Included:
- Obama Campaign Met with Hamas and Hezbollah Supporters
Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to "spread the wealth around" -- a comment that may only draw fire from riled-up John McCain supporters who have taken to calling Obama a "socialist" at the Republican's rallies.
Obama made the remark, caught on camera, after fielding some tough questions from the plumber Sunday in Ohio, where the Democratic candidate canvassed neighborhoods and encouraged residents to vote early.
"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."
"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
Obama's remarks drew fresh criticism on the blogosphere that the Illinois senator favors a breed of wealth redistribution -- as well as a rebuke from the McCain campaign.
"If Barack Obama's goal as President is to 'spread the wealth around,' perhaps his unconditional meetings with Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and Kim Jong-Il aren't so crazy -- if nothing else they can advise an Obama administration on economic policy," McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said in a written statement to FOXNews.com. "In contrast, John McCain's goal as president will be to let the American people prosper unburdened by government and ever higher taxes."
Obama frequently rails against what he calls a Republican concept that tax breaks for the wealthy will somehow "trickle down" to middle-class Americans.
Obama says he will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
However, McCain's aides and supporters argue that Obama wrongly wants to raise taxes on businesses in a time of economic distress.
Both candidates spent Monday discussing how they would resurrect the ailing economy. McCain again pointed to his plan to buy up cumbersome mortgages from homeowners and renegotiate them. Obama unveiled what he called an economic rescue plan for the middle class, which included a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures.
Click here to watch the video of Obama's remarks. http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=195153
Obama Campaign Met with Hamas and Hezbollah Supporters
Politics | Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:07:38 am PDT
The Obama campaign is trying to minimize the damage from a meeting attended by their “Muslim outreach director,” at which several notorious Hamas and Hezbollah supporters were present: Obama concedes mistake over Muslim outreach meeting.
The Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach director participated in a meeting in mid September that was attended by several controversial Muslim activists, NBC News has learned. The Obama campaign now concedes that was a misjudgment, and that its top Muslim staffer would not have attended the meeting if she had known the full participant list beforehand. “Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC.
On September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a small group of Muslim leaders and potential Obama supporters at a hotel in Springfield, Virginia, several meeting participants and the campaign said. Two other Obama-affiliated Democratic Party workers joined Husaini and also spoke to the crowd. ...
One meeting attendee was Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society, several of the participants said. The MAS website describes Bray as an imam and “long time civil and human rights activist.” Bray’s critics say he has a history of defending terrorists. They point to a video of Bray at a rally in 2000, for example, in which he can be seen pumping his fist in the air in support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In a 2004 interview, he called the Israeli assassination of a Hamas spiritual leader an “unlawful, cowardly and dangerous act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Bray did not return a call requesting comment.
Also attending the meeting was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a Muslim-American civil rights group that has, as its website states, “consistently and persistently condemned terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.” Nonetheless, the group has many critics, especially in law-enforcement circles, and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.
In an interview on Thursday, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said that CAIR has consistently condemned “every act of terrorism” by groups including Hamas and Hezbollah. But he would not answer whether CAIR condemns those designated terrorist groups themselves. “I’ve already answered your questions,” he said, and abruptly ended the interview. Nihad Awad, the executive director, did not return a call seeking comment.
And that’s not all. Also attending the meeting was the Obama campaign’s previous “Muslim outreach director,” who abruptly resigned in August when the Wall Street Journal exposed his ties to extremists.
A second meeting participant speaking on condition on anonymity said he was stunned to learn that Awad and Bray had been invited to an event where Obama representatives would be present. The participant said Awad and Bray are considered politically “radioactive.” He said that some in the Obama group knew ahead of time that top CAIR officials would be in attendance—an allegation the Obama campaign disputes.
“Yes, when I knew they were coming it made me uncomfortable,” the attendee said. “There was some hope it wouldn’t get out” into the media, the attendee added. “There was some concern within the Obama camp that some of these people coming may be a political liability.”
Chicago-based lawyer Mazen Asbahi also attended the meeting. He is the Obama campaign’s former Muslim outreach coordinator, who abruptly resigned in August after the Wall Street Journal and websites that track fundamentalist Islam began questioning Asbahi’s involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. When reached by NBC News, Asbahi would not comment about the September gathering or his brief stint eight years ago on an investment fund board which also included a fundamentalist imam.
When informed that Asbahi had attended the recent meeting, an Obama spokesman said: “Mazen Asbahi resigned from his role as the campaign’s Muslim American outreach coordinator and was replaced—he is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign.”
Politics | Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 11:52:09 am PDT
The Cleveland Leader has a series of posts tracking the Obama campaign’s lies and evasions about the candidate’s long history of connections with ACORN, and their attempts to quietly edit the Obama website as more information leaks out: Obama Campaign Involved in More Cover-Ups in ACORN Scandal.
Wikileaks.org has an article from the Winter 2003 edition of the magazine Social Policy (the full article is here, but requires registration), making it very clear that Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN are extensive.
(Here’s our local copy of the PDF file.)
[Photo caption: “ACORN members meet with Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama. Photo courtesy Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.”]
Obama started building the base years before. For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for STate Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.
Barack Obama's Involvement with ACORN Unearthed, Missing Article Recovered
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/7203
While Barack Obama's connection with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has not gone entirely unreported, it has not been fully explained. Most media background pieces simply note Obama's involvement in a 1995 lawsuit on behalf of ACORN. Obama's own website, as well as most major media, fail to reveal the full depth and extent of his relationship with the organization.
Attempts to hide evidence of Obama's involvement with ACORN have included wiping the web clean of potentially damaging articles that had appeared, and were previously publicly accessible. Unfortunately, those behind the attempted cover-up failed to realize that in today's day and age, nothing disappears forever. There also exists another layer of the web, the hidden web, which is full of information included in proprietary scholarly databases where these very same "missing" articles can be easily uncovered.
Obama's campaign website states:
Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
Is that really a FACT, or just another lie? Let's take a look at a quote from a 2004 article - Case Study: Chicago- The Barack Obama Campaign - written by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN Leader, which was published in the journal Social Policy. Did we mention that Social Policy recently pulled this particular article from their website, while leaving links to all other articles up?
"Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for STate Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends."
Not only does Foulkes boast of Obama's ACORN leadership training, but also makes it clear that Obama's post-law school organizing of "Project VOTE" in 1992 was undertaken in direct partnership with ACORN. The tie between Project VOTE and ACORN is also something that Obama and others have attempted to disprove in recent weeks as ACORN has come under fire for allegations of voter registration fraud.
As recently as March 2008, the Los Angeles Times also made reference to Barack Obama's involvement with ACORN:
"At the time, Talbot worked at the social action group ACORN and initially considered Obama a competitor. But she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff." (LA Times, March 2, 2008)
All this information was easily pulled up with minimal time investment. It took less than thirty minutes to find, despite attempts by some to bury the truth. If I could find this with little effort, imagine what could be dug up with a serious, in-depth investigation. Scary, isn't it?
Nevertheless, Barack Obama's campaign website continues to lie and deny the truth about his involvement and association with ACORN. No matter how many times you say it, it does not make it true. The facts do not lie, Senator Obama. It's time to come clean and tell the truth, and it's time for the American people to demand it.
***Update: A person who left a comment on the story below (thank you) has notified us that the Obama website has changed. We have done a follow up story that can be read following this link Here is our follow up story:
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/7231 ***
Obama was one of the lawyers that sued Citibank under CRA forcing bad loans!
http://www.mediacircus.com/2008/10/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/
Do you remember how we told you that the Democrats and groups associated with them leaned on banks and even sued to get them to make bad loans under the Community Reinvestment Act which was a factor in causing the economic crisis (see HERE ) … well look at what some fellow bloggers have dug up while researching Obama’s legal career. Looks like a typical ACORN lawsuit to get banks to hand out bad loans.
In these lawsuits, ACORN makes a bogus claim of Redlining (denying poor people loans because of their ethnic heritage). They protest and get the local media to raise a big stink. This stink means that the bank faces thousands of people closing their accounts and get local politicians to lobby to stop the bank from doing some future business, expansions and mergers. If the bank goes to court, they will win, but the damage is already done because who is going to launch a big campaign to get the bank’s reputation back?
It is important to understand the nature of these lawsuits and what their purpose is. ACORN filed tons of these lawsuits and ALL of them allege racism.
Thanks to the IUSB Vision Weblog for providing additional details of this story.
We pulled the docket down, but here’s a brief for your summary:
Case Name
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank Fair Housing/Lending/Insurance
Docket / Court 94 C 4094 ( N.D. Ill. ) FH-IL-0011
State/Territory Illinois
Case Summary
Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.
U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo certified the Plaintiffs’ suit as a class action on June 30, 1995. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 322 (N.D. Ill. 1995). Also on June 30, Judge Castillo granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of a sample of Defendant-bank’s loan application files. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 338 (N.D. Ill. 1995).
The parties voluntarily dismissed the case on May 12, 1998, pursuant to a settlement agreement.
Plaintiff’s Lawyers Alexis, Hilary I. (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Childers, Michael Allen (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Clayton, Fay (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Cummings, Jeffrey Irvine (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Love, Sara Norris (Virginia)
FH-IL-0011-9000
Miner, Judson Hirsch (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Obama, Barack H. (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000
Wickert, John Henry (Illinois)
FH-IL-0011-9000
Obama raised $1 million for foreign thug’s election
Democrat joined Libya’s Gadhafi among top contributors to Odinga
By Jerome R. Corsi © 2008 WorldNetDaily
NEW YORK –Sen. Barack Obama, with a donation of nearly $1 million, and a son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi were among the biggest contributors to the presidential campaign of controversial Kenyan leader Raila Odinga, according to an internal document obtained by WND.
…Among the 72 individuals and organizations that contributed money to Odinga’s 2007 presidential run in Kenya, Shabbir lists “Friends of Senator B.O.” as having donated 66,000,000 Kenyan schillings, about $950,000.
Saif el-Islam Gadhafi, the Libyan strongman’s second oldest son, reportedly donated 53,450,000 Kenyan schillings, about $765,000.
Obama funded education programs built on anti-American Afrocentrist ideology
Thomas Lifson, The American Thinker
Stanley Kurtz’s examination of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge provides us evidence of the sort of educational policies Barack Obama funded when handing out scores of millions of dollars he was entrusted with. In a must-read article at National Review Online, Kurtz provides the detailed history of the movement Obama backed with tax-free charitable funds. It is absolutely fair to quiz Obama on his views toward education today based on his track record. A few brief samples:
- Obama gave legitimacy - and a whole lot of money - to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. [....]
http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6_k3NtXZs
This is Part I of a video regarding Barack Obama's stand on Israel, examining his advisors, friends, running mate, and words. Part I covers the introduction and his advisors. Please see Parts II and III for his friends, running mate, words, and conclusion.
The Jewish Case Against Barack Obama -- Part II
The Jewish Case Against Barack Obama -- Part III
I couldn't verify, but it does show up on a lot of blogs...
This is really insightful!
'C H A N G E'
From
Dear Editor, 'Times-Dispatch',
Each year I get to celebrate Independence Day twice. On June 30 I celebrate my independence day, and on July 4 I celebrate
On June 30, 1968, I escaped Communist
I've thought a lot about the anniversary this year. The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about
When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press fell in love with him. They never questioned who his friends were or what he really believed in. When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone followed. When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said, 'Praise the Lord.'
And when the young leader said, 'I will be for change and I'll bring you change'; everyone yelled, 'Viva Fidel!'
But nobody asked about the change, so by the time the executioner's guns went silent, the people's guns had been taken away. By the time everyone was equal, they were equally poor, hungry, and oppressed. By the time everyone received their free education, it was worth nothing. By the time the press noticed, it was too late, because they were now working for him. By the time the change was finally implemented,
Luckily, we would never fall in
'C H A N G E'
Would we?
Manuel Alvarez, Jr.
Posts
