Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category
Alert the Media: Ayers’ Claim He Wrote Obama’s ‘Dreams from My Father’ Is A Blockbuster Story
Posted by Rusty Humphries in Featured Story, Obama on October 7th, 2009
UPDATED 10/8 9:37 PDT.
Revealing audio after the jump.
Anne Leary is a conservative blogger found at http://backyardconservative.blogspot.com/. She claims to have recently met Bill Ayers at the Reagan National Airport. She approached him and out of the blue, he claimed to have written Barack Obama’s bestseller Dreams from My Father. Was he joking? Serious?
I wanted to have Anne Leary on my radio show right away to see if she was reliable and to see what Ayers may have been trying to tell her. I have been actively tracking Jack Cashill’s investigation into the possibility Bill Ayers was Obama’s ghostwriter for Dreams. I was very skeptical of the story at first but Jack’s research and Christopher Andersen’s favorable book on the First Couple both supported that Ayers did, in fact, play a significant role in Obama’s book (which President Obama claims he wrote with no help).
You can read Jack Cashill’s comprehensive investigations:
The Improvised Odyssey of Barack Obama
When I saw Anne’s blog, it was important to verify her story and make an assessment of her report. My exclusive interview with her convinced me the conversation with Ayers was real, she reported it accurately and we have a blockbuster story on our hands.
Ayers didn’t just help with the book, it appears he took entire sections of his own past and transformed them into Obama life stories. Why is this important? If Barack Obama lied about writing Dreams, and if in fact an unrepentant terrorist and self-described communist did indeed write the book, then all claims by Barack Obama from the beginning must now be reexamined. Also, the left is already attacking the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s new book as a “racist.” Really? You want to compare ghostwriters? This is like Timothy McVeigh ghostwriting John McCain’s book.
Cashill’s research, Andersen’s book and Ayers statement have created an awkward moment for the media. Do they do their job or continue to deny their readers/viewers/listeners the truth? The President’s credibility is on the line. It demands our attention.
Here is my EXCLUSIVE interview with Anne Leary on The Rusty Humphries Show, 10-06-2009:
Alert the Media: Ayers’ Claim He Wrote Obama’s ‘Dreams of My Father’ Is A Blockbuster Story
Posted by Rusty Humphries in Featured Story, Obama on October 7th, 2009
Audio after the jump.
Anne Leary is a conservative blogger found at http://backyardconservative.blogspot.com/. She claims to have recently met Bill Ayers at the Reagan National Airport. She approached him and out of the blue, he claimed to have written Barack Obama’s bestseller Dreams of My Father. Was he joking? Serious?
I wanted to have Anne Leary on my radio show right away to see if she was reliable and to see what Ayers may have been trying to tell her. I have been actively tracking Jack Cashill’s investigation into the possibility Bill Ayers was Obama’s ghostwriter for Dreams. I was very skeptical of the story at first however Jack’s research is overwhelming and Christopher Andersen’s favorable book on the First Couple confirmed that Ayers did, in fact, play a significant role in Obama’s book– that President Obama claims he wrote with no help.
You can read Jack Cashill’s comprehensive investigations:
The Improvised Odyssey of Barack Obama
When I saw Anne’s blog, it was important to verify her story and make an assessment of her report. My exclusive interview with her convinced me the conversation with Ayers was real, she reported it accurately and we have a blockbuster story on our hands.
Ayers didn’t just help with the book, it appears he took entire sections of his own past and transformed them into Obama life stories. Why is this important? If Barack Obama lied about writing Dreams, and if in fact an unrepentant terrorist and self-described communist did indeed write the book, then all claims by Barack Obama from the beginning must now be reexamined. Also, the left is already attacking the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s new book as a “racist.” Really? You want to compare ghostwriters? This is like Timothy McVey ghostwriting John McCain’s book.
Cashill’s research, Andersen’s book and Ayers statement have created an awkward moment for the media. Do they do their job or continue to deny their readers/viewers/listeners the truth? The President’s credibility is on the line. It demands our attention.
Here is my EXCLUSIVE interview with Anne Leary on The Rusty Humphries Show, 10-06-2009:
Bailout May Be Helping to Generate Up to Half of Bank’s Profits
Posted by Anthony Randazzo in News, Obama, Politics on October 7th, 2009
We will never know how many, if any, of the major banks would have failed without the TARP bailout package passed a year ago. Several banks were strong-armed into taking the money. We can be reasonably sure that Citigroup and Bank of America wouldn’t be the institutions they are today without some government hand-holding—actually, it is more like continuous CPR while giving blood and donating a kidney.
However, while we can’t know the counterfactual, we can assess how the liquidity infusions have decreased credit risk, lowering the cost of capital, and compare these savings to profits. And the stunning numbers show that up to nearly half of all profits from the top 18 banks are the result of Uncle Sam subsidizing the cost of credit.
Every day financial firms borrow money to conduct business. Just like with individuals and families, there is a cost to the credit in the form of an interest payment or fee. However, with a virtual government guarantee of security, the big financial institutions have been able to borrow at artificially reduced rates. Lenders to financial institutions know Uncle Sam has the back of the big boys on Wall Street. They’re sure to get their money back, based on current White House and Fed policy.
The problem is that this gives large financial institutions a competitive advantage over smaller business. Those smaller firms have to pay more for their credit. They don’t have the government guarantee. They are more risky. And while it is true that smaller firms will always have to pay more money to borrow than the larger firms, the government guarantee has widened the gap between the cost of credit for the smalls and bigs.
This has been a generally accepted phenomena over the past year, but now we have some real numbers to back up the theory. The left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released an interesting study last week that looked at the implicit benefits that banks have received from TARP and associated Federal Reserve programs. The report finds that banks have received up to $34.1 billion in benefits—beyond the $700 billion of TARP infusions—from cheap access to credit due to their too big to fail (TBTF) status.
Here is the gist of the study:
The spread between the average cost of funds for smaller banks and the cost of funds for institutions with assets in excess of $100 billion averaged 0.29 percentage points in the period from the first quarter of 2000 through the fourth quarter of 2007, the last quarter before the collapse of Bear Stearns. In the period from the fourth quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, after the government bailouts had largely established TBTF as official policy, the gap had widened to an average of 0.78 percentage points. [...] The increase in the gap of 0.49 percentage points implies a government subsidy of $34.1 billion a year to the 18 bank holding companies with more than $100 billion in assets in the first quarter of 2009.
Note that the “subsidy” mentioned here is not direct cash taken from taxpayer coffers, but rather it is a benefit that is gained by the promised use of taxpayer monies to insurance against losses/failure. This is the government using policy to redirect resources in the marketplace. Essentially this is saying that big banks were saved over $34.1 billion in costs.
To put that number in context, the total profits of the 18 largest banks during the second measured period from the end of 2008 to 2009 has been $68.56 billion, meaning the “subsidy” from cheaper access to credit accounts for nearly half of big bank profits. And, again, this not even counting the direct benefit that the capital infusions from TARP have provided.
The report also notes that $34.1 billion is the high end estimate and that there are other factors which could be considered as the cause for the increased spread in cost of credit. But if the high end estimate is correct, then government “subsidy” accounted for 166% of Capital One’s profits last year, and it prevented Morgan Stanley’s losses from being 50% larger. Those are very significant numbers when you consider what other uses the assets and resources these failing companies are consuming could be put towards.
If President Obama’s Wall St. regulation reform plan becomes law it will make TBTF explicit, perpetuating these associated problems with artificially reduced credit risk (which I wrote about in my recent financial services regulation study published by the Reason Foundation). As The New York Times puts it:
Too-big-to-fail is already an extremely costly policy; the longer it is allowed to persist, the heavier this taxpayer burden will become.
See here for the full CERP report and data.
For more on this, check out Reason’s blog Out of Control: New Study Suggests Nearly Half of Bank Profits Could Be From Too Big To Fail Guarantees
Obama’s America- the Gordon Brown years?
Posted by Daniel Kalder in Obama, Politics, health care on October 7th, 2009
The 2008 election campaign filled me with an eerie sense of déjà vu, as I suspect it did many British people living in America. The hysterical reception accorded Barack Obama was strongly reminiscent of the frothing enthusiasm for Tony Blair in 1997.
Obama had a more inspiring biography than Tony Blair of course and did sincerity better; nevertheless there were many parallels. Both were relatively young, charismatic men who insistently repeated stirring but vague mantras about change and a coming new era to an exhausted electorate craving a break with the recent past. Both surrounded themselves with pop stars and other glamorous types, in an attempt to identify with everything that was young and progressive and hip. Of course, this being America, Obama operated on a much grander, messianic scale: Blair never implied that his victory might lower the earth’s water levels for example, and nor did anybody ever faint at his rallies as if he were a faith healer. However when Blair won the election the sympathetic Guardian newspaper did get rather overheated: I recall an article in which the atmosphere in the UK was compared to the relief felt at the end of World War II, thus equating the hapless John Major with Adolph Hitler. That total absence of proportion will sound familiar to anyone who has flicked through the People’s Temple style newsletter that is Newsweek or spent a few minutes watching the risible MSNBC. (In the Guardian’s defence however, none of its writers were ever so feeble-minded as to compare Blair to God.)
Anyway, during the election campaign I would say to those who asked for my thoughts on the Obama phenomenon that perhaps it wasn’t wise for so many people to allow themselves to be so carried away. Obama was only a man; worse still a politician; and even worse- not a very experienced one. I would then suggest that many Americans were setting themselves up for a massive disappointment: that the impossible expectations that Obama and his devotees had aroused would ultimately lead to profound disillusionment, leaving people even more cynical and embittered than if they had never been thus misled. Tony Blair’s career in Britain offered a shining example of this process in action. My listeners would then change the subject and never mention Obama to me again. I understood: they wanted to believe, they were protecting their faith.
Meanwhile I had a sinking suspicion that having evaded the Blair era in the UK (I was in Moscow, enjoying the regime of Vladimir Putin) I was about to experience the big budget American remake under Mr. Obama. Of course, it was never going to be an exact fit: Britain and America have different political systems, different histories and different cultures even if we speak (roughly) the same language. Yet peering through Obama’s cloud of lofty rhetoric I seemed to see a lot that was familiar. Like Blair, Obama was obsessed with his representation in the media and excessively keen to be perceived as cool and trendy. Like Blair, he was enthusiastic for a massive expansion of government, for the promotion of relatively unaccountable unelected officials into influential positions, for the incurring of massive debt to pay for his grand schemes, for promoting people with backgrounds in campus radicalism, and for great globs of toweringly ambitious but apparently half-baked reform.
The comparison was not perfect of course. Thankfully Obama showed no enthusiasm for several of Mr. Blair’s more notorious outrages, such as establishing a new criminal offence for every day he was in office, or transforming Britain into a paranoid, surveillance society. Nor did he speak of ‘Democracy’ in the same dreamy way as Blair, as if it was a metaphysical force for good in itself. Post- Iraq, Obama prefers sovereignty, including the sovereignty of scumbags. Still, Britain 1997- 2007 seemed like a reasonable rule of thumb for some of the president’s agenda at least.
Recently however I’ve started to think I may have been wrong. You see, Blair, for all his faults, got things done. He cracked skulls and enforced rigid party discipline. Armed with an overwhelming parliamentary majority and faced with an opposition in total disarray, he seized the moment to ram through reams of legislation. Obama on the other hand seems unable to achieve much of anything, as even SNL has noticed, while his party is impressively undisciplined. The absurd stimulus package, so obviously stuffed with un-stimulating pet projects was an embarrassment. Then there is the ongoing civil war between elements of the administration and the CIA; and the endless shenanigans over health care etc. It is starting to look as though Obama has little control over his own party, and that its hierarchy does not necessarily respect him. Every major initiative he sets out to pursue seems to degenerate into chaos.
However, it was as I was watching Obama make his pitch for Chicago before the IOC in Copenhagen that I knew I definitely had the wrong analogy. After all, Blair won the Olympic Games for London when everybody thought the city was going to lose. Obama, on the other hand, not only lost but made himself look ridiculous in the process- the most powerful man in the world come as a supplicant before the crooks of the IOC, only to be slapped down.
Perhaps we aren’t about to live through a remake of the Blair years after all. Blair is a winner, you see- even now many think he may live again as first president of the EU. Obama on the other hand, well… he used to look like a winner, but increasingly- not so much. Could it be then that the USA has fast forwarded to what followed Blair? Maybe there will be no period of hope giving way to gradual disillusionment, no period of furious reform collapsing into widespread cynicism. Maybe instead we’re going straight to the catastrophic aftermath- courtesy of a man with big dreams promoted beyond the level of his competence, besieged on all sides by disaster, unable to effect anything. Is Barack Obama actually America’s Gordon Brown? I hope not- for all our sakes.
Afghanistan: Obama’s Setup and Payoff
Posted by Robert J. Avrech in Obama, Politics on October 7th, 2009
Skillfully written screenplays are frequently structured around a series of setups and payoffs.
The most rudimentary example is, of course, the pistol in the desk drawer: revealed in Act I, and then in Act II, the gun is used to kill someone.
For an intensive workshop in cinematic setups and payoffs you should screen the Back to the Future series, where setup and payoff are elevated to an entirely new level.
It’s kind of fascinating, watching Obama construct the setup for his Afghanistan policy. He follows a familiar dramatic structure:
1. Anguished self-reflection, all quite public in order to display nobility of character.
2. Striking out at supporting players—Generals Petraeus and McChrystal—for their disloyal behavior.
3. Floating ideas through the court jester, Joe Biden, regarding an alternate—i.e. losing—policy in Afghanistan. The fool is allowed to speak the truth in order to maintain plausible deniability, but actually designed to prepare the great unwashed for a series of radical policy shifts.
It’s all very Will Shakespeare.
But of course this is all a set-up for Obama to do nothing for as long as possible, which is, by the way, doing quite a bit. Inaction on the part of America and her allies benefits the Muslim terrorists by giving them time to recruit, raise funds, regroup, train, and conquer more real estate.
Obama’s next move will be to deploy a few extra troops to Afghanistan, just enough to claim that he’s in the fight, but not enough to shatter his liberal base.
However, as the body count rises and the tactical and strategic situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, Obama will, in slow motion, bring the troops home, thereby surrendering to radical Islam. And, according to the Democrats, rescuing us from a Vietnam like quagmire.
The blowback will be massive.
1. The Islamists will—rightly—declare victory over the Crusader infidels.
2. Radical Islam will point to a failure of Western resolve in the face of imperial Islam. The propaganda value of this claim cannot be overstated.
3. The Taliban will swallow the entire country and a reign of Islamic terror will spread like the Black Plague.
4. Rapidly, Afghanistan will devolve into a terrorist and drug cartel state, sending out death squads to Europe, North Africa and America.
5. Emboldened, the Taliban will set their sights on neighboring Pakistan, a failed nuclear state ripe for picking. India will be compelled to act or face a nuclear Taliban—dirty suitcase bombs will proliferate—and their non-state Islamist allies, including Iranian proxies. Hamas and Hizbullah.
6. America’s allies will view Obama’s America as an unreliable ally and draw away from America’s orbit.
7. Obama’s fetish for sitting down, in community organizer mode, and yapping away with totalitarian regimes signals massive naivete and weakness. Hence, the Taliban, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela will stomp all over this administration like a rug. The number one rule of geo-politics is: weakness invites aggression.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Copyright © Robert J. Avrech
Afghanistan: Obama’s Setup and Payoff
Posted by Robert J. Avrech in Obama, Politics on October 7th, 2009
Skillfully written screenplays are frequently structured around a series of setups and payoffs.
The most rudimentary example is, of course, the pistol in the desk drawer: revealed in Act I, and then in Act II, the gun is used to kill someone.
For an intensive workshop in cinematic setups and payoffs you should screen the Back to the Future series, where setup and payoff are elevated to an entirely new level.
It’s kind of fascinating, watching Obama construct the setup for his Afghanistan policy. He follows a familiar dramatic structure:
1. Anguished self-reflection, all quite public in order to display nobility of character.
2. Striking out at supporting players—Generals Petraeus and McChrystal—for their disloyal behavior.
3. Floating ideas through the court jester, Joe Biden, regarding an alternate—i.e. losing—policy in Afghanistan. The fool is allowed to speak the truth in order to maintain plausible deniability, but actually designed to prepare the great unwashed for a series of radical policy shifts.
It’s all very Will Shakespeare.
But of course this is all a set-up for Obama to do nothing for as long as possible, which is, by the way, doing quite a bit. Inaction on the part of America and her allies benefits the Muslim terrorists by giving them time to recruit, raise funds, regroup, train, and conquer more real estate.
Obama’s next move will be to deploy a few extra troops to Afghanistan, just enough to claim that he’s in the fight, but not enough to shatter his liberal base.
However, as the body count rises and the tactical and strategic situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, Obama will, in slow motion, bring the troops home, thereby surrendering to radical Islam. And, according to the Democrats, rescuing us from a Vietnam like quagmire.
The blowback will be massive.
1. The Islamists will—rightly—declare victory over the Crusader infidels.
2. Radical Islam will point to a failure of Western resolve in the face of imperial Islam. The propaganda value of this claim cannot be overstated.
3. The Taliban will swallow the entire country and a reign of Islamic terror will spread like the Black Plague.
4. Rapidly, Afghanistan will devolve into a terrorist and drug cartel state, sending out death squads to Europe, North Africa and America.
5. Emboldened, the Taliban will set their sights on neighboring Pakistan, a failed nuclear state ripe for picking. India will be compelled to act or face a nuclear Taliban—dirty suitcase bombs will proliferate—and their non-state Islamist allies, including Iranian proxies. Hamas and Hizbullah.
6. America’s allies will view Obama’s America as an unreliable ally and draw away from America’s orbit.
7. Obama’s fetish for sitting down, in community organizer mode, and yapping away with totalitarian regimes signals massive naivete and weakness. Hence, the Taliban, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela will stomp all over this administration like a rug. The number one rule of geo-politics is: weakness invites aggression.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Copyright © Robert J. Avrech
Was Buffy Wicks Also Behind Missouri’s Obama Truth Squad?
Posted by Dana Loesch in Obama, Politics on October 7th, 2009
Coincidence? Buffy Wicks ran Obama’s Missouri campaign and two of St. Louis high-profile prosecuting attorneys, both Democrats, threatened to target anyone who dared to spread misinformation about the then-candidate, known as “Obama’s Truth Squad.”
If the NEA conference call is any indication, the answer is no.
Wicks, who works in the Obama White House as the Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement, helped orchestrate, and took part in, the infamous NEA call which asked the artistic community to sell their souls for a partisan political agenda.
You know, in the name of art.
One year ago on September 23rd, KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis reported that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and St. Louis Circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce joined a high-profile group of law enforcement officials (including Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer) threatening to invoke “Missouri ethics laws” against anyone the prosecutors determined had spread misleading information about Obama.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Said McCullough:
“If they’re not going to tell the truth, somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not the truth. This is the truth.’”
The KMOV report stated:
“They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that violate Missouri’s ethics laws.”
Is it too much to assume that perhaps Wicks convened with McCullough and Joyce to ask for their assistance in stamping out dissent?
KMOV reported:
“The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”
The campaign is asking. The only assumption with which we’re left is that Wicks, as the head of the Missouri campaign, was directly involved with the attempt to misuse St. Louis prosecutors against the people they serve – especially considering the precedence established by the NEA call. Wicks’s modus operandi is enlisting others to do Obama’s dirty work, disrespecting the skills and responsibilities of professionals and artists by co-opting their talents in the name of partisan politics.
These tricks bring to mind one of my favorite monologues from Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter):
“Growing up in the rural part of Georgia, I’ve been around compost all my life. I’ve seen it tilled and hoed and spread across fields far and wide, but until today, I’ve never seen it tied up and gift-wrapped in such a neat and tidy and pretty a package. Congratulations! You’re a very clever girl–but it’s still compost.”
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Was Buffy Wicks Also Behind Missouri’s Obama Truth Squad?
Posted by Dana Loesch in Obama, Politics on October 7th, 2009
Coincidence? Buffy Wicks ran Obama’s Missouri campaign and two of St. Louis high-profile prosecuting attorneys, both Democrats, threatened to target anyone who dared to spread misinformation about the then-candidate, known as “Obama’s Truth Squad.”
If the NEA conference call is any indication, the answer is no.
Wicks, who works in the Obama White House as the Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement, helped orchestrate, and took part in, the infamous NEA call which asked the artistic community to sell their souls for a partisan political agenda.
You know, in the name of art.
One year ago on September 23rd, KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis reported that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and St. Louis Circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce joined a high-profile group of law enforcement officials (including Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer) threatening to invoke “Missouri ethics laws” against anyone the prosecutors determined had spread misleading information about Obama.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Said McCullough:
“If they’re not going to tell the truth, somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not the truth. This is the truth.’”
The KMOV report stated:
“They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that violate Missouri’s ethics laws.”
Is it too much to assume that perhaps Wicks convened with McCullough and Joyce to ask for their assistance in stamping out dissent?
KMOV reported:
“The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”
The campaign is asking. The only assumption with which we’re left is that Wicks, as the head of the Missouri campaign, was directly involved with the attempt to misuse St. Louis prosecutors against the people they serve – especially considering the precedence established by the NEA call. Wicks’s modus operandi is enlisting others to do Obama’s dirty work, disrespecting the skills and responsibilities of professionals and artists by co-opting their talents in the name of partisan politics.
These tricks bring to mind one of my favorite monologues from Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter):
“Growing up in the rural part of Georgia, I’ve been around compost all my life. I’ve seen it tilled and hoed and spread across fields far and wide, but until today, I’ve never seen it tied up and gift-wrapped in such a neat and tidy and pretty a package. Congratulations! You’re a very clever girl–but it’s still compost.”
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
ACORN and SEIU Have Been Going Steady a Long Time: Did They Break Up?
Posted by Matthew Vadum in ACORN, Obama, Politics on October 6th, 2009
Now that ACORN is drowning is an ocean of adverse publicity, its longtime ally the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) claims to have broken with the embattled radical left-wing activist group.
Last week SEIU international secretary-treasurer Anna Burger dropped this political bombshell that has been ignored by the mainstream media.
In response to a question from Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) posed during a meeting of the House Financial Services Committee, Burger casually noted that her union “cut all ties to ACORN.”
In an interview Monday night I asked SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette what Burger meant when she said SEIU had cut all ties with ACORN.
Ringuette replied, “We have suspended all contracts and active work with ACORN,” pending the results of a panel of inquiry looking into ACORN. SEIU boss Andy Stern sits on that supposedly independent panel.
Of course, SEIU –which is President Obama’s favorite union– could still be providing help to ACORN behind the scenes even if it publicly distances itself from the embattled activist group. Longtime lovers often sneak around together during messy breakups.
I’m skeptical that the two actually split up given the strong ties between ACORN and SEIU over the years. It’s gotten to the point that ACORN and SEIU overlap so much that they are virtually indistinguishable.
The full article is available at American Spectator.