisphere? Is his memory so short he has forgotten the Castro brothers' willingness to aid revolutionary movements? Is he so shortsighted as to ignore the threat to Mideast stability that Syria's meddling in Lebanon and support for Hamas and Hezbollah represents?

Mr. Obama's Sunday statement grew out of a kerfuffle over his proclaimed willingness to meet - eagerly and without precondition - during his first year as president with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. On Monday, he said it was a show of confidence when American leaders meet with rivals; he insisted he was merely doing what Richard Nixon did by going to China.

I recommend that he read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqu‚ worked out over months of careful diplomacy.

The Chinese didn't change because of a presidential visit. In another book, "Diplomacy," Mr. Kissinger writes that "China was induced to rejoin the community of nations less by the prospect of dialogue with the United States than by fear of being attacked by its ostensible ally, the Soviet Union." Change came because the U.S. convinced Beijing it was in its interest to change. Then the president visited.

The same is true with other successful negotiations. President Ronald Reagan prepared the ground for his meetings with a series of Soviet leaders by rebuilding the U.S. military, restoring confidence in American intentions, and pressuring the Soviets by raising the specter of a missile defense shield.

Reagan knew rogue states only change when they see there are real consequences of their actions, and when it is in their interest to change. This requires patience, vision, hard work and the use of all the tools, talents and relationships available to the U.S. We saw a recent example when Libya, fearful of American resolve after 9/11, gave up its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. These programs, incidentally, were more advanced than Western intelligence thought.

Reagan knew he must not squander the prestige of the American presidency and the authority of the United States by meaningless meetings that serve only as propaganda victories for our adversaries. Mr. Obama seems to believe charisma and smooth talk can fundamentally alter the behavior of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

But what might work on the primary campaign trail doesn't work nearly as well in Tehran. What, for example, does Mr. Obama think he can offer the Iranians to get them to become a less pernicious and destabilizing force? One of Iran's top foreign policy goals is a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. This happens to be Mr. Obama's top foreign policy goal, too. Why should Iran or other rogue states alter their behavior if Mr. Obama gives them what they want, without preconditions?

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said in Florida that in a meeting with the Iranians he'd make it clear their behavior is unacceptable. That message has been delivered clearly by Republican and Democratic administrations in public and private diplomacy over the past 16 years. Is he so na‹ve to think he has a unique ability to make this even clearer?

If Mr. Obama believes he can change the behavior of these nations by meeting without preconditions, he owes it to the voters to explain, in specific terms, what he can say that will lead these states to abandon their hostility. He also needs to explain why unconditional, unilateral meetings with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong Il will not deeply unsettle our allies.

If Mr. Obama fails to do so, voters may come to believe that he is asking them to accept that he has a "Secret Plan," and that he is hopelessly out of his depth on national security.

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The Obama Learning Curve

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden took to the airwaves this week to "help" the rookie Barack Obama out of a foreign-policy jam. Oh sure, admitted Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee had given the "wrong" answer when he said he'd meet unconditionally with leaders of rogue states. But on the upside, the guy "has learned a hell of a lot."

Somewhere Mr. Obama was muttering an expletive. But give Mr. Biden marks for honesty. As Mr. Obama finishes a week of brutal questioning over his foreign-policy judgments, it's become clear he has learned a lot - and is learning still.

Right now, for instance, he's learning how tough it can be to pivot to a general-election stance on the crucial issue of foreign policy. He's also learning Democrats won't be able to sail through a national-security debate by simply painting John McCain as the second coming of George Bush.

Remember how Mr. Obama got here. In a July debate, the Illinois senator was asked if he'd meet, "without preconditions," the "leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea." It was an unexpected question, and Mr. Obama rolled with his gut: "I would," he said, riffing that the Bush administration's policy of not negotiating with terror-sponsoring states was "ridiculous."

Hillary Clinton, who still had the aura of inevitability, and who was already thinking ahead to a general election, wouldn't bite. At that point, any initial misgivings the Obama campaign had about the boss's answer disappeared. Mr. Obama hadn't got much traction differentiating himself from Mrs. Clinton over Iraq, but this was a chance to get to her left, to cast her to liberal primary voters as a warmonger. Which he did, often, committing himself ever more to a policy of unfettered engagement.

Today's Obama, all-but-nominee, is pitching to a broad American audience less keen to legitimize Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who provides weapons that kill American soldiers. The senator clumsily invited this debate when he took great umbrage to President Bush's recent criticism of appeasers (which, in a wonderfully revealing moment, Democrats instantly assumed meant them). Mr. Obama has since been scrambling to neutralize his former statement.

A week ago, in Oregon, he adopted the "no-big-deal" approach, telling listeners Iran was just a "tiny" country that, unlike the Soviet Union, did not "pose a serious threat to us." But this suggested he'd missed that whole asymmetrical warfare debate - not to mention 9/11 - so by the next day, he'd switched to the "blame-Republicans" line. Iran was in fact "the greatest threat to the United States and Israel and the Middle East for a generation" - but all because of President Bush's Iraq war.

This, however, revived questions of why he'd meet with said greatest-threat leader, so his advisers jumped in, this time to float the "misunderstood" balloon. Obama senior foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, channeling Bill Clinton, said it all depended on what the definition of a "leader" is. "Well, first of all, he said he'd meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. He hasn't named who that leader will be." (Turns out, Mr. Obama has said he will meet with . . . Mr. Ahmadinejad.)

Former Sen. Tom Daschle, channeling Ms. Rice, explained it also depended on what the definition of a precondition is: "It's important to emphasize again when we talk about preconditions, we're just saying everything needs to be on the table. I would not say that we would meet unconditionally." This is called being against preconditions before you were for them.

And so it goes, as Mr. Obama shifts and shambles, all the while telling audiences that when voting for president they should look beyond "experience" to "judgment." In this case, whatever his particular judgment on Iran is on any particular day.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Democrats entered this race confident national security wouldn't be the drag on the party it has in the past. With an unpopular war and a rival who supports that war, they planned to wrap Mr. McCain around the unpopular Mr. Bush and be done with it. Mr. Obama is still manfully marching down this road, today spending as much time warning about a "third Bush term" as he does reassuring voters about a first Obama one.

Then again, 9/11 and five years of Iraq debate have educated voters. Mr. McCain is certainly betting they can separate the war from the urgent threat of an Iranian dictator who could possess nukes, and whose legitimization would encourage other rogues in their belligerence. This is a debate the Arizonan has been preparing for all his life and, note, Iranian diplomacy is simply the topic du jour.

Mr. McCain has every intention of running his opponent through the complete foreign-policy gamut. Explain again in what circumstances you'd use nuclear weapons? What was that about invading Pakistan? How does a policy of engaging the world include Mr. Ahmadinejad, but not our ally Colombia and its trade pact?

It explains too the strong desire among the McCain camp to get Mr. Obama on stage for debates soon. There's a feeling Mr. Obama is still climbing the foreign-policy learning curve. And they see mileage in his issuing a few more gut reactions.

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Obama's Iraq Problem

Once Barack Obama's appeasement issue completes its turn through the most recent news cycle, the presumptive Democratic nominee will have to face a more worrisome analysis of another aspect of his foreign policy. While he's been blurring the lines between pre-conditions and diplomatic preparations, between terrorists and terrorist sponsors, clarity has come to Iraq. The Maliki government, the citizens of Iraq, and the Iraqi military are resolved to keep their country on track. Barack Obama continues to deny them support in their efforts.

On Tuesday, during a speech in Iowa, Obama said, "The Bush Iraq policy that asks everything of our troops and nothing of Iraqi politicians is John McCain's policy too," without so much as a nod to the Iraqi government's and Iraqi military's recent string of achievements. In February, the Iraqi parliament passed three laws, all critical to the future success of statehood: a 2008 budget, a regulation on power-sharing of provincial and local governments, and a partial amnesty of Iraqi prisoners. In March, Prime Minister al-Maliki liberated the southern city of Basra from Sadrists militias thus bringing the country's largest Sunni bloc back into the government. The Iraqi Army is now successfully ridding Bagdhad's Sadr City of more Sadrist thugs and Iraqi-U.S. forces are rooting al Qaeda in Iraq from their last stronghold in the northern city of Mosul.

We already know that the world's candidate has no problem denying American success (Obama has belittled the troop surge since its very inception), but how can the man who speaks incessantly of restoring the U.S.'s global image denigrate the efforts of America's newest-and arguably most critical-ally? How can he continue to mock the fragile hopes of a newborn democracy? How can any American president do so while making friendly overtures toward a neighboring mullocracy?

If Obama thinks there is no cost for shunning allies, he should look at the recent case of Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker of the House slammed the Maliki government in February at the very same time that the Iraqis passed the above-mentioned laws. She called the troop surge "a failure" and resigned herself to the all-is-lost script of 2006. This past weekend, Pelosi met with a cold reception when visiting Iraq to begin her mea culpa. Time magazine reports:

Pelosi is something of a nonentity to average Iraqis. If they know who she is at all, she is generally seen as an antiwar caricature figure, someone whose views on U.S. troop withdrawals are widely considered unrealistic. Pelosi has said she wants to begin withdrawal of troops this year with a goal for the U.S to be out of Iraq by the end of 2009. It is a time frame virtually no Iraqi political leader sees as feasible. Not even Mahdi Army militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiercest advocate of a U.S. withdrawal on the scene, has called for such a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The lack of popularity of Pelosi's views was evident in the fact that her first day on the ground Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not make an effort to see her. Maliki is currently in the northern city of Mosul overseeing a crackdown on insurgent networks there. But the city has been largely quiet in recent days, and there was no obvious pressing reason for the Prime Minister to skip Pelosi's arrival.

Such strained relations with a country so intimately involved with the U.S. is a liability. The problem is Barack Obama continues to espouse the same Iraq plan as Pelosi's. Every time he says "I will bring this war to an end in 2009," Iraqi leaders and citizens have reason to quake.

The U.S. is rightly concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq. Consider the risks of having an American president land in Iraq only to get the Pelosi treatment. No lofty talk about talk is going to assuage the concerns of Iraqis who know their futures depend, at the very least, on the recognition of their country's progress.

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Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed

IN his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency's - indeed one of the cold war's - most consequential: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy's special assistant, called those sentences "the distinctive note" of the inaugural.

They have also been a distinctive note in Senator Obama's campaign, and were made even more prominent last week when President Bush, in a speech to Israel's Parliament, disparaged a willingness to negotiate with America's adversaries as appeasement. Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy's legacy: "If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that's what he did with Khrushchev."

But Kennedy's one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one's adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings - his Harvard thesis was titled "Appeasement at Munich" - he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy's own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: "Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?"

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting "old, moribund, reactionary regimes" and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood "against other peoples following its suit." Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was "very unwise" for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.

Kennedy's aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was "just a disaster." Khrushchev's aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed "very inexperienced, even immature." Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was "too intelligent and too weak." The Soviet leader left Vienna elated - and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.

Kennedy's assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the "roughest thing in my life." Kennedy went on: "He just beat the hell out of me. I've got a terrible problem if he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won't get anywhere with him."

A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war." The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to "throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam's pants": nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna - of Kennedy as ineffective - was among them.

If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy's footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate.

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More of Obama's strange friends

On May 14 Barack Obama held a private and unpublicized meeting with Imam Hassan Qazwini at Macomb Community College in Michigan.

Qazwini heads the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Debbie Schlussel describes Qazwini as the Hezbollah terror group's foremost agent in America.

Qazwini is very open about his support for Palestinian homicide bombings, HAMAS, and Hezbollah. And he's a good friend of Hezbollah spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah--the man who issued the fatwa to Hezbollah terrorists to murder over 300 U.S. Marines and U.S. Embassy civilians in cold blood. Qazwini's mosque has held rallies and celebrations in support of Hezbollah, and many of Hezbollah's biggest money-launderers and agents in America are his congregants.

When I went undercover to his mosque in 1998, he and others welcomed Nation of Islam chief racist Louis Farrakhan as "our dear brother" and "a freedom fighter." Qazwini applauded Farrakhan's anti-Semitic statements saying that Jews were the "forces of Satan" and that there needed to be a "jihad" on the American people.

Obama's meeting with Qazwini was discovered almost by accident. The Detroit Free Press had a short piece on the meeting, which appears to have been sourced by Qazwini's mosque.

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Yet another choice Obama associate

An attorney and top foreign policy adviser to Sen. Barack Obama is coming under fire for representing controversial figures, including an accused human rights abuser, an alleged murderer of a U.S. soldier and even the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan.

Greg Craig, who has been termed the "lawyer of the left," represented John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Reagan in 1981 by firing six bullets at the president as he left a hotel. Craig was reportedly the architect of Hinckley's successful defense in which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, even though reports by the federal prosecution found Hinckley sane.

As a partner in the high-powered Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly, Craig represented former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sanchez-Berzain in a federal lawsuit of "crimes against humanity" due to his alleged role in the suppression of labor union riots in 2003 that resulted in the deaths of 67 people.

Sanchez-Berzain is loathed in Bolivia for allegedly turning the army loose on protesters in what was described as a brutal massacre of unarmed men, women and children, some of whom were reportedly shot at point-blank range.

Craig currently represents Pedro Miguel Gonzalez-Pinzon, president of the Panamanian National Assembly, who is wanted in the U.S. for the 1992 murder of a U.S. Army soldier and the attempted murder of another.

Gonzalez, a harsh critic of the U.S., is accused of murdering the solider, Zak Hernandez Laporte, on the eve of President George H.W. Bush's visit to Panama in 1992. The FBI is said to have credible evidence proving Gonzalez's guilt. The accusations and Gonzalez's Panamanian government position are a primary reason the U.S. has halted a U.S.-Panama free trade accord.

The American Future Fund this week called on Obama to fire Craig, stating in an ad campaign that someone who "has a history of defending corrupt foreign leaders and murderers" could offer severely misguided advice to the Illinois senator. The AFF launched a YouTube video petitioning for Craig's ouster.

In a January editorial, the Dallas Morning News called on Obama to fire Craig if the attorney doesn't drop the Panamanian as a client: "Mr. Obama has made clear that the White House is no place for influence-peddlers and special interests. ... This is one instance where he needs to show presidential decisiveness by asking Mr. Craig to choose between the campaign and involvement in a legal case where hot-button bilateral issues - and a Senate vote - hang in the balance," read the editorial.

Obama repeatedly has attacked Sen. John McCain for purportedly allowing lobbyists to serve as top advisers.

The Political Punch blog run by ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper noted, "There's a big difference between a lobbyist, who is paid to interact with lawmakers such as Mr. Obama, and a lawyer, who works with the courts. But in this situation, Gonzalez's indictment has complicated passage of the U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement."

Craig recently said at a forum that Obama's campaign is aware of his involvement in the Gonzalez case. "I have removed myself from participation in discussions with the candidate or his advisers on relations between the United States and Panama," Craig said. Obama has been on the record stating he opposes any trade act with Panama due to the Gonzalez case.

But Obama has not addressed Craig's defense of other unsavory characters such as Hinckley.

Craig also has represented Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., in the 1991 Palm Beach, Fla., rape case involving the senator and his accused nephew, William Kennedy Smith, who was acquitted of all charges. Craig was an aide to Kennedy in the 1980s.

In 2004, Craig was counsel for then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan during investigations that year of the Oil-for-Food scandal.

Craig, an anti-war protester in the 1960s, also successfully represented Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the Cuban father of Elian Gonzalez during the 2000 child custody dispute that ended in the forcible seizure of Elian by U.S. marshals and the boy's return to Cuba. According to reports, Craig was heavily involved in the decision to seize Elian. The outcome was seen as a major victory for Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Craig is a top foreign policy adviser to Obama. His foreign policy experience includes serving as Sen. Ted Kennedy's senior adviser on defense, foreign policy and national security issues from 1974 to 1988. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appointed Craig as a top senior adviser and as director of policy planning.

Craig's embrace of Obama turned some heads due to the attorney's high profile representation of Bill Clinton during impeachment hearings over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When the Senate refused to convict Clinton on accusations of perjury, Craig was seen as the politician's savior.

But Craig admonished Sen. Hillary Clinton in a March posting on Obama's site: "Hillary Clinton's argument that she has passed 'the commander-in-chief test' is simply not supported by her record," he wrote. "[Obama] possesses the personal attributes of a great leader - an even temperament, an open-minded approach to even the most challenging problems, a willingness to listen to all views, clarity of vision, the ability to inspire, conviction and courage," Craig argued.

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(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.)

McCain on Obama

U.S. Senator John McCain today issued the following statement:

"After Senator Obama's own advisors and supporters backtracked from his stated desire to hold summit meetings with the leaders of the world's worst regimes, Senator Obama himself has begun to reinterpret his stand. He now claims that some 'fear' to 'negotiate' with the likes of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who has called Israel a 'stinking corpse' or Ayatollah Khamenei, who called Israel a 'cancerous tumor.'

I have news for Senator Obama: I have met some very bad people before in my life. It is not fear that drives my opposition to unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, Kim Jong Il, and Raul Castro; rather it is my clear understanding that such a course will fail to eliminate the threat posed by these rogue regimes. I don't fear to negotiate. Instead I have the knowledge and experience to understand the dangerous consequences of a naive approach to Presidential summits based entirely on emotion.

"The question before the American people is which candidate is best able to secure the peace for the next generation of Americans, a peace that will keep our nation safe, prosperous and free. Senator Obama's desire to meet unconditionally in his first year at the presidential level with Iranian leaders is reckless, and demonstrates poor judgment that will make the world more dangerous.

With respect to Cuba, it is not America that needs to make unilateral concessions to the Castros - a 'gesture of good faith' as Senator Obama said yesterday - it is the Castro brothers who must allow the freedom they have so long denied to the Cuban people. Free the political prisoners, open the media, allow people to worship, schedule free and fair elections, and the United States will be happy to meet and talk. Until then, we cannot compromise our principles.

"Senator Obama has consistently offered his judgment on Iraq, and he has been consistently wrong. He said that General Petraeus' new strategy would not reduce sectarian violence, but would worsen it. He was wrong. He said the dynamics in Iraq would not change as a result of the 'surge.' He was wrong. One year ago, he voted to cut off all funds for our forces fighting extremists in Iraq. He was wrong. Sectarian violence has been dramatically reduced, Sunnis in Anbar province and throughout Iraq are cooperating in fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, and Shi'ite extremist militias no longer control Basra - the Maliki government and its forces do. British and Iraqi forces now move freely in areas that were controlled by Iranian-backed militias. The fight against al Qaeda in Mosul is succeeding in further weakening that deadly terrorist group, and many key leaders have been killed or captured.



As General Petraeus said last month, 'As we combat AQI we must remember that doing so not only reduces a major source of instability in Iraq, it also weakens an organization that Al Qaeda's senior leaders view as a tool to spread its influence and foment regional instability.' Iraqi forces have moved unopposed into Sadr City, a development the New York Times characterized today as a 'dramatic turnaround' as the government of Prime Minister Maliki 'advanced its goal of establishing sovereignty and curtailing the powers of the militias.'

"We continue to face challenges in Iraq, and we have a lot of work ahead. Yet the American people must ask whether we are more or less likely to succeed there if Senator Obama has his way. Each of these positive developments in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed. Senator Obama consistently predicted the new strategy would fail, and at every step events have demonstrated his judgment was consistently wrong.

He now says that he intends to withdraw combat troops from Iraq - one to two brigades per month until they are all removed - regardless of the conditions in Iraq, irrespective of the consequences for our national security, and despite the best advice of our commanders on the ground. He is wrong again, and the American people deserve a President who has the strength, judgment and experience to keep our country safe and secure."

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Obama already reinforcing A'jad in Iran

As predicted by Ed Lasky, Barack Obama's cozying up to summitry with Ahmedinejad of Iran is damaging our efforts to contain him. Only faster than Ed anticipated. Amir Tehari says Obama is already creating a terrible impact with regard to Iran's nuclear program:

BUOYED by their modest electoral success last month, critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's provocative foreign policy were preparing to launch a series of attacks on him in the Islamic Majlis, Iran's ersatz parliament. But then Ahmadinejad got an unexpected boost from Barack Obama.

Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator and now a Majlis member, was arguing that the Islamic Republic would pay a heavy price for Ahmadinejad's rejection of three UN Security Council resolutions on nukes. Then the likely Democratic presidential nominee stepped in.

Obama announced that, if elected, he wouldn't ask Iran to comply with UN resolutions as a precondition for direct talks with Ahmadinejad: "Preconditions, as it applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art. Because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are essentially what Iran views, and many other observers would view, as the subject of the negotiations; for example, their nuclear program."

"Talking without preconditions" would require America to ignore three unanimous Security Council resolutions. Before starting his unconditional talks, would Obama present a new resolution at the Security Council to cancel the three that Ahmadinejad doesn't like? Or would the new US president act in defiance of the United Nations - further weakening the Security Council's authority?

If Obama can do this harm before he takes office, imagine what kind of presidency he would run.

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If We Could Talk to the Animals

by Ann Coulter

You always know you've struck gold when liberals react with hysteria and rage to something you've said. So I knew President Bush's speech at the Knesset last week was a barn burner before even I read it. Liberals haven't been this worked up since Rev. Jerry Falwell criticized a cartoon sponge. Calling the fight against terrorism "the defining challenge of our time" -- which already confused liberals who think the defining struggle of our time is against Wal-Mart -- Bush said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The way liberals squealed, you'd think someone had mentioned Obama's ears. Summoning all their womanly anger, today's Neville Chamberlains denounced Bush, saying this was an unjustified attack on Obambi and, furthermore, that it's absurd to compare B. Hussein Obama's willingness to "talk" to Ahmadinejad to Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler.

Unlike liberals, I will honestly report their point before I attack it. The New York Times editorialized: "Sen. Obama has called for talking with Iran and Syria," but has not "suggested surrendering to these countries' demands, which is, after all, what appeasement is."

"Hardball's" Chris Matthews gloated all week about nailing a conservative talk radio host with this brilliant riposte: "You don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong ... is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia."

Liberals think all real tyrants ended with Hitler and act as if they would have known all along not to appease him. Next time is always different for people who refuse to learn from history. As Air America's Mark Green said: "Look, Hitler was Hitler." (Which, I admit, threw me for a loop: I thought Air America's position is that Bush is Hitler.)

This is nonsense. Ahmadinejad looks a lot like Hitler did when Chamberlain agreed to meet with him at Munich, except that Hitler didn't buy his suits from ratty thrift shops. Much of England reacted just as today's Democrats would because, like today's Democrats, they feared nothing more than another war. (Lloyd George lied, kids died!) Lots of Britons cheered when Chamberlain returned from Munich and announced "peace in our time." Without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, what on earth makes Chris Matthews think he would not be among them?

As Bush said at the Knesset, "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words." That was Chamberlain. And that is today's Democratic Party.

What Matthews and the Times are saying is this: We can have a Munich, but we promise to be tougher than Chamberlain was. Therein lies the flaw in their logic. Yes, in the abstract, it is technically possible to "talk" without giving up Czechoslovakia (or in today's case, Iraq or Israel). But in reality, when talking to a lunatic without having first bombed him into submission, the only possible result is appeasement. Any talk with Hitler, or a McHitler like Ahmadinejad, that does not include handing over Czechoslovakia or Israel, like a game show parting gift, is going to be a relatively brief chat. Churchill knew that before Chamberlain went to Munich. But a lot of Britons then, like a lot of Americans today, refused to see that blindingly obvious point.

Liberals think the way to deal with dangerous tyrants is to send in a sensitive president who will make Ahmadinejad fall in love with him. They imagine Obama becoming Ahmadinejad's psychotherapist, like Barbra Streisand in "The Prince of Tides."

President Bush described such people perfectly with his reference to Sen. William Edgar Borah, the one who said World War II could have been avoided if only he could have talked to Hitler. Liberals refuse to learn from history because they put their hands over their ears and tell themselves over and over again: "Hitler was different."

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Linda Douglass Joins Obama

By Byron York

Marc Ambinder reports the National Journal's Linda Douglass, the former CBS and ABC News correspondent, is joining the Obama campaign as a senior strategist and spokeswoman. Ben Smith suggests that "the Clinton campaign - and Fox News - is going to have a field day with this."

At the risk of having a field day myself, Douglass' move brings to mind a story I did about her for the American Spectator back in 1998. (Not available on the web, as far as I know.) It seems she sometimes found it difficult to draw the line between reporter and source back then:

On March 14, 1994, the CBS Evening News began with word of a big shake- up in the Clinton administration. "Another high-ranking member of the Clinton team was pulled down tonight in the spreading undertow of Whitewater," anchorwoman Connie Chung announced. "The latest to resign: Webster Hubbell, a high-ranking official at the Justice Department with close ties to the president and Mrs. Clinton." Chung tossed to correspondent Rita Braver, who reported the story from Detroit, where President Clinton was attending a jobs conference; then to Bob Schieffer, who covered reaction on Capitol Hill, and finally to Linda Douglass, who was traveling with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in Colorado.

Douglass reported that Mrs. Clinton was trying to keep the focus on her health care initiative-and away from Whitewater. But she wasn't having much luck; everywhere she turned, journalists seemed more interested in her role in the Arkansas land deal. The experience was clearly troubling for the first lady, Douglass reported, and Douglass herself seemed almost saddened by the turn of events in Washington. She concluded her report on a faintly elegiac note: "This was a difficult day for Mrs. Clinton as she watched another close friend, Webster Hubbell, forced from public life," Douglass said. "She had urged him and other friends to join her to serve in Washington; yet despite her power, she's had to watch some of them fall and has been unable to protect them. Linda Douglass, CBS News, Denver."

What CBS viewers could not have known was that Webb Hubbell- who later pleaded guilty to stealing $400,000 from his old law firm and cheating on his taxes-was not just the first lady's friend. He was also a friend of Linda Douglass. From the earliest days of the Clinton administration, Douglass and her husband, an influential public interest lawyer named John Phillips, socialized often with Hubbell and his wife Suzy. Within weeks of Hubbell's resignation, Phillips put together a deal by which a California non-profit group paid Hubbell $45,000 to write a series of articles on the idea of public service. Later, Phillips and Douglass picked up much of the tab when they and the Hubbells flew to Greece for a ten-day vacation cruising the Aegean Sea. They stayed in touch after Hubbell pleaded guilty-and even after Hubbell went to prison..

Douglass says she told network management about the friendship and recused herself from covering matters involving Hubbell (as she had done earlier with respect to her friend Mickey Kantor). "I am absolutely scrupulous on this issue," Douglass says. "I pride myself on taking great care to try to avoid those situations." Once she became close to Hubbell, Douglass says, "I certainly never covered anything having to do with Webb, never covered anything having to do with his problems. I recused myself from that whole story."

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Stockmarkets Don't Like Obama

One of the things we've learned during the Democratic primary battle is that Hillary's victories are bullish for stocks and Obama's wins are bearish.

The clearest example was Hillary's massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama's big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.

Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night's elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.

Markets don't like Obama. If he wins alongside Democratic gains in the House and Senate, taxes are going up big time. This is especially true for the capital-gains tax, which is the single most important levy on assets of all kind, including stocks. (One wonders if Obama's cap-gains tax hike will apply to housing, which obviously is in no need of higher taxes right now.)

Then there was Obama's Des Moines, Iowa, speech last evening. Lots of class warfare: "The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans that once bothered Sen. McCain's conscience are now his only economic policy." Obama went on, "Change is a tax code that rewards work instead of wealth . . . a tax code that rewards businesses that create good jobs here in America instead of corporations that ship them overseas." Obama then repeated his usual litany: big-government health care, an attack on oil companies, a big spending plan for education, big bailouts for housing, and a pension assault on corporations.

This idea of rewarding work instead of wealth is just insane. Capital needs labor and labor needs capital. You can't create a new job without a thriving business. But if corporate and investment taxes are going up, how will these businesses be funded? And attacking corporations that work partly overseas is pure protectionism and isolationism. It's as bad as Obama's antipathy towards trade deals with South Korea and Colombia, as well as his Carter-like diplomatic initiatives toward Iran and other rogue states.

The stock market is a barometer of the economic health of the nation. It doesn't like these Obama statements one bit. It sees the handwriting on the wall: an attack on investors, an attack on capital, an attack on business, and an attack on trade. Most of all, higher taxes are anathema to the equity markets.

Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight a) because she was roughing up Obama for the general-election fight against McCain and b) because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can't with Obama.

Last night's results position Obama on the very edge of the nomination. The Intrade betting-parlor prediction markets give Obama a very strong chance of winning in November. Coupled with expected Democratic gains in Congress, we're looking at anti-growth policies that could do great damage to the stock market and the economy.

Of course, I am not counting John McCain out. He's got some important openings that could carry him to the White House. But right now I'm not surprised the stock market is going through a downward correction after the big run-up that followed the McCain surge and the Fed rescue of the banking system.

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(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.)