Less then a week to go before the November 4th general election.  I sent up an event for all my listed friends and contacts and am hopeful the word will get out that voting is important, a duty, and necessary in keeping our country strong and viable as it needs strong and decisive leadership in the face of so many issues and events.

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US Presidential Election

Hosted by: JohhnyBravo Date and time: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 at 5:00 PM Location name: Your city, contact city clerk, USA View this event on Windows Live

  One of my Live Spaces friends, The RoadExecutive, posted an excellent article outlining a simple 3 point argument about the possibilities of things to come if our country makes a historic shift to the left, the largest since 1939 and much more liberal and socialist then that movement (during the height of Communisum's popularity).  I suggest you read and help point friend to this and any other blogs to ensure we keep a more moderate and less radically minded government in place.  Our very country's future depends on it.  I have highlighted key points I feel are the most important and worth further distribution.  Come on folks, the liberal main stream media is NOT going to get critical on Obama during these last 2 weeks.  Obama is outspending McCain 4 to 1 in advertising in key states and yet polls show them nearly even, this is very telling.  We all need to tell as many people as we can this election IS NOT over yet and get the logical arguments out there, not hype, fear, or sound bite slogans but real logical points like the ones below out to as many undecided and independent people as possible and try our best to make an argument to keep our government moderate and balanced and not give unchecked power to one party, or the other.  It did not work out well for us in 1939 and it won't work well for us in 2009 either!

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Go ahead, vote for Barack Obama

Today's Rant...

 

Some of my readers have concluded that there is simply no way a case can be made to vote for Barack Obama. Au contraire! In this post I intend to make a strong case for voting for Mr. Obama. I shall do so under the following three general headings: Economics, Law, and Foreign Policy.

 

Economics

 

Susan Estrich once had a conversation with Bill Clinton, prior to his election to the highest office in the land, in which he complained to her about the possibility of being embarrassed by Jerry Brown in the California primary. She recounted her response to him in her September 12^th column:

 

Finally, with a few glasses of wine in me, and the frustration of a mother of a then-young child (oh, how fast they grow) with whom I’d fled in fear to a friend’s house in the hills (with a trunkful of diapers) only a month before when my city went up in smoke, I turned to the future president. Enough about you, I said. This isn’t about you. It’s about me, and tens of millions of other people like me, who are nervous and scared and insecure, worried about their future and their children’s, worried about sick parents and relatives who may get laid off any day and all the other stuff of life that doesn’t penetrate the cocoon of successful politicians.

 

Just do this, I said. Tell me three ways my life will be better if you’re elected president. Tell me three ways my brother’s life will be better, three ways my sister’s life will be better, three worries that you’re going to take off my mother’s plate.

 

This can be translated fairly, I believe, thus: “Tell me how you (the government) plan to take care of us”. Or perhaps it means “Tell me what goodies you can promise the government is going to give us”. Either way, it is the antithesis, of course, of John F. Kennedy’s famous statement: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. It is the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals, economically speaking, in which conservatives uphold the idea that people should be viewed as free and self-reliant individuals while liberals are convinced collectivists. It’s why Obama told Joe-the-Plumber that he wanted to “spread the wealth around”. It’s why Joe Biden suggested that paying higher taxes was the patriotic thing to do. The financing of a nanny-state is viewed as a noble thing.

 

Bill Clinton aside, Estrich’s question can be answered easily enough. It would go something like this:

 

“If you are asking for goodies, the government will furnish you with NONE. If, on the other hand, you really want to know three things that will make your life better: Number one- we’ll see to it that you are safe from terrorism and foreign aggression. This would include protecting our borders. Number two- we’ll get the government out of the way of your economic prosperity by lowering your taxes and promoting growth. Number three- we’ll get rid of all the ridiculous legislation that hampers economic growth, intrudes into your life, and makes the cost of living higher. In short, we’ll promote a situation where you can take care of yourself and prosper while you do it.”

 

This wouldn’t have satisfied Estrich at all, but it would have made a conservative voter jump for joy, because the last thing a conservative wants is to be dependant upon the government. However, if you, like Estrich, are scared, worried, and insecure, wanting to know what the government is going to do about it, i.e. provide health care, hand-outs, and a myriad of other things you don’t have to plan, work, or pay for (because you think some “rich” jerk’s taxes will)…

 

Go ahead, vote for Barack Obama.

 

Law

 

Senator Charles Schumer  recently expressed his opinion that the greatest failure of the Democrats was in failing to stop the appointment of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court. You may also remember Joe Biden, in his debate with Sarah Palin, fondly recalling how he learned the necessity of putting the kibosh on strict constructionist judicial appointees like Judge Robert Bork. With the likelihood of having both houses of Congress under Democrat control for some time to come, Schumer need not worry about failure again even if Obama isn’t elected. But if Obama is elected, Schumer and Biden will have a delightful time rubber-stamping whatever liberal activist judge Obama sends their way. And make no mistake, that is what they’ll get. Princeton Professor Robert George wrote last week:

 

Barack Obama is deeply committed to the belief that members of an entire class of human beings have no rights that others must respect. Across the spectrum of pro-life concerns for the unborn, he would deny these small and vulnerable members of the human family the basic protection of the laws. Over the next four to eight years, as many as five or even six U.S. Supreme Court justices could retire. Obama enthusiastically supports Roe v. Wade and would appoint judges who would protect that morally and constitutionally disastrous decision and even expand its scope. Indeed, in an interview in Glamour magazine, he made it clear that he would apply a litmus test for Supreme Court nominations: jurists who do not support Roe will not be considered for appointment by Obama.

 

We will have a Congress and a White House where we’ll see it all- Gay rights, abortion rights (in the extreme), activist court appointees, the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine, and congressional hearings about everyone and everything (except if you are Barney Frank or Chris Dodd, in which case you’ll get a pass). Karl Rove and Dick Cheney will be among the first to get a special counsel appointed to go after them. Bush will be saved for later. Sooner or later, someone will go to jail.

 

Perhaps this is indeed your idea of Utopia. Maybe you’ve dreamed of and fought for this for years. Maybe you really like the idea of muzzling Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity through the socialization of the airwaves that the Fairness Doctrine utilizes. Perhaps you can’t wait to see those awful Fundamentalist preachers finally silenced when the government determines that calling homosexuality a sin is, in fact, a hate speech crime. If this is what you’ve been hoping for, you’ll get all this and more!

 

Go ahead, vote for Barack Obama.

Foreign Policy

In mid-July there was an interesting change made at Barack Obama’s presidential campaign web site. His critique of the troop surge in Iraq mysteriously disappeared. According to the New York Daily News, the site used to describe the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

 

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

 

Suddenly, the criticism was gone. In its place was praise for the troops for their hard work and sacrifice, along with an observation of the “improved security situation”. I guess the surge is no longer a “problem”…or is it?

 

Last November, having already seen the beginnings of the surge success, Bill Kristol wrote this is in the Daily Standard:

 

…now the surge is succeeding. Any serious person has to be rethinking his position going forward in that light. No Democrat is doing any such rethinking, however. What Democrats are doing now is, in effect, denying evident success. And, by continuing to push for a withdrawal timetable, they are trying to prevent further success.

 

Around the same time frame, Obama said this:

 

…I said, very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.

 

Fast forward to September of ’08. Obama tells Bill O’Reilly that the surge had “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams”. He still, however, maintained he was correct in opposing it.

 

As Jack Kelly asked in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, why can’t Obama simply admit that he was wrong?

 

Beyond the dishonesty that may be at play here, we have a glimpse of what foreign policy will look like in an Obama administration: Contradictory, naïve, and weak.

 

John McCain stood nearly alone in support of the surge, prepared to stand firm no matter what the political consequence because he believed the surge was a necessity. And he was right. Obama, for his part, can’t bring himself to admit fault in judgment here. He and his party were simply too invested in defeat.

 

But maybe al-Qaeda doesn’t scare you much anymore. Maybe guys wearing turbans living in caves in Pakistan aren’t really plotting to blow up your city. Maybe they’ve found better things to do. Besides, they probably like Obama. Polls demonstrate that most of the world does. Maybe he can negotiate with these guys, as well as with Iran, North Korea, Russia, etc. It’s like Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad last February said:

 

"It's 3:00am and your children are asleep," the voice over says. "There's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Something is happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call."

"Whether someone knows the world's leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead. It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?"

 

Maybe you think the answer to that question is someone other than John McCain. If so, bend over, grab your backside with both hands, and,

 

Go ahead, vote for Barack Obama.

 

 

 

For the past two weeks all the media was reporting was how Obama is raising in the polls and McCain is sinking.  Just this week headline article after headline article in all the liberal mouthpiece media outlets, LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Herald, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, Time etc. were crowing how Obama was opening up a 10 point lead in battle ground states.  After two weeks of this it sounds like the race is over, or is that what they want you to think?  Take this for example, the AP, Associated Press (one of only 4 groups of news I pay attention to because they have more ethics and standards then 95% of American media outlets now) reported now that the race is a dead heat, a near tie!  What is going on?  How could Obama slip from a 10 point lead to a 2 point lead in less then a week?

The article in question, Candidates Running Nearly Even, points out a shocking statement, to those listening to the pounding noise of the left wing media circus calling themselves news outlets.  "The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as Republican-leaning voters drifted home to their party."  How can this be?  Well first off you have to understand polls.  Living in a battleground state for the 2000 and 2004 elections I understand this much better then I did in Virginia in 96 and Alabama in 92 (my first national election). 

For my non American readers who are curious here is a very brief and quick rundown of what everyone is talking about.  The US is comprised of 50 states, each carries a curtain number of Electoral College votes based off of population.  To win the election you need 270 of the 538 total Electoral College votes.  Now I will not get into the Electoral College in depth because it is really complex (you can win the popular vote but loose EC votes and still be presidnet, just ask Al Gore).  Back to the point, some states are aligned with one party or the other so much they will seldom, if ever, vote against their party affiliation; California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, and Hawaii of course are going for Obama by an overwhelming majority.  Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, Louisiana, and Alaska are going to McCain by an overwhelming majority.  The Midwest section of the United States, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania are battleground states, meaning they are split and require more energy and time from the candidates and together hold 69 EC votes.  These states are where polls are conducted and elections won or lost.

Back to the polls.  There are hundreds of polls all with different methodologies, criteria, and scopes.  Any information scientist, the field I majored in in college, will tell you that information gathering is very complex and in order to be objective will have a highly complex formula to apply in order to keep the answers objective and impartial.  This is the key.  MSNBC and the Wall Street Journal have a poll, so does Zogby, JD Powers, LA Times, and so on and so forth.  Many of these polls do not employ real information scientists but news professionals who run to lists of registered voters and take a sample cross section on what ever criteria they feel is right and run a sample to see what they get.  In other words these polls are not objective and can not be held as reliable.  This is why Obama went from a 10 point lead to a 2 point lead in 1 week, comparing 2 different polls.  What do I think of polls?  C-R-A-P!  Politicians who pay too much attention to them are lost, people who listen to them are sheep, and those who report on them are NOT objective.  Polls have a margin of error, usually plus or minus 3 to 5 points, so tight races are withing the margin of error, those outside are considered landslides and can not be turned around so quickly (unless a HUGE embarrasement happens, Willie Horton).

People from the military know the following term, 'shaping the battlefield'.  It means to use and create existing conditions and influences and manipulate them into an advantageous situation.  US battle doctrine dictates we control the air space and sea lanes prior to deploying ground troops.  Once the troops are there we utilize the air and sea to render the enemy defenses useless and then go on a major offensive.  Politics is no different.  In home states are too well defended to crack.  The battleground states is were all the action happens.  Obama has air superiority, he is racking in hundreds of millions of dollars a week!  This money is spent of running so many radio, TV, and print ads he is outspending McCain 4 to 1, yes 4 to 1.  That means if you are watching your favorite TV show and you see a McCain ad, you will see 4 Obama ads next.  Let us not forget the overwhelming support Obama gets from print and mass media outlets in the way of slanted reporting.  The press is shaping the battlefield for Obama.  Why?  For starters they are left wing and always follow the left.  Second they are getting paid HUGE amounts of money at a time when the economy is going down and newspapers are losing jobs faster then the US auto industry is now.  Lastly, they love their power and influence and believe it will serve them well in the coming years with favorable tax and regulation laws as well as access and coverage rights.

How can I say this?  Do I know some dirty inside secret?  No, but I have eyes, ears, and a brain.  Look at a sample of today's latest headlines about the campaign; LA Times - What $75,062 will buy you at Neiman Marcus, CNN - With big lead, Obama says McCain is 'running out of time', MSNBC - Palin may release her medical records, ABC - Obama accuses McCain of 'willful ignorance' on the economy, NYT - Obama states both candidates would face a 'crisis', TIME - Poll, Obama holds leads in key states, McCain's attacks not swaying.  Now look at the other side, Reuters - How Obama, McCain are faring in key states, AP - McCain's negative coverage up as numbers go down, an um, well that is it.  Seriously that is it.  The majority of the stories you see are pro-Obama and anti-McCain.  The rest are all about early voting, voter fraud, or election status of a particular area.  What about the record breaking amounts of cash Obama is drawing in day after day?  Where are the criticisms of Obama's broken pledge to take publicly matched funding that McCain is still using?  Is the White House for sale, Obama's campaign seems to think so, raising $150 million dollars in September alone, yet all the press really reports on is Sarah Palins $150 thousand dollars for appearance and logistics while the lest wing pundits and bloggers seethe over hypocrisy and greed stating the GOP should have used the money to feed poor or fund socialists programs, well what about Obama's campaign?  At a spending rate of 4 to 1 why not sink that $150 million into those programs?  Where are the calls from the media here?  Oh, that chirping sound of crickets... is the left's hypocrisy.  The real story is why Obama has not finished off McCain's campaign yet, despite all the money and influence the race is still going on, the media refuses to discuss this point.

The media SHOULD be running articles on the candidates platforms at this late stage, comparing their health care packages, tax plans, trade plans, defense plans, education plans, legislative agendas, first 100 day goals and expectations, profiles of the campaign managers and key staffers who will show how they select their people, supreme court views, heck even their views of space exploration and entertainment favorites.  The media should be picking all these plans and packages apart looking for false assumptions, where they are good and bad, how they will work, if they can work, etc.  No we are getting detailed reports on Joe the plumber's taxes and driving records from 1998 and his lack of plumber's union credentials.  We are seeing 4 to 1 add coverage with no reporting on this fact or why there is such negative coverage of McCain while Obama gets a free ride.  We are getting agenda based, slanted, and devious reporting of things that either don't matter or only matter to liberals.  If Obama is spending 4 to 1 on coverage, why then is the race now being reportd by the AP to being a dead heat?  Does this mean McCain is gaining while Obama throws hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising every day to prevent a McCain lead?  The media is focusing on the $150 thousand spent by the GOP, not McCain's campaign, for wardrode but not reporting the $150+ spent a day by Obama on advertising, why?  This turns me off and I know it is getting overwhelming for the undecided and independents out there as well.

So add in the above overt and over the top media bias with the media led polls and you get a picture that the race is over.  The media declared the race over before the first debate, and kept doing it day after day after day thereafter.  We only see that the polls show Obama with a 10 point lead, but are not told what this means or why.  The polls are portrayed as some mystic oracle who is predicting the future and screaming at those of the opposition that all efforts are futile and useless.  The polls are portrayed as telling those undecided and independent voters that casting a vote for McCain is a waste of time and energy as he is obviously going to lose anyway.  That is not what voting is all about.  Voting is not going with the flow and following the leader.  Voting is not letting the polls or the media, or celebrities, or anyone telling you what you think or feel.  Voting is not akin to the farce of American Idol, internet web surveys, or emotional reactions to events.  Voting is serious, deadly serious.  We don't vote for someone because we like them! 

Hundreds of thousands of Americans gave lives, limbs, and blood for our freedoms and rights, of which voting is the paramount.  Voting is a responsibility, for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.  We shape our government, select it, and hold it accountable.  The media does not.  We should vote based on how the candidate will perform on the issues that matter the most to us.  Change is not a platform, it is a concept and without a designed and overtly given framework it is nothing more then a cloud in the sky.  We vote our conscience, on views like abortion, civil rights, national defense, worker's rights, fiscal responsibility, medical coverage, tax plans, education plans, etc.  We have to select a candidate based on how well they match our personal views.  There is no candidate that can appeal to everyone's thoughts on these subjects, that is impossible.  We select the candidates on how well they match our opinions on the views that matter the most to us.  When we stray from these principles of voting we disgrace those who died for our rights.  The President of the United States in not a popularity contest, that is what polls and approval ratings track, it is an office to reflect the will of the people. 

Over the past 16 years elections have gone from bad to worse.  This election is the worst one I have ever witnessed and it is such a same we, as Americans, stand by and allow such a spectacle and feeding frenzy by the press and the slants to color our views and thoughts.  We have gotten so caught up in instant gratification that the election was declared over in September.  Just as Christmas decoration now go up in stores before Halloween we can't wait for anything to start anymore.  Instant messaging, cell phones, on-demand cable and satellite TV, CD's and DVD's, MP3 and MP4 technologies, iPods, smart phones, and the like have made is impatient.  This impatience has crept into our most sacred institution.  Now we have early voting, people submitting absentee ballots just so they can get it over with before November, but we still have to wait until November to hear the results.  The media can't wait, they have the results already and are not afraid to share them.  This is akin to voter disfranchisement, keeping telling the other side it is over again and again to the point they give up.  I am sure the early voting results will be leaked, showing Obama with a 30% lead before November.  Just as California has to deal with cable TV reporting results for New York and Florida and projections made before they can even get to the booths, it is a way of shaping the battlefield.  My views and beliefs are reflected in both platforms, but the priority of the items is reflected in one much more then the other.  Unfortunately most Americans will not vote their views and ideas, but their raw emotions and publicly shaped opinions.  There will be protest votes, backlash votes, and uninformed votes cast and unfortunately this polarized election will most likely have the majority of the votes cast into these categories.  The media is supposed to supply us with the tools for selecting, instead they have become a cheerleader and we stand by and allow it to happen.  We the people select the leaders, if this is taken away we are no longer America.  We have neglected our institutions for so long we have lost sight of how important they are and what responsibilities they carry. We are too caught up in the circus we have forgotten we are not the spectators but the people running the show, for too long we have been satisfied to sit in the bleachers and watch the show.  Because of this, the show has gone on, and now it is bigger then us and we are just along for the ride. 

This is the first part of a two part Wall Street Journal article read I suggest people read and pass around, as it was how I found out about it.  The second part is one from September and is below this one as this is more relevant to the current situation we face.  I have added in comments in blue to make my points and observations obvious and underlined key points needing emphasis.

A Liberal Supermajority
Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933. (Author not named) Copyright ©2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Found on the Wall Street Journal web site located at http://online.wsj.com posted October 17^th in the Review & Outlook section, Opinions

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.  Here lies the real problem.  Non-stop Nancy is the leader of the party, Speaker of the House and with her radical left coast agenda will have nothing to stop her from proposing any and every left wing-nut idea.  As mid-term elections may correct this imbalance she will be motivated to press as much as she can as hard as she can while they have the power to do so.  I hope to God I am wrong and they will be responsible and moderate but given the furor and toxicity of this campaign I can't be that optimistic.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

The nearby table shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.

- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.  How many countries can you say this approach has worked for, France, Sweden, Switzerland, they all have bad economies, high taxes, and a highly defunct medical system, what about Cuba, well only if we are willing to go completely Communistic and take the entire medical system from pharmaceuticals to hospitals and doctors and regulate them all to a level there is no profitability (high taxes) and then thing about all your 401k, IRA, and mutual funds that are invested in these industries and sectors.

Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.

The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.

- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.  Remember my rant over Hillary Clinton's 'take the profits back' comment she made about big oil, well the same goes here.  Government only has the right to levy fines or taxes against companies for wrong doings or new policies.  Taking profits will kill their stocks, make stock dividends worthless, kill investments, see the big 3 mentioned above, and worst off, it will drive big business overseas just like Haliburton.  This is a socialists tactic of 'redistributing wealth' which is how communists take from the rich to give to the poor in order to make everyone equal, it does not work in practice and will only kill business in our country.

The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.

- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.  Doesn't sound very democratic to me, more like how to bully employees into participating in something they don't want to.  I hate unions.  They are dinosaurs and their time has come and gone.  They killed my home town of Detroit and that city is still in the death throws of trying to purge the unions out.  Unions in American make inflation happen and make us uncompetitive in a modern global economy.

The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.

- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.  Watch for key code words here folks.  'Invest' means tax.  'Credit' means wealth transfer.  'Create' means newer, bigger, more clumsy government.  Joe the plumber was told by Obama that his success would be 'spread around', meaning that the government will take money (taxes) and then give to those making less (credits).  How is it people who don't pay taxes in the first place get tax cuts?  People who don't pay taxes (those who get rebate checks or owe nothing on April 15th) will get additional rebates AND the promised services, who is paying for that???

- The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.

- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress -- Democratic, naturally.  Wisconsin has same day voter registration, meaning you can register at the polls.  There is HUGE voter fraud in Wisconsin and Milwaukee.  In 2000 and 2004 there were more votes cast then registered voters, and by tens of thousands.  The state's voter accountability board, backed by Democrat governor Jim Doyle, is refusing to comply with Federal Law by enforcing the Fair Voter Act of 2004.  They are blocking all county and city clerks from checking their voter rolls to ensue the names match state DMV records.  If the name is not found it is flagged and the voter told to cast a provisional ballot and once identity is confirmed the vote is counted, but Democrats are pushing hard to prevent this.  I'm not even going to go into the slashing of tires and destruction of GOP offices by Democrats in Milwaukee in 2004 (government employee's son caught and convicted but given commuted sentence).

Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.  This act, shot down twice by previous Congresses, will force media outlets to mandate equal air time for opposition, meaning for every hour of Rush Limbauh the same station has to air an hour of left-wing talk radio.  Seeing nearly all left wing talk radio tanked and no longer exists the mandate demands if the opposing view is not available then the other is not allowed to be on the air.  The FCC would enforce, and being appointed by Obama we all know its enforcement would be directed in one way only.

- Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar's ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.

It's always possible that events -- such as a recession -- would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn't turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama's agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton's was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore's BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.

In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.  While impossible to see into the future and hoping cooler heads would prevail it is still scary to see my country shifting so quickly to the far left, into a direction I see everyday here in China.  While I know Democrats will not go that far the measures I keep seeing pop up here and there and the lack of scrutiny by the press makes me more pessimistic about the state, freedoms, and integrity of my country.  The polarization and glee the far left is showing now, coupled with the overboard fawning by the press into a starstruck teen girl air by the mass media and I can't help but be reminded of history lessons of 1945 Russia, 1939 Germany and Italy, 1950's Cuba and China.  Anyone speaking out is quickly and overwhelmingly marginalized and silenced.  Just like the outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya I fear this is where the voice of moderates will land.  Joe the Plumber has been destroyed by the left wing press, blogers, and DNC hate machine all because he asked a good question and got a non-answer. 

This is why I keep saying, show me the platform, show me your agenda, show me your plans.  Without those I can not vote for you.  The Democrats keep saying McCain is just like Bush, well, I know where Bush stands on many issues, I may not like some of them but I can live with them.  I can not live in a socialists America, I am living in communist China already and need to know the country I left to further my personal, professional, and intellectual life will be there when I come back.  It may not be perfect but it is better then any country on Earth just the way it is now.  Moving the country to the far left and making it closer to Cuba, the old Soviet Union, and China then to our allies of England, Australia, Canada and India is a grave mistake and a crying shame.

Below is a second article I felt like sharing, one that shows just how far from center Mr. Obama really is.  I will interject comments and observations into the article, highlighted in blue to be easily distinguishable.

Obama's Leftism
The Democratic nominee is nowhere near as moderate as he sounds. By JOSHUA MURAVCHIK This article appears in the October issue of Commentary, Copyright ©2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Found on the Wall Street Journal web site located at http://online.wsj.com posted September 29^th in the Federation Feature section

Introducing himself to the nation at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama spoke not only of his black father, "born and raised in a small village in Kenya," but of his white mother, "born in a town . . . in Kansas" to a father who "worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression" before enlisting in military service "the day after Pearl Harbor." What brought them together was "a magical place, America," he said, adding, "I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage... knowing that... in no other country on earth, is my story even possible."

Not only was Mr. Obama the real, living embodiment of America's racial diversity. He was a dazzling presence, outshining the party's nominee with his look, stage presence, oratorical mastery and the brilliance of his rhetoric. Nor was that all. This avatar of reconciliation talked of transcending divisions not just racial but political and ideological. He spoke lovingly of country and movingly of God and family in a way that had eluded the Democrats since their sharp turn to the Left when the party nominated George McGovern in 1972.

In the speech's highlight, Mr. Obama said:

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America... We worship an "awesome God" in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

Four years later, Mr. Obama is the Democratic nominee, and even his occasional shrill attacks on his opponent seem to have chipped away little of the cornerstone of his own candidacy: the promise to bring us, all of us, together. Can he do that? Is he well-suited to raise the curtain on a new postpartisan, postideological era?  Well, it started out promising, inspiring, and with optimism and patriotism we could all fall behind.  This is the beauty of being a moderate.  From humble and downtrodden roots to raising above the expectations to arrive at success, it is something all of us could admire.  Unfortunately the makeup of moderatism fell away when the campaigning began.

From his record in office, it would hardly seem so. Nonpartisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Mr. Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Mr. Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.

Last year, for example, the average Senator voted with his own party 84% of the time; Mr. Obama voted with his party 96% of the time. In the prior two years, his number was 95%, making him the fourth most partisan member of the Senate. And not just partisan, but also highly ideological. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Mr. Obama's voting record made him "the most liberal Senator." Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action, the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Mr. Obama voted "right" 90% of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the "wrong" side. If we discount his absences, Mr. Obama voted to ADA's approval more than 98% of the time.  This was shocking.  Mr. Obama did fell in-line with his party 12% above average!  Not only does he toe-the-line, he rubber stamps the agenda.  This speaks to me of a person who does not know what is going on and is just going with the flow.  Moderates do not rubber stamp.  Moderates do not agree with all things going on with their party or direction of the party over 90% of the time.  This is the sign of a person so drunk off of the kool-aid of their party they can't see the middle, much less the view from the right.  This is beyond dangerous.

This touches directly on the question of what, beyond the platitudes of unity, hope and change, Mr. Obama himself believes in. His voting record is one indication. Another is his intellectual evolution.

Abandoned by his father when he was still too young to remember him and then sent at age 10 by his mother to live in Hawaii with her parents, who enrolled him in a prestigious prep school, Mr. Obama spent much of his teen years searching for his black identity. Late in his high-school career he found a mentor of sorts in Frank Marshall Davis, an older black poet. According to Herbert Romerstein, former minority chief investigator of the House Committee on Internal Security, FBI files reveal Davis to have been a member of the Communist Party not only in its public phase but also when it officially dissolved and went underground in the 1950s.

According to Mr. Obama, Davis told him that a white person "can't know" a black person, and that the "real price of admission" to college was "leaving your race at the door." Perhaps influenced by this, he reports that at college, "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."  You can tell a lot about a person by who they chose to associate themselves with, the current names in the press are far more tame then this group.  During those times the radical left was so far out to the left it was into the realm of extremism, which is never a good thing for anyone.  It is also telling that Mr. Obama "...Chose my friends carefully", at what point did HE STOP DOING THIS?  Since college it seems Obama stopped carefully checking out his friends as his associations with extreme peoples have exploded.  His real-estate deals in Chicago, his ACORN ties, Ayers, Rev Wright, etc.  Why is it Obama has not countered the GOP and moderate's questions with examples of his moderate friends, his moderate ties, his 'not a liberal American or Conservative American but a United States of America'?  Why has his message dived so far to the left and more disturbing is the fact he is not refuting this shift.  He is defending the far left's views, not showing how it works for moderates.   

Despite Mr. Obama's tone of self-mockery, the passage discloses the milieu in which he immersed himself. In this light, it is not surprising that, upon graduation, he decided on a career as a "community organizer," even if it was none too clear to him what exactly that meant. As he confesses in his early memoir "Dreams from My Father" (1995):

"When classmates… asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House… Change in the Congress… Change in the mood of the country… Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots… I'll organize black folks."

Thanks to a grant from a left-wing foundation, he was hired by a small group of white protégés of Saul Alinsky, the original apostle of "community organizing." Alinsky's institutional base was the Industrial Areas Foundation, which he called a "school for professional radicals" and whose goal he announced to be "revolution, not revelation." As Mr. Obama himself would put it, there were "two roles that an organizer was supposed to play… getting the Stop sign [and] the educative function. At some point you have to link up winning that Stop sign… with the larger trends, larger movements." In other words, "community organizer," to Mr. Obama and his colleagues and mentors, was a euphemism for professional radical.

It was in the course of trying to mobilize churches for political protest that Mr. Obama met Jeremiah Wright. When the controversy surrounding the pastor arose this year, Mr. Obama denied being present when Mr. Wright delivered his most incendiary sermons, commenting that he was like "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with." But this was evasive. By Mr. Obama's own testimony, the reason other ministers directed him to Mr. Wright was that Mr. Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ was steeped in politics.  Now to be fair I have attended some 'odd' Christian churches in Alabama, mostly in the pursuit of girls, and therefore I can attest that a preacher's views are not shared by his congregation.  Christianity is all about forgiveness and hope, it is between God and Rev. Wright.  To me this is not as big an issue as the militant ties or the post college associates who had more access and influence to Mr. Obama then an old preacher who's sermons Mr. Obama most likely did not intently listen to a majority of anyway.

Thus, Mr. Obama writes that Mr. Wright had "dabbl[ed] with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism" before returning to Christianity and studying, among other things, "the black liberation theologians." Whoever and however many these theologians may have been, Mr. Wright invoked only one on the church's Web site. "The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ," in Wright's words, was "based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, Black Power and Black Theology."

What was that theology? Here are two tiny snippets of Cone's thought: "Christianity and whiteness are opposites," and "there will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness." In addition to a cross superimposed on a map of Africa, the Web site declares: "We are an African people, and remain 'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization." It defines Trinity as, among other things, "a congregation committed to the historical education of African people in diaspora, a congregation committed to liberation." When Mr. Obama joined the church in the 1980s, it did not yet have a Web site, but he tells of a brochure that, while condoning the pursuit of income, warned congregants against the "psychological entrapment of black 'middleclassness.' " The liberationist music was playing back then, too.

At Trinity, Mr. Obama attempted to enlist Mr. Wright in his protest campaign, and the pastor sought to recruit Mr. Obama to the church. Evidently both succeeded, though at the time Mr. Obama says he was so far from religion that he "could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." But when he began to participate in Trinity's services, he discovered he was not unique in his ambivalence. Of the other congregants, he would observe:

Not all of what these people sought was strictly religious… It occurred to me that Trinity, with its African themes, its emphasis on black history, [was] a redistributor of values and circulator of ideas. Only now the redistribution didn't run in just a single direction from the schoolteacher or the physician… to… the sharecropper or the young man fresh from the South… The flow of culture now ran in reverse as well, the former gang-banger, the teenage mother, had their own forms of validation—claims of greater deprivation, and hence authenticity.

The first time Mr. Obama attended services at Trinity, Mr. Wright delivered a sermon (it was titled "The Audacity of Hope") whose theme was: "white folks' greed runs a world in need." Twenty years later, when it was revealed that Mr. Wright's church had honored Louis Farrakhan, that Mr. Wright had traveled with Mr. Farrakhan to visit the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, and that in his sermons Mr. Wright had beseeched God to "damn America," charged the U.S. government with inventing the AIDS virus in order to kill black people, and claimed that Israel and South Africa had colluded to invent an "ethnic bomb" to kill blacks and Arabs while leaving whites unharmed—when all this was revealed, Mr. Obama, under pressure from the Hillary Clinton campaign, declared himself "shocked" at Mr. Wright's vitriol. But in truth not only was he aware of Mr. Wright's views, they were what had drawn him to Trinity church in the first place.

Mr. Obama left Chicago after three years to attend Harvard Law School. As he would explain, "I had things to learn…, things that would help me bring about real change." After graduating with honors in 1991, he returned to the Windy City to join the small law firm of Judson Miner, an activist who had been attorney to Mayor Harold Washington.

Within three years of his return, he also became deeply involved with Bill Ayers, a former leader of the so-called Weather Underground. This leftist terrorist group, akin to the German Baader-Meinhof gang or the Italian Red Brigades, specialized in bombing government buildings. Ayers later wrote boastfully that he had personally carried out an attack on the Pentagon. Ayers's wife and closest collaborator was Bernardine Dohrn, whose views were so extreme that they seemed to cross a line from ultraleftism to Satanism. At a meeting of the Weather Underground, she hailed the murders then recently committed by Charles Manson's demented followers. "Dig it, first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach!" she exulted, giving a three-fingered salute to signify a fork.  Again the company you keep speaks volumes, not I am not saying Mr. Obama shares these views or ideals but remember he did state earlier that he chose his friends very carefully.  Instead I am saying they helped color his perspective and rationale as these people and their friends has access and conversations with Mr. Obama and his friends creating a circle of people in which ideas could pass.  This is troubling in that at this time he was still young and inexperienced to the degree that blocking out radically slanted views was not developed to the degree necessary to prevent some air of kinship from forming.

After the pair emerged from hiding in 1980, a court dismissed the main charges against Ayers on the grounds that the government had used an illegal wiretap. He pleaded guilty to possessing explosives, but served no time. The net outcome inspired him to gloat that he was "guilty as hell and free as a bird." Dohrn served seven months. Then they both went respectable, but without changing their views. Ayers posed for a picture stomping on an American flag, and in 2001 he told the New York Times: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

The details of Mr. Obama's association with Ayers remain somewhat shrouded because both Ayers and Dohrn have refused to discuss it, while Mr. Obama and his spokesmen have prevaricated about it. When, during one of the televised primary debates, George Stephanopoulos asked about his connection to Ayers, Mr. Obama replied:

"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know, and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

Later, Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, added: "Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school." If this is true, Ayers's children must be slow learners, since they are 31 and 28, while Mr. Obama's are 9 and 6. But Mr. Obama's own reply, though less bald-faced than Mr. Axelrod's, was thoroughly disingenuous. Thanks to the meticulous investigations of the left-leaning blogger Steven Diamond (globallabor.blogspot.com), the story of Mr. Obama and Ayers's collaboration has been seeping into the public record despite extraordinary efforts to seal it.  This is the beginning of the Bill Ayres tie ins and the article goes off on a tangent, if you are interested in the history continue, it does show how the groups that had access to Obama were formed and the ideology of their leaders, heroes, and policy makers.

After escaping punishment for his crimes, Ayers received degrees in education and became an advocate of school reform in Chicago. In particular, he propounded a "radical" project in the late 1980s that was inspired by New York City's disastrous experiment decades earlier in "community control." Ayers's project was championed by a coalition called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABC's; according to Mr. Diamond, one member of the "alliance" was the Developing Communities Project, the group for which Mr. Obama worked as an organizer. If so, then it is likely that the two met back then, since the DCP was a tiny organization and Mr. Obama was most likely its representative.

In any event, in 1994, when the philanthropist Walter Annenberg put up $500 million to help the nation's public schools, Ayers submitted a grant proposal that secured $50 million for an entity called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The word "challenge" signified that the recipients were required to find double the amount in matching funds; this they did, disposing altogether of some $160 million.

The ostensible purpose of the project was to reinvigorate Chicago's flagging decentralization project. Ayers devised a structure made up of three connected elements, of which the main two were the Collaborative, or operational center, and the Board, with overall financial control. Ayers named himself to head the Collaborative; Barack Obama, apparently by Ayers's choice, became chairman of the Board.

So it is conceivable that the two met as late as 1994, but this hardly seems likely. Would anyone yield control of the purse to someone he did not already know well and trust thoroughly? And what exactly were Mr. Obama's credentials in the field of school reform, unless he had been active in the ABC's with Ayers in the 1980's? At the very latest, the two must have met sometime after Mr. Obama returned from Harvard in late 1991 or early 1992, well before he was chosen to chair the board in 1995.

For the next four to five years, the two worked together to raise the matching funds and disburse small grants to local organizations pushing the reform program. It could only have been an intimate partnership. When Mr. Obama decided to run for the state senate, his first fund-raising event was held in the home of Ayers and Dohrn. In 1997, Ayers published a book about juvenile justice, "A Kind and Just Parent," which Mr. Obama blurbed as "a searing and timely account." The two also served together on the board of the leftist Woods Fund from 1998 until 2001.

This is what is now public about the relations between Mr. Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. There may be much more, so far successfully hidden by all concerned; but even these facts suggest that Ayers was among Mr. Obama's closest collaborators.

Mr. Obama's turn to electoral politics signified no change in his basic ideological orientation. As his wife, Michelle, put it: "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change." ("I take that observation as a compliment," Mr. Obama said as late as 2005.)  Tangent done, back to better background stuff below.  Odd the deal about Obama's house and property is not mentioned, that was a real sweetheart deal worth a few front page articles.

Mr. Obama's target was a legislative seat held by Alice Palmer, who had decided to make a run for the U.S. Congress. She introduced Mr. Obama in Democratic Party circles as her anointed successor. (After a later falling-out, the two would dispute whether her support had amounted to a formal endorsement or merely, as she claimed, "an informal nod.") Like others among his mentors or patrons, Ms. Palmer, too, was a radical, a member of the executive body of the U.S. Peace Council, the least disguised of Soviet front organizations. She had made multiple pilgrimages to the Soviet Union, and in 1986 attended the 27th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, telling the party paper on her return that the Soviets "plan to provide people with higher wages and better education, health and transportation, while we in our country are hearing that cutbacks are necessary in all of these areas." According to a later story in the same paper, Ms. Palmer visited Moscow again the following year to attend the World Congress of Women sponsored by another Soviet front organization.

In his campaign for the Illinois senate, Mr. Obama was endorsed by the New Party, a coalition of socialists, Communists and other leftists. According to the newsletter of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, whose members were said to constitute 15 percent of the Chicago New Party, "Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP [which] mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP." Apparently, Mr. Obama signed such a pledge. After winning the primary (unopposed because his lawyers had succeeded in knocking all three opponents off the ballot), he appeared at a New Party membership meeting to voice his thanks.

Entering the national political scene eight years later, Mr. Obama did not, to be sure, appear as a radical, but he still bore the earmarks of the world in which he had been immersed for 20 years. He called himself "progressive," a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists. Early this year his wife, Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time. The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a "downright mean" place, "guided by fear," where the "life... that most people are living has gotten progressively worse."

This year, Mr. Obama appeared before the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network (whose official slogan is "no justice, no peace") to seek its support. The candidate praised Mr. Sharpton as "a voice for the voiceless and... dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up." Given Mr. Sharpton's long career of reckless racial demagogy, it might seem shocking that a mainstream candidate should be seeking his blessing, but in this, at least, Mr. Obama was not unique: all of the 2008 Democratic aspirants did so. He did, though, strive to separate himself from the pack:

"If there is somebody who has been more on the forefront on behalf of the issues that you care about and has more concrete accomplishment on behalf of the things you're concerned about, then I am happy to see you endorse them. I am happy to see you support them... But I am absolutely confident that you will not find that, because there is nobody who has stood fast on these issues more consistently each and every day, than I have. That is something that I know."

As it happened, Mr. Sharpton, a consummate wheeler-dealer, kept his options open for a while. But other radicals, soft and hard, rushed to embrace Mr. Obama, often waxing rapturous in their support. Robert Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel enthused in The Nation that Mr. Obama's was "a historic candidacy," from which "new possibilities will be born." Michael Lerner wrote in Tikkun that the "energy, hopefulness, and excitement that manifests [sic] in Obama's campaign" was reminiscent of "the civil-rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the movement for gay liberation." Most remarkably, Tom Hayden himself joined the chorus by breaking a New Left taboo against "red-baiting" and laying bare some of Hillary Clinton's own far-left history—this, in retaliation for the Clinton campaign's revelations about Mr. Obama's radical background.  My feelings about Mr. Sharpton are very well known among my long time readers.  I will not let that color my objectiveness.  I understand the political reasons for getting chumy with Sharpton, Jackson, and the like however given the history of Sharpton's actions I would not provide a blanket praise and encouragement to his actions given his most public escapades seen by the general public, that of the Duke University character assinations that ended up being false and then never apoligizing for it becaue he stated that it had happened before, just not this time.  Sharpton is a very polorizing figure, one who inspires high emotion on both sides and seeking out his endorsement again shows more about Obama's mindset and personal agenda then his publically spun campaign glossed over platform.

Even after declaring his candidacy, and despite a certain inevitable sidling rightward, Mr. Obama still reflected the presuppositions of a radical worldview. In one notable remark, he said of voters in economic distress that in their desperation they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." Chastised for his condescension, he responded: "I said something that everybody knows is true." This was elitism of a very specific kind—the mentality of the community organizer, according to which people in the grip of "false consciousness" need to be enlightened as to the true nature of their class interests, and to the nature of their true class enemies.  This is one of my problems with Mr. Obama.  He talks about John McCain being out of touch on many issues, yet here he is out of touch with the feelings of middle of the road moderates, their concerns, and he has the audacity to mock them and then say everyone knows they are wrong!  Clinging to religion is wrong?  Clinging to the 2nd Amendment is wrong?  I feel people have the ability to chose what matters the most to them and they are responsible enough to make their own decisions.  Statements like this, and the follow up, do not show compassion, understanding, or that Obama 'gets it' when it comes to middle America.

The same suppositions are again evident in Mr. Obama's stances on international issues. Iraq, as he sees it, is only a symptom. "I don't want to just end the war… I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place." And what would that mindset be? In a 2002 speech that he frequently cites, he said the war resulted from:

"the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors… to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne… the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income… the arms merchants in our own country… feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe."

In this litany of global perfidy, the issues of Saddam Hussein's murderous dictatorship, of American security, of the future of freedom, shrink to inconsequentiality next to the struggle of the oppressed against their American capitalist overlords.

When it comes to Iran, Mr. Obama has acknowledged that the regime presents a problem. But his actions—he opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—as well as his rhetoric imply that the greater danger emanates from George W. Bush (who is allegedly seeking "any justification to extend the Iraq war or to attack Iran"). Likewise on defeating terrorism, where he rejects the America-centric focus that Bush has given to the issue; instead, in the words of his aides, Obama's main goal is to "restore… our moral standing"—that is, to put an end to our aggressive ways.

Even the events of 9/11 could not shake Mr. Obama from the mindset that the enemy is always ourselves. The bombings, he wrote, reflected:

"the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together; and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us."  What?  He is blaming our success or our flaunting of success and then our unyielding policy to terrorists as the reasons behind this.  I think the good Senator needs to seek out a terrorism expert to see what really motivates and drives these people to do what they do.  While there is a financial and religious component the main factor is an ideology so intense it hijacks the senses and morality of a person to an unimaginable level.  Terrorists are manipulated, twisted, and blinded people who are pawns by power broker self proclaimed deities who only answer for their deeds in the next world.  His misunderstanding of them is more dangerous then the previous 4 administrations underestimation of them.

In this reading, the lessons to be learned from the actions of Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta are that we must accept multiculturalism at home and share our wealth abroad.  Remember this term and the akin one "spread it around" they are key and will be discussed later on when I have time.

In sum, Mr. Obama comes to us from a background farther to the left than any presidential nominee since George McGovern, or perhaps ever. This makes him an extremely unlikely leader to bridge the divides of party, ideology or, for that matter, race. If he loses, it will be for that reason (though many will no doubt adduce different explanations, including of course white racism, to which every GOP victory since Nixon's election in 1968 has been attributed).

And if he wins? Without a doubt, it will be a thrilling moment. But the enduring importance of that landmark event will depend on the subsequent effectiveness of his presidency. If his tenure—like that of, say, Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter—should end by inviting scorn, then it may open as many wounds as it heals. On the other hand, it is not unimaginable that he may rise to the challenge of the office and govern from the center, as he will have to do to succeed. This, however, would truly involve reinventing himself, a task for which his intellectual and ideological background furnishes few materials.

With his sharply partisan speech to the Democratic national convention in late August, Mr. Obama appeared to zag to the left after months of zigging toward the center in hopes of winning over independent voters, which had stirred cries of alarm among some of his leftist supporters. Others among them, however, were and are nothing fazed. As The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss explained, they "put their faith in the Senator's character and innate instincts." Heaven help us, they are probably right.

Mr. Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This article appears in the October issue of Commentary.

The most troubling part of all this is the slant the main stream media is taking.  There is no microscope being offered to Obama or his policies.  He touts independent sources, but who are they and how independent are they?  Are they as independent and impartial as the main stream media?  Obama's shift to the left is very calculated.  While he is too inexperienced or naive to be as dangerous as some right wing pundits state, this does not make him any less dangerous.  We all know the Congress will be filled by more Democrats this year, with Obama in there as well they will have total control of both houses and the executive branch.  Nancy Pelosi will then have a complete rubber stamp, there will be no filibuster option to prevent 'legislate from the bench' judges from being pushed through and the country will be pointed towards the most left based course it has every seen.  When power is not balanced it is never a good thing.  When the Republicans had total power like this they enacted the Patriot Act along with many measures that jeopardized our freedoms, well now if the Democrats gain the same power it appears they will try to go one further.  Socialism is on the rise, there is a real likelihood for the first time in our nation's history things could go too far, we need more moderate tones and common sense to prevail, unfortunately the options are not there, and if they were the media orgy we have seen would discredit it and turn a deaf ear.  Our founding fathers believed in sheading the burdens of government and running the leanest government necessary and letting the individuals decide how best to conduct their lives, this IS the pursuit of happiness.  As much as the left hates the restrictions imposed by the Patriot Act, we conservatives hate the socialists based restrictions imposed by nationalized healthcare, windfall taxes, higher taxes offset by tax credits, and so on and so forth.  The only way to run the country now is to do so from the center.  Preaching 'reaching across the isle' is not enough.  The records do not show this.  Without moderates the country will fall too far to one side of the other, and this is too far off our forefather's beliefs and will cause too much damage.  Who is more moderate?  Who is able to listen to and work with people of the other idology?  Who is more center leaning and able to acheive things both sides can agree to?  These are my questions, and the answers will translate into my vote.