Yo-ho-ho, I need a bottle of rum...

Don't these bailouts remind you of the aid shipments to the People's States of Europe in Atlas Shrugged?

Where is Ragnar Danneskjold when you need him?

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/96571-gop-continues-its-effort-to-thwart-eu-bailouts?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=


GOP continues effort to thwart EU bailouts

By Jay Heflin - 05/06/10 06:30 PM ET

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash), vice chair of the House Republican Conference, on Thursday said the Dow losing approximately 348 points should signal the Obama administration that the Greece bailout will not help to restore the market.

"The market downturn supports the argument of bailout opponents that investors don't have confidence that the Greek bailout deal will work," she said in prepared remarks.

Rodgers and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) also sent a letter to Vice President Joseph Biden urging him to oppose a potential bailout of Spain, which appears to be teetering toward financial crisis.

"Should Spain request a bailout from the IMF, we urge you to make it clear that the U.S. will oppose such a bailout, and do all in its power as the IMF's leading contributor to reject putting American money further at risk," they wrote. "The U.S. did not implement the policies that have caused Spain's debt issue and the U.S. taxpayer should not be put at risk to bail them out."

The lawmakers have already sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner calling on him to oppose the $145 billion bailout of Greece, as well as future European bailouts. 


 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100510/ap_on_bi_ge/us_europe_financial_crisis_fed;_ylt=AmPhWupHO4yf1orPyddFmKes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTQyZTQ5bWM0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNTEwL3VzX2V1cm9wZV9maW5hbmNpYWxfY3Jpc2lzX2ZlZARjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzYEcG9zAzMEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0BHNsawNmZWRlcmFscmVzZXI-


Federal Reserve opens credit line to Europe

Red Dawn?

I agree with the essence of this article passed on to me:

Obama does remind Americans of when the U.S. was really occupied by a foreign power. A Declaration of Independence passage may still resonate: "HE [George III] has erected a Multitude of new Offices [Czars], and sent hither Swarms of Officers [recently hired IRS agents] to harass our People, and eat out the Substance."

though I catalogue Obama as much worse than George III -- he's not a clueless British ruler, but, in my opinion, more like a foreign conquerer who is now engaged in "softening" the populace and subjugating the people of the country. He reminds me of some old dystopic stories of the U.S. being conquered by the Chicomms or whoever, and what the new rulers have to do to get the people to willingly accept being ruled. The stories always center around those who resist versus those who "go along to get along" or who say "why rock the boat" or who "accept the new reality" and turn in the resistance types. The new rulers are always portrayed as "easy going", "congenial", "reasonable" -- till pushed by opposition, which grows in response to their slowly ratcheted-up brutality.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/a_stranger_in_our_midst.html

April 29, 2010


A Stranger in Our Midst

By Robert Weissberg

As the Obama administration enters its second year, I -- and undoubtedly millions of others -- have struggled to develop a shorthand term that captures our emotional unease. Defining this discomfort is tricky. I reject nearly the entire Obama agenda, but the term "being opposed" lacks an emotional punch. Nor do terms like "worried" or "anxious" apply. I was more worried about America's future during the Johnson or Carter years, so it's not that dictionary, either. Nor, for that matter, is this about backroom odious deal-making and pork, which are endemic in American politics.

After auditioning countless political terms, I finally realized that the Obama administration and its congressional collaborators almost resemble a foreign occupying force, a coterie of politically and culturally non-indigenous leaders whose rule contravenes local values rooted in our national tradition. It is as if the United States has been occupied by a foreign power, and this transcends policy objections. It is not about Obama's birthplace. It is not about race, either; millions of white Americans have had black mayors and black governors, and this unease about out-of-synch values never surfaced.

The term I settled on is "alien rule" -- based on outsider values, regardless of policy benefits -- that generates agitation. This is what bloody anti-colonial strife was all about. No doubt, millions of Indians and Africans probably grasped that expelling the British guaranteed economic ruin and even worse governance, but at least the mess would be their mess. Just travel to Afghanistan and witness American military commanders' efforts to enlist tribal elders with promises of roads, clean water, dental clinics, and all else that America can freely provide. Many of these elders probably privately prefer abject poverty to foreign occupation since it would be their poverty, run by their people, according to their sensibilities.

This disquiet was a slow realization. Awareness began with Obama's odd pre-presidency associations, decades of being oblivious to Rev. Wright's anti-American ranting, his enduring friendship with the terrorist guy-in-the-neighborhood Bill Ayers, and the Saul Alinsky-flavored anti-capitalist community activism. Further add a hazy personal background -- an Indonesian childhood, shifting official names, and a paperless-trail climb through elite educational institutions.

None of this disqualified Obama from the presidency; rather, this background just doesn't fit with the conventional political résumé. It is just the "outsider?" quality that alarms. For all the yammering about George W. Bush's privileged background, his made-in-the-USA persona was absolutely indisputable. John McCain might be embarrassed about his Naval Academy class rank and iffy combat performance, but there was never any doubt of his authenticity. Countless conservatives despised Bill Clinton, but nobody ever, ever doubted his good-old-boy American bonafides.

The suspicion that Obama is an outsider, a figure who really doesn't "get" America, grew clearer from his initial appointments. What "native" would appoint Kevin Jennings, a militant gay activist, to oversee school safety? Or permit a Marxist rabble-rouser to be a "green jobs czar"? How about an Attorney General who began by accusing Americans of cowardice when it comes to discussing race? And who can forget Obama's weird defense of his pal Louis Henry Gates from "racist" Cambridge, Massachusetts cops? If the American Revolution had never occurred and the Queen had appointed Obama Royal Governor (after his distinguished service in Kenya), a trusted locally attuned aide would have first whispered in his ear, "Mr. Governor General, here in America, we do not automatically assume that the police were at fault," and the day would have been saved.

And then there's the "we are sorry, we'll never be arrogant again" rhetoric seemingly designed for a future President of the World election campaign. What made Obama's Cairo utterances so distressing was how they grated on American cultural sensibilities. And he just doesn't notice, perhaps akin to never hearing Rev. Wright anti-American diatribes. An American president does not pander to third-world audiences by lying about the Muslim contribution to America. Imagine Ronald Reagan, or any past American president, trying to win friends by apologizing. This appeal contravenes our national character and far exceeds a momentary embarrassment about garbled syntax or poor delivery. Then there's Obama's bizarre, totally unnecessary deep bowing to foreign potentates. Americans look foreign leaders squarely in the eye and firmly shake hands; we don't bow.

But far worse is Obama's tone-deafness about American government. How can any ordinary American, even a traditional liberal, believe that jamming through unpopular, debt-expanding legislation that consumes one-sixth of our GDP, sometimes with sly side-payments and with a thin majority, will eventually be judged legitimate? This is third-world, maximum-leader-style politics. That the legislation was barely understood even by its defenders and vehemently championed by a representative of that typical American city, San Francisco, only exacerbates the strangeness. And now President Obama sides with illegal aliens over the State of Arizona, which seeks to enforce the federal immigration law to protect American citizens from marauding drug gangs and other miscreants streaming in across the Mexican border.

Reciprocal public disengagement from President Obama is strongly suggested by recent poll data on public trust in government. According to a recent Pew report , only 22% of those asked trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest figures in half a century. And while pro-government support has been slipping for decades, the Obama presidency has sharply exacerbated this drop. To be sure, many factors (in particular the economic downturn) contribute to this decline, but remember that Obama was recently elected by an often wildly enthusiastic popular majority. The collapse of trust undoubtedly transcends policy quibbles or a sluggish economy -- it is far more consistent with a deeper alienation.

Perhaps the clearest evidence for this "foreigner in our midst" mentality is the name given our resistance -- tea parties, an image that instantly invokes the American struggle against George III, a clueless foreign ruler from central casting. This history-laden label was hardly predetermined, but it instantly stuck (as did the election of Sen. Scott Brown as "the shot heard around the world" and tea partiers dressing up in colonial-era costumes). Perhaps subconsciously, Obama does remind Americans of when the U.S. was really occupied by a foreign power. A Declaration of Independence passage may still resonate: "HE [George III] has erected a Multitude of new Offices [Czars], and sent hither Swarms of Officers [recently hired IRS agents] to harass our People, and eat out the Substance." What's next?

Yet ANOTHER commie in Comrade Barack's closet

Reading about Obama's teary-eyed performance at the funeral of Dorothy Height, the Grand Dame of the civil rights movement (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269836/Obamas-tears-Dorothy-Heights-funeral-Washington.html), I was actually wondering for a moment if I should have a shred of sympathy for the guy:

Tears streaming down his cheeks, grief overcame Barack Obama today as he attended the funeral of the woman he called the 'Godmother' of the American civil rights movement.  The U.S. president was weeping openly as he watched the service for Dorothy Height in Washington today. He delivered the eulogy for Dr Height, whose activisim stretched from the New Deal right up until Mr Obama's election as the first African American president of the United States.

The article goes on to shed crocodile tears for Obama's suffering, and to praise the late Ms. Height,

Dr Height ...often received rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was easily recognisable in the bright, colourful hats she almost always wore. ...'She never cared about who got the credit,' the president said. 'What she cared about was the cause. The cause of justice, the cause of equality, the cause of opportunity, freedom's cause.'

Blah, blah-blah, blah-blah.

Then it struck me: Just who *is* Dorothy Height? The article really said *nothing* about her of any substance beyond those colorful hats. So I typed into Google "Dorothy Height communist", and the very first thing that came up was an article with this acolade:

Height was among the civil rights movement's most influential leaders, said Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

That came from "People's World", a communist paper self-described as

The People's World / Mundo Popular is a national, grassroots newspaper and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker. Published by Long View Publishing Co., the PW reports on and analyzes the pressing issues and struggles of the day: for workers' rights, peace, equality, social and economic justice, democracy, civil liberties, women's rights, protection of the environment, and more.

Shucks, that sounds just like Comrade Barack.

Seriously, what more do I need to know? The executive vice chair of the American Communist Party loves the hell out of her. Just what was Dorothy doing those 98 years of her life?

Dr. Height was a quietly powerful figure in Washington, meeting with every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.... Height visited the Obama White House 21 times [emphasis mine], the president said. He noted that she was determined to attend a meeting of African American leaders on unemployment last winter despite an approaching blizzard and being confined to a wheelchair. She would not allow 'just a bunch of men' to control the meeting, Obama said. When Height's attendance became impossible because cars could not reach her snow-choked driveway, he said, she still sent a message with her ideas.

I think I've got a pretty good idea of the ideas that were her message, and why Comrade Barack was shedding so many tears for her.  Sadly, this is what took over so many in the American Civil Rights movement since the 1960s.


http://www.peoplesworld.org/dorothy-height-godmother-of-civil-rights-movement/

Dorothy Height, godmother of civil rights movement

by: Pepe Lozano
April 23 2010

Dorothy Irene Height, a tireless crusader for civil rights, justice and equality for African Americans, women and all working people, died at 98 of natural causes Tuesday.

She is remembered as a pioneering voice of the civil rights movement whose life's work and activism stretched from the New Deal through the 2008 election of President Obama.

In a statement Obama called her "the godmother of the Civil Rights movement" and a hero for all Americans.

"Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement - witnessing every march and milestone along the way," said Obama.

It was as a young girl that Height decided to stand up against prejudice and discrimination and fight for access to jobs and education and for voting rights for women and African Americans. As a teenager, she marched in New York's Time Square shouting, "Stop the lynching."

Height was born March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Va., before women could vote and when Blacks had few rights. The daughter of a nurse and building contractor, she excelled in school and at public speaking.

At an early age Height encountered racial discrimination, when at 16, she was accepted into Barnard College in New York. She was invited to the school for an interview but was not admitted because the elite women's college had already reached its quota of two black women. She went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University.

In 1980, Barnard College awarded Height its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.

After earning her degrees, she became a leader of the Harlem Young Women's Christian Association and the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. During these years Height fought to stop lynching, desegregate the armed forces and reform the criminal justice system.

At age 25 Height met First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women. In 1957 Height became that group's fourth president. In that position, she initiated programs to meet the needs of teenage mothers and to address hunger in rural areas. She also organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi," in which black and white women from the North traveled to Mississippi to meet with their Southern counterparts in an effort to ease racial tensions and bridge differences.

She became a natural leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s and sought to empower and uplift women, advocating for equal wages for women, child care programs, decent housing and educational opportunities. Height worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists to coordinate the growing movement. She was on the platform near King when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington.

Height was among the civil rights movement's most influential leaders, said Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

"She was the matriarch of the movement," said Tyner. "She was a remarkable leader and her politics were quite progressive and although she is respected as a 'proper lady,' she was a militant fighter."

Tyner noted that Height and others of her generation displayed tremendous courage in speaking out against lynching and battling racial injustice.

"People like Ms. Height planted the seeds which eventually awakened Black voters to unite with others and spread the notion of anti-racist unity among all people," he said.

Fighting racism was the soul of the movement and breaking down Jim Crow laws paved the way for advancing democracy, said Tyner. "And it really made the difference."

Height liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

She used to say, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time."

In a 1997 Associated Press interview, Ms. said, "We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off."

After Obama won the presidential election in 2008, Height told Washington TV station WTTG that she was overwhelmed with emotion.

"People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen, and I said, 'If you didn't have the dream, you couldn't have worked on it," she said.

Height's life work and her commitment to African American liberation was deeply rooted in the fight for human liberation. She envisioned justice for blacks as part of justice for people everywhere in the world.

In recent years Height is known for creating the National Black Family Reunion, an annual celebration in Washington and other cities. She was also one of the few women asked to speak at the Million Man March in 1995.

She received two of the nation's highest honors: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

In a joint statement Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton said, "Our nation is poorer for her loss but infinitely richer for the life she led, the progress she achieved and the people she touched."

The Psychology of a Spiritual Looter

The one common theme in all the new government laws, policies and edicts coming our way now that Obama and the Democrats have almost unbridled power (and even their many statist allies among the Republicans) -- is power as an end in itself.  They are like thugs in a candy store of helpless victims.  They rationalize every act as "for our own good", but when you see Obama seizing control or ordering the dissolution of entire industries while acting as the behind the scenes puppet master of union goons beating up innocent Tea Party protesters, or even the absolute absurdity of Bloomberg's attempts to regulate **SALT** (an essential nutrient of life!), and now the NY state legislature contemplating making organ donation MANDATORY (see http://wcbstv.com/health/ny.organ.donor.2.1662437.html) you may be absolutely sure that their motives have nothing whatsoever to do with our well-being -- it is all about expressing their desire to exert absolute, unbridled power over all of us, to prove it can be done, to prove that we can be subjugated, to prove that they are in control of not just our existence, but all existence. 

Dwell a moment on why someone would need to do that... the psychology of someone who is terrified to face existence on his own, terrified of independence, crippled--at some deep, unadmitted level--in self-doubt about their own competence to exist.  This manifests as a hatred of every competent being out there--every businessman, every capable person, every rational person, every person of integrity, honesty and loyalty to real values (like the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution), everyone who creates values and happiness on Earth.  As Ayn Rand put it so well, their's is a "hatred of the good for being the good".  The only way they have to express that is a desire to destroy everyone who is an affront to their own inner self-loathing and self-doubt -- traits they desperately seek to conceal from everyone with a veneer of intellectuality, wit, sneers, condescension, and superficial social polish.  Which over time becomes manifested as power-lust and various forms of megalomania.

This is why I say Obama is so great danger -- his entire life has been spent manipulating people, not existence, and his ideology--a form of Castroite Marxism--is formulated to the ultimate form of that end -- destruction of all human life and happiness.

The question of the hour is whether the American public as a whole (excluding those who subscribe to the sadomasochistic serflike mentality that welcomes a healthy regular beating) will stand for it. 

Right now the best thing for the country may be if Obama gets his way on everything as fast as possible -- and I mean months, not years.  He's lusting to be an absolute dictator-for-life: he's got the megalomanical mentality of Nicolai Ceausescu.  Look him up (eg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C5%9Fescu) -- former Romanian dictator.  Especially how he got started, how his ideals and his power drove him mad, and his fitting ending, after destroying the economy of that country. 

Unlike Romania, I don't believe that Americans as a whole will tolerate a dictator -- if it happens quickly enough.  And the experience of preventing that could forever stiffen the resolve of this country to ever tolerate it happening again.

 

And the Winner Isn't...

Just to give you an idea how utterly power mad the people running our government are, here's a contest for the best reasons to put a noose firmly around your neck and jump off a high chair:

"President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are "important to everyone."

If this isn't bizarre and stupid, I don't know what is.  Let's hold another contest for home videos explaining why mass extinction events are "important to everyone", also.  We'll run it on "America's Funniest Home Videos" show.

We ought to have a counter contest (is a contest the opposite of a protest?):  Encourage the public to create the STUPIDEST video advertisments explaining why federal regulations are "important to everyone".  Mock the living hell out of these clowns.  I'm sending this idea around to all my favorite media outlets.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/64297

EPA Contest Seeks Videos Promoting Government Regulations
Monday, April 19, 2010
By Matt Cover, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are "important to everyone."

The contest, which ends May 17, will award $2,500 to the makers of the video that best explains why federal regulations are good and how ordinary citizens can become more involved in making regulations. The videos must be posted on YouTube and can be no more than 60-90 seconds in length.

In the current contest, each video must include the slogan “Let your voice be heard,” and it must direct viewers to the government’s regulatory website www.Regulations.gov . The winning video will then be used by the entire federal government to promote the regulatory process and enhance the public’s participation in it.

The EPA is managing the contest, part of the government’s eRulemaking program, on behalf of the entire government.

As explained in the EPA press release announcing the contest, the purpose of the videos will be to remind the public that federal regulation touches “almost every aspect” of their lives and to promote how important those regulations are.

“The contest will highlight the significance of federal regulations and help the public understand the rulemaking process. Federal agencies develop and issue hundreds of rules and regulations every year to implement statutes written by Congress. Almost every aspect of an individual’s life is touched by federal regulations, but many do not understand how rules are made or how they can get involved in the process.”

The videos should be designed to “capture the public imagination” and to “explain” why government regulations are “important to everyone.”

“With a short 60 to 90 second video, citizens should capture public imagination and use creativity, artistic expression and innovation to explain why regulations are important to everyone, and motivate others to participate in the rulemaking process.”

The videos must both educate viewers on the government’s regulatory process and encourage them to become more involved in it. The videos must remind viewers that regulations are laws written by the executive branch.

“Federal agencies write laws called regulations or rules,” the contest’s information guidelines states. “When Congress writes a statute and the President signs it, it usually doesn’t have enough detail for it to be put into effect. So, federal agencies fill in the details by issuing regulations.”

The videos must also remind viewers that regulations are the law and that they actually outnumber laws passed by Congress on the order of 10-1.

“Regulations have the power of law. Breaking them can result in fines and even jail time. Regulations outnumber Congressional statutes. For every statute passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, federal agencies create about 10 regulations, each of which have the force of law.”

The videos must also explain to viewers how regulations affect the everyday lives of Americans, showing just what the government does that has a “direct impact” on the lives of “every American citizen.”

Regulations have a direct impact on your life and the life of every American citizen,” the information packet says.

“The price of the coffee you drink in the morning is affected by regulations written by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The television shows you watch are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. The quality of the air you breathe is affected by regulations written by the Environmental Protection Agency.”

The winning entry will be the video which best promotes greater awareness of federal regulations, motivates people to participate in it, and tries to change the way most people think about regulation, EPA spokesman Latisha Petteway told CNSNews.com in an email explaining the contest.

“The overall message should promote greater awareness of Federal rulemaking, motivate
others to participate, and perhaps, even change the common perception of Federal rulemaking.”

The winning video will be announced by EPA in June 2010.

Previous government contests dealt with subjects such as reducing water pollution and preventing the flu. Those contests produced videos encouraging people to follow the government's advice on how to prevent storm water runoff and the spread of disease.

Commies in the Closet of Comrade Obama

Reading the Times' story at bottom, I found another commie in Obama's closet:

        Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School professor.  
        Ogletree taught both Barack and Michelle Obama at Harvard; he has remained close to Mr. Obama throughout his political career.

From Wiki.  I highlight the "Harvard professor" part because it makes the guy extremely influential, and it's clear from the sanitized bio's online that he has been and continues to be extremely influential.

The stuff excerpted below just turned up in a quick search, but what's clear is that the guy is very careful about what gets out in public about himself (he probably wrote the bios himself) -- for instance, he is a prolific writer and legal scholar, but there's not a word in wikipedia about what's in his writings, or what kind of court cases he is so famous for winning.

In researching a guy like Obama or anyone else with connections to communists, it's SO important to look at his teachers, and the teachers of his teachers, and their teachers, ad infinitum.  Also, to look for the euphemisms like "membership in activist" groups.  Or to ask... what does someone do in Cuba, in the 1970s, as part of a student activist group??  Who do you meet with, talk to?  If you are a fellow traveler (as communists like to call themselves, and Ogletree was a Black Panther -- ie, communist bent on radical overthrow of the United States), what do they ask you to do when you go back home?  Etc.

All this is just a very small piece of why I say there is no doubt whatsover that Obama is a communist, and these days, as the evidence mounts, I'm more and more inclined to say that he is actually a mole receiving instructions from overseas.  Probably Cuba or Russia, or both. 

-------------

http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-ogletree

Ogletree became a campus radical, organizing an Afrocentric (though still integrated) dormitory, where he met his future wife, Pamela Barnes. He edited a campus Black Panther newspaper called The Real News and traveled to Africa and Cuba as part of student activist groups.

He attended nearly every day of the trial of Black Power activist and Communist Angela Davis.

Ogletree also gained prominence in 1991 when he was asked by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to write up an investigation into the legal career of a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chief and African-American judge Clarence Thomas... Ogletree drafted a 30-page report on Thomas that was instrumental in the NAACP's vote of no confidence for the nominee. He later became further embroiled in the battle against Thomas when charges of sexual harassment were leveled against the judge by a law professor and former EEOC subordinate named Anita Hill;

The following year, Ogletree's career at Harvard--whose decision- makers had named him assistant professor in 1989--became the subject of controversy when a paper he had submitted to the school's Law Review Journal was called into question by some of the publication's staff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ogletree

In 2004 Harvard disciplined Ogletree for plagiarizing six paragraphs from Yale scholar Jack Balkin's book, What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said in his own book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education.  Ogletree apologized, saying that he "made a serious mistake during the editorial process of completing this book, and delegated too much responsibility to others during the final editing process.” Former Harvard President Derek C. Bok concluded, "There was no deliberate wrongdoing at all...He marshaled his assistants and parceled out the work and in the process some quotation marks got lost.”

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/18/us/AP-US-Obama-Sharpton-Factor.html?ref=aponline


Ex-Mentor: Sharpton Is Obama's Link to the Streets

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 18, 2010
Filed at 1:00 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Rev. Al Sharpton is a ''lightning rod'' for President Barack Obama on inner city streets, Obama's former Harvard mentor and friend said Saturday at a forum in Harlem.

But Sharpton, who led the event, told The Associated Press that America's first black president ''has to work both for us and for others,'' and that if Obama were to push a race-based agenda, ''that would only organize the right against him.''

Sharpton spoke on the last day of an annual conference organized by his National Action Network. Speakers included three members of Obama's Cabinet and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, as well as Charles Ogletree, the president's Harvard Law School professor, now a friend.

''Al Sharpton has become the lightning rod in moving Obama's agenda forward,'' Ogletree told the AP, describing Sharpton as a conduit between the disadvantaged and powerful leaders. ''And he has access to both the streets and the suites, to make sure that the people who are voiceless, faceless and powerless finally have some say.''

Standing at the back of a balcony overlooking Harlem's ornate First Corinthian Baptist Church, the 57-year-old lawyer said that some black Americans may be disappointed the president they helped elect isn't doing more for them.

''And President Obama expected to do a lot more,'' said Ogletree, referring to the challenges Obama faces in two wars and the struggling economy. Still, he predicted, the new health care law would affect uninsured black Americans more than any other segment of the population.

Sharpton clearly was at the center of this forum. Saturday, the front page of The Washington Post featured a photo of him with a headline that read: ''Activist Al Sharpton takes on new role as administration ally.''

He chuckled at the notion.

''I've been as much in this White House as I was in George (W.) Bush's -- it's only when Bush invited me to the White House, it was him reaching out; when Obama invites me, all of a sudden, we're allies,'' Sharpton joked during a break, sitting in a pew on the altar that served as a high-tech stage.

Amid a heated national debate over whether black leaders should align themselves with the president, Sharpton has defended Obama against criticism from television host Tavis Smiley that ''black folk are catching hell'' and Obama should do more to help them.

Black Americans, Sharpton said, ''need to solve our own problems.''

Sharpton told the AP that he is working to expand his Harlem-based organization to 100 cities from the current 42, with about 200,000 members, ''and to really deliver against unemployment that is disproportionate in the black community, and for health care and education reform.''

The four-day conference, focusing on a 12-month plan of action for black leadership, brought together prominent figures from dozens of fields, tackling topics as diverse as finding jobs for men leaving prison and federal subsidies for black farmers.

Sharpton's plan to better life for black Americans measures its success by individual goal-setting -- ''every day, every week, every month,'' said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

Nutter has a big goal: to reach and teach a half million adults in his city who are considered ''low-literate,'' which means they can read, technically, but have difficulty understanding a newspaper article or even a utility bill.

''It is impossible for parents to help their children if they can't read,'' said Nutter, who leads the largest American city with a black mayor. ''It is almost impossible to lift yourself out of poverty if you can't function at a high enough level.''

How a Python Devours its Prey

A great article from last fall came back around to me, still fully relevant.  John Lewis writes of a warning from a man appointed by Bill Clinton -- and if he's scared, everyone else should be.

"...mandated fiscal entitlements, projected into the future, are over 52,000 billion dollars. That will equal 90% of all household wealth in the U.S., and will place a burden of over 450 thousand dollars on every household in the land. This is almost ten times the present median household income level... "

"Health care entitlements constitute by far the largest single piece of this economic disaster. Those who think that creating thousands of billions of dollars in new government entitlements--in a health care bill that adds tens of millions of Americans to government programs--will do anything except hasten the coming bankruptcy are out of touch with reality. "

"If fundamental reforms are not begun now, Walker concludes, the United States will experience a financial and political collapse comparable to the fall of Rome."

We only have to review a little Roman history to get the full impact of that last one.

"He stresses that this coming financial meltdown is known by everyone in Washington--but no one wants to acknowledge it. "

I would add:  Obama may not want to acknowledge it;  he simply *wants* it. This is his path to permanent, unbridled power.  I mean that seriously and literally.  Stay tuned.

http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/economics/5631-The-Collapse-America-The-Dire-Message-David-Walker.html


The Collapse of America? The Dire Message of Mr. David Walker

28 August 2009 John Lewis

If fundamental reforms are not begun now, Walker concludes, the United States will experience a financial and political collapse comparable to the fall of Rome.

(read full article at the link)