After Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer withdrew from cabinet nominations, Geithner and Sebelius were confirmed even though they both owed years of back taxes, and Van Jones and Yosi Sergant were ousted from their czar posts, people assumed that there was a vetting problem in the Obama camp. "Who's vetting these people?" was the question asked. Implicit in that question is an assumption of innocence on the part of the administration. They didn't pick bad people; they have a poor selection process. The question that hasn't been asked, at least out loud by the mainstream media, is "Are these the people that Obama REALLY wants in place representing his administration?" What if the vetting process is working exactly as designed? Well, that just may be the case. Hillary Clinton recently called the vetting process "exhaustive." [1]
When I was young there were kids on the block that used to run around and cause trouble. Slingshots and BB guns were their common accessories, and there was a certain amount of lure that came with tools like that. Even though I went to school with them and knew them fairly well, I was forbidden from hanging out with them so I missed out on the all the fun. Then one night, shortly after my mom came home from a women's club meeting there was a knock on the door, and when she answered it, there was a policeman on the other side. He was looking for someone who had shot out a car window with a BB gun, and the shot had come from the bike path next to our house. I had just become the prime suspect. I swore I hadn't done it and it was true; another neighbor put the finger on the responsible parties, and all the kids who were with 'the shooter.' I was off the hook; they all got in big trouble. This was my first exposure to 'guilt by association.'
I tell this tale because it's relevant to our president. He has, for a long time, surrounded himself with people who openly hate our country, hate the government, and hold racial biases. He's supported organizations that have been exposed as criminal enterprises. He's been endorsed (sought their endorsement!) by a communist organization and selected communists to represent him in his administration. My parents didn't let me hang out with some of the kids in our neighborhood because they knew sooner or later those associations and the behavior they would encourage would get me into trouble. Is that going to happen to our president? It may already be starting.
If you go back to the 1990's, ACORN and the SEIU (local 880) were two of the groups who helped form The New Party in Chicago. This communist organization was frustrated with the centrist governing of Bill Clinton, so they endorsed candidates who pledged to push their agenda. Obama was one of those candidates, and members of the new party actively campaigned on his behalf. [2] Is this relevant? It may help explain the presence of communist Van Jones as the Green Jobs Czar. It certainly makes one wonder just how far to the left does Obama go?
Obama's ties to Acorn didn't stop with the new party. He was part of a team of lawyers representing ACORN in their attempt to register voters in Illinois in 1995. They won, forcing Illinois to implement the law. Of course now ACORN is under investigation in several states for voter registration fraud, so they don't follow the law anyway. He also successfully represented a group of aldermen in getting ward boundaries redrawn. So with new wards favoring the aldermen, loosened voter registration laws and the endorsement of the New Party, Obama's political career was off and running. [3]
In politics, a favor given must be returned. Obama helped ACORN; they helped get him elected to the Illinois state legislature. Last year, they helped him get elected president. So it was no wonder when Obama came to the White House and forced the stimulus bill through it was loaded with pork that was going to go to "community organizations" like ACORN. They weren't going to get all of it, so say the apologists, but you can take it to the bank that they were going to get some of it. Then ACORN was going to be one of the groups helping with the census…the census that determines congressional districts. With a history of redrawing boundaries for political gain, savvy people grew nervous. Talk of using "sampling" to "extrapolate" numbers in the census did nothing to mollify critics.
Enter James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, two independent investigative reporters. The enterprising duo set out to see just how far they could get ACORN to go, and the answers shocked even them. Posing as a prostitute and a pimp, they went to several ACORN offices looking for assistance with taxes (turn $96,000 into $9,600? No problem!), housing (Want to run a brothel? Sure thing) and importing underage sex slaves (I have contacts in Tijuana! Gotcha covered!). Giles, in an interview with Sean Hannity, said that every single office they visited helped them. When you watch the videos, the people don't even blink at the requests they make. Acorn's nut has been cracked.
Of course, the apologists claim that Obama has no direct ties to ACORN. Please...John Gotti didn't pull the triggers, either, but he still wound up in jail. That it took a scandal this huge, this insurmountable, for the Obama and the left to abandon ACORN is telling, just as it was telling that it took ad-nauseum repetition of Jeremiah Wright screaming "God Damn America" for Obama to say he was no longer associated with him. The apologists at that time said that Obama wasn't in church for the bad stuff Wright said. He knew him well enough to use one of his lines as the title of his book (The Audacity Of Hope) but had no idea Wright hates America? Please.
Still, America elected him. It wasn't a landslide, but it was a convincing win. It SHOULD have been a landslide; he was running against a mediocre opponent who represented the party of the incumbent President, whose popularity was in the low 30's, in the midst of a financial meltdown. He was slick and well spoken, adored by the media who focused not on what he said but on how he said it. After 185 says as US Senator, he was on his way to the White House.
Anyone who read "The Case Against Barack Obama" was wise to his history and his tactics. I have to believe that anyone who read that book voted against him. Others voted for him simply because there was a D next to his name, or because of the R next to the other guy. I saw firsthand last fall while making calls for the Boulder County Republicans, that many Ron Paul supporters were so angered that McCain got the nod that they voted for Obama. He ran as a centrist, then upon coming to office he has pushed his agenda as far to the left as he could, and from the stimulus to pushing the health care debate, he has done things very quickly.
But people - 'we the people' - don't want to be governed from the left. In the midst of the recession, people are seeing the folly of using debt to get to the promised land. As houses get foreclosed upon, cars get repossessed, jobs continue to disappear and retirement plans no longer cover the goals set forth, people don't want risk; they want safety. Pushback against his policies has been rising, and may not have crested yet. The shine has worn off, and with the demise of ACORN, people may be waking from the dream of a new day to realize there is a nightmare below the surface, and that bodes not well for the president.
In the March 30th issue of Forbes, in his "Fact And Comment" section, Steve Forbes said "The President himself will start to see the light when his poll numbers crash below 50%, which they will if the economy isn't on the mend by Labor Day. Despite periods of suspension, the American system of checks and balances always reasserts itself." Well, the economy isn't on the mend, the poll numbers have dropped but Obama is pushing blindly forward, not only oblivious to the light, but to the cliff he's heading towards. Let's hope he doesn't pull the country down with him when he goes over.
[2] http://earthhopenetwork.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=3101
[3] http://archive.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/barack_obama_sought_the_new_partys_endorsement_knowing_it_was_a_radical_left_organization
No comments:
Post a Comment