The Financial Filter: How CNBC Handles Howard Dean vs. Susan Boyle

~~By  InsightAnalytical-GRL

Lately, I’ve been testing my mettle by actually tuning into CNBC occasionally. We don’t have FOX Business here, but you get enough of their angle on the regular FOX shows featuring Neil Cavuto and the weekend financial panels.

Yesterday, I caught Howard Dean just around the Noon hour ET (on Power Lunch), slugging it out with that panel they have which features Larry Kudlow among others.  I was wondering what Dean was doing on there following the latest Geithner comments, but perhaps he’s getting warmed up to defend the upcoming healthcare “reform” that will be vomited out of the Congress and Obamaville soon.

Anyway, Kudlow was yelling again about “why can’t the markets be allowed to correct themselves” to which Dean retorted in perfect Obot fashion “Look what the markets did to the American people!” (sic).

Well, I waited for the comeback…I waited to hear one of these panel people, including Kudlow, respond snappily with how Congress, particularly Democratic members, failed to provide oversight over the housing mortgage debacle, which seems to have precipitated much of the mess we’re in.

CRICKETS!

But, as I thought about it, I figured that’s exactly what I was expected to hear. The GE family of companies that “bring good things to life” don’t consider history and full debate healthy for the 5th-grade level critical skills level of the American viewer. Kudlow is probably under orders “not to go there,” so he doesn’t go there. He’s loud and passionate about “the markets” but he pulled up short with Dean.

But that’s the way it is now. The media is in a permanent state of coitus interruptus when in it comes to discussing financial matters…or most political news. Especially since the Obama folks are so cozy with GE…

Sue Herera and Bill Griffeth, still at it after all these years,  are stuck in the middle of all this.  They’ll get a couple of people on and ask some serious questions, but the upcoming segments which follow always involve some provocative pugilism.  After listening to the Dean segment, which included another guest plus Dean and the four CNBC panelists,  I felt whiplashed, not informed. Mission accomplished!

After 3 PM, we get a lot more sober discussion for a brief time as The Closing Bell airs and things settle down.   Gone is the screaming on the panels and the minute-by-minute, breathless spewing that sounds like the coverage of a sporting event while the market gyrates. Maria Bartiromo anchors and does interviews and the discussions are less hysterical. Today, I caught a young guy from the NY Times and a few experienced hands getting down to the real problems with the financial sector…including the one-time things done this quarter courtesy government largesse that won’t be around to play with over the next few quarters when the rubber meets the road.

Yeah, but then it’s over as we get Fast Money then Jim Cramer’s Mad Money to liven the pace for evening prime time with their gameshow approach to finance and to appeal to the young dreamers who want to get rich quick and don’t have a clue. And then Kudlow returns.

In a comment to yesterday’s post, Lee M. had a musing which captures the zeitgeist of CNBC these days, too…I’ve done some word substitutions where appropriate:

…the cretins over at MSNBC CNBC, having crossed the Rubicon, have no where else to go.

They know that those of us who value our Constitution [journalistic integrity] have written them off, so they keep pitching their wares to the far left and the Obots because without them they would have no audience at all.

Like Julius Caesar before them, the die is cast, and they can’t go back. So they will continue their vile jokes [obvious bias and omissions] that would have gotten anyone else censored [fired] before this. They are tolerated because that is the way TPTB want it for now.

So Howard Dean is treated with kid gloves, the facts be damned!

Oh, but the folks at CNBC certainly DO have somewhere to go, if I may quibble a bit with that first line of the above comment. Where? Well, let’s visit the CNBC website where yesterday afternoon I found somebody dragging Susan Boyle along in a “humor” piece that ties the global economy to her performance…with an odd mixture of  admiration (?) and the requisite mockery (of course).  How appropriate…the taunts begin the day after I write about “Smeargate” in the UK and the level of “discourse”  we have here in the U.S.:

Apr.21

1:49 PM ET

As she concluded the song and the crowd jumped to its feet cheering, Susan Boyle blew a kiss. A kiss that, like the butterfly that flapped its wings, set in motion a flutter of dollars, pounds, euros and yen that will get this global economy humming again.

Will YouTube Sensation Susan Boyle Save the Global Economy?

Posted By:Cindy Perman

As the world grapples with headlines about troubled loans at Bank of America [BAC 8.76 +  0.74 (+9.23%)
and pirates wreaking havoc on the high seas, a lone dove has emerged to save the global economy.

SNIP

Boyle rolls her unknown-to-man hips.

Teenage girls roll their eyes. (Yeah, we saw you, eye-rolling girl at 1:24)

SNIP

Susan Boyle has given people a reason to hope.

A reason to look up from their flaming 401(k) statements.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

A reason to walk over to their computer and log on to YouTube.com.

When hope was high

A reason to buy Kleenex in bulk at Costco. [COST 46.48 + 2.14 (+4.83%) ]

And life worth living

A reason to go to Amazon.com [AMZN 78.75 + 1.18 (+1.52%) ]

I dreamed that love would never die—

SNIP

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

A reason to watch the made-for-TV movie about her on Lifetime and expose themselves to millions of dollars in advertising. [DIS 19.47 + 0.06 (+0.31%) ]

Do you get the feeling that someone RESENTS the fact that Susan Boyle wasn’t manufactured by the entertainment industry and the mass media, but simply appeared and touched people’s souls without a filter? If the “money machine” were cranking up for one of their fake creations, would you get the slights and mockery that we see directed at Susan Boyle in this piece? Or the cheapening of a great performance (and a pretty darned good song, too) ? The vultures find it so distasteful that the the plebes responded spontaneously even though the entertainment biz types will be trying to make money off  her until the well runs dry?  Personally, I hope she makes a bundle on her own terms and then walks away…before we start getting the “whispers” about her single life that will probably be started up to shove her aside for some plastic doll that can be marketed and controlled for public consumption… Like, what? She doesn’t deserve to make any money off her REAL talent??  Mark my words, Simon Cowell will look like a compassionate saint compared to what could come down further along this road…

Yes, just like the filtering of political and financial news, we have to get a filter in place for Susan Boyle so the public can be redirected to enable the opinion/money makers can move onto creating a fab NEW item for which they can take full credit and reward themselves with extra executive compensation bonuses.  Maybe TPTB can recycle the filters they used with Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton and a “feeble” John McCain as they deal with Susan Boyle.

Heart seems to have a short shelf-life these days…

Molly Ivins: 2 Years After Her Death, People Who Knew Her Are Putting Words into Her Mouth (Are They Holding Seances?)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Molly Ivins

(Courtesy Wikipedia)

Tomorrow, January 31, will mark the second anniversary of Molly Ivins’ death from breast cancer.

At the time of her death, a lovely tribute was composed by her editor and friend of many years, Anthony Zurcher.  In his moving tribute, he wrote:

Goodbye, Molly I.

Molly Ivins is gone, and her words will never grace these pages again — for this, we will mourn. But Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would want us to grieve. More likely, she’d say something like, “Hang in there, keep fightin’ for freedom, raise more hell, and don’t forget to laugh, too.”

SNIP

But while she was here, her heart never failed to see clear and true — and for that, we can all be grateful.

Almost exactly one year before she passed away, Molly Ivins announced:

Molly Ivins: Not. backing. Hillary.

Friday, January 20, 2006; Posted: 9:18 a.m. EST (14:18 GMT)

AUSTIN, Texas (Creators Syndicate) — I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone.  This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

(SNIP)

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway (“First, you have to win elections”). Can’t you even read the damn polls?

Here’s a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, “There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008.”

This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by “a string of bad new from the Middle East … into calling for premature retreat from Iraq,” versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

MORE

I can understand what Molly wrote back in 2006 because, to be honest, I was thinking much the same thing.

Well, now we fast forward to 2009 and Molly’s former assistant, Betsy Moon, described as “FORMER ASSISTANT AND “CHIEF OF STUFF” FROM 2001 to 2007,” has decided to commemorate Molly’s death by being a mind reader.

What Would Molly Think?

Betsy Moon

AUSTIN, Texas — The question I have been asked most often during the last two years is, “What would Molly think about this?” Molly Ivins would have loved this election. She would have loved the beautiful sight of “We the People” finally stepping up to become the real deciders. She would have loved the drama, the comedy and the characters.

SNIP

In fact, we know how she would have felt, because she was as prescient about this election before her death two years ago as she was about all the other tragedies of the Bush years. Carlton Carl, CEO/publisher at Molly’s beloved Texas Observer, recalls her saying after Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, “You know … that young man could be president someday.”

Before Barack Obama announced his candidacy, Chicago Magazine asked a number of luminaries if they thought he should run. Opinions varied. Molly was succinct and direct, and with her usual wit and certainty said: “Yes, he should run. He’s the only Democrat with any Elvis to him.”

And, in her column on Jan. 20, 2006, she said: “It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator … with the guts to do it.” She was speaking about Gene McCarthy then, but it might as well have been Barack Obama.

SNIP

She’d love that Barack Obama began his community organizing knowing that power lies in all of us united and that he continues to remind us that we are the deciders.

SNIP

Ken Bunting, an old friend of Molly’s who’s now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly on Election Day, “I’m not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack’s grandma.” You know, I think he is right.

Where do I begin? First of all, I think it’s a bit presumptuous for anyone to speak for a person who can’t speak for themselves. What, did Moon and Bunting conduct a seance?

Secondly, just because Molly didn’t like Hillary Clinton and had some good words for Obama’s “Elvis factor” back in 2006, doesn’t mean she would feel the same way today.  Furthermore, for Moon to state that Obama shares the same qualities of “guts” with Eugene McCarthy is a reach, isn’t it? I still have my McCarthy bumper sticker from back then…somehow, I don’t see Obama as having the same courage of Eugene McCarthy!!

Then there’s the matter of what Molly thought, not only of Clinton, but also about Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden, both now hanging around the Obama Administration. Emanuel, of course, is in a very powerful position as Chief of Staff, while Biden is posing as VP.  And Clinton is rattling around at the State Department.

So, what would Molly Ivins be thinking now? I DON’T KNOW, but if she were staying “clear and true” I think she MIGHT be throwing some caustic comments out there into the ether, particularly with regard to the “stimulus package” and some of the little games played by Obama over the last couple of days aimed at attracting GOP support (and winning ZIP with the House vote). And would she really think that we were “the deciders”??

As for Moon and Bunting–is seems that they are transferring their OWN fascination with Obama into a dream of  what they would WANT Molly Ivins to think.

OK, Molly, give us a sign.  I sure would like to know what you’ve been REALLY thinking about  all that’s happened over the last year…

But I sure have MY opinion…Molly, have you been listening?

Howard’s Agony: Seems Like We’ve Been Here Before

~~By Grail Guardian

Howard Dean is at it again. Yep. There’s a You Tube video entitled the “Agony of the Women of 2008” (posted 11/15/08) of “Dean The Scream” on C-Span 2’s post-election “Presidential Election Analysis” by Smithsonian Associates. There he is decrying the rampant sexism in this year’s Presidential campaign. (H/T to “imustprotest” for the link.  Updated Editor’s Note: The You Tube video is from BettyJean Kling at Free Us Now–see blogroll)

As if he’s been screaming about it for years, Dean states:

“Washington doesn’t get it. They always get it last. This is the most underwritten story of this campaign… by the press… by the media.”

“Women my age, in m generation felt this really acutely. Because they were the ones that suffered all of the indignities that you suffer when you fight to win the battle for equality. As they did.”

“Nobody understood the agony that women, particularly of my generation, were undergoing about this…issue…and to this day, it has been swept under the rug and been forgotten because she didn’t win.”

Say what? Did Mr. Misogyny just say that the media screwed women?

“We thought we were past all this stuff and we weren’t. We weren’t surprised about the degree of racism or lack of it or whatever, that was endlessly examined. We did not examine the fact that we didn’t get, we haven’t gotten nearly as far ahead as we thought we were about equality between the sexes. And that ought to be revisited as a result of what happened.”

But wait, it gets even better! Coward goes on to defend… wait for it… Sarah Palin!

…and it happened to Sarah Palin too. All the stuff that happened to Sarah Palin, and I know God knows I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her political points of view, but a lot of the stuff that happened to her, as she pointed out, would not have happened had she been a man.”

Holy Toledo, Batman!

Is this the same Howard Dean that says he was slow to pick up on the sexism against Senator Clinton in the primaries because he doesn’t watch cable TV? Is this the same Howard Dean that asked Cynthia Ruccia of Women for Fair Politics “What sexism?” Or could it be the same Howard Dean that decried the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos near the end of the Democratic Primaries, too late to do anyone any good?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring up another point on unifying the party. Geraldine Ferraro wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe this week where she talked about the persistent — what she’s saying is sexism — in the party and the difficulty that Barack Obama is going to have winning over Reagan democrats. Let me show — here’s a portion of what she wrote. She said that “Reagan democrats see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black. They’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that’s driving them, it’s racial resentment, and that is in force because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems.” She’s talking about a deep breach. What does Senator Obama —

DEAN: Well, first of all, I’m not going to respond to Senator — I mean to Geraldine Ferraro’s views on race because I think they have been outside the mainstream and unhelpful. But I will respond —

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are responding to them.

DEAN: No, but I will respond to something she said on sexism. There has been enormous amount of sexism in this campaign on the part of the media, including the mainstream media. We’ll leave present company excepted because I think that’s true. But there have been major networks that have featured numerous outrageous comments that if the words were reversed and they were about race the people would have been fired. So that’s a big issue. And there are a lot of women in this country who — there’s two issues here. One is one candidate is ahead and one is not. That happens all the time in primaries, and you get over that. What you don’t get over is deep wounds that have been inflicted on somebody because they happen to be a woman running for President of the United States.

Hmmmmm. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? But I can’t seem to recall Dean saying a single word about the obnoxious tactics used by the Obama campaign against Sarah Palin until after the election when it’s too late to do anyone any good. Wow, didn’t I just say that? Yep. I’ll say something else that I said at the time Dean made the first statement:

Howard, you are a coward, an idiot, and a liar. I can only pray that you are soon relegated back to the pages of history as the screaming lunatic you’ve proven yourself to be.

Post Election Thoughts…The Last Salvo or REALITY BITES

~~By Grail Guardian

There will never be a female President of the United States. There. I said it. Ladies, go home and grab your burkas and start cooking dinner for your man and popping out babies. You will never have equal pay for equal work, you will never be considered competent or capable at anything you ever do, and you stand no chance of ever getting anywhere unless it’s to a soccer or hockey game to cheer your (male) children on. Of course the laws will be wide open to allow you to abort female children so you don’t have to sully the landscape with them at all anymore.

How do I know? Because before even half the nation’s votes were tallied tonight, not only were all the major networks calling the race for Barack Obama, but the pundits are already discussing how Sarah Palin was John McCain’s downfall. Pundits attempting to defend her popularity with statistics were shot down on Fox News. That’s it – it’s over. You will not see another female Presidential candidate taken seriously in this country in our lifetimes. We’ll be lucky if we continue to see women continue to hold seats in the Senate and House after tonight. Female Governors? Forget about it. Palin won’t be re-elected there, because in spite of the fact that Alaska loved her (90% approval rating) just 4 months ago, she has been trashed and is now persona non grata in her own state courtesy of the Chosen One.

Hillary Clinton will lose her Senate seat in 2012. Barack Obama had determined that before she surrendered her fight for the Democratic nomination, and all the pundits are hammering how he “beat the Clinton machine”. She is toast. But frankly, that’s OK with me tonight. As far as I am concerned, Hillary is one of the top reasons that Barack Obama was able to destroy the United States Constitution and insinuate himself into the Presidency. She has lost my respect and she has lost my vote. She bears a huge responsibility for Obama’s victory. She gave up on America to save her career. She sold out her constituents and supporters for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver, and she will have to live with that for the rest of her life.

So here are my top reasons for the desecration and destruction of the Constitution of the United States of America:

Karl Rove: The Republican strategist was neck deep in foisting Obama on an unaware America. After his manipulations to get and keep George W. Bush in the White House, he pulled off the ultimate hoodwink by clandestinely switching sides and getting the most unelectable man in politics elected on literally no platform. His uncontrollable glee while watching the returns confirmed for me that he had more than just a casual involvement in the victory. I’m sure he is now convinced that he is the most powerful man in the world.

Hillary Clinton: She spent the primary convincing us how unqualified Obama was to be POTUS and how she would never quit fighting for the American people. After all is said and done, I believe history will prove her correct on the former point. After “suspending” her campaign and humiliating herself and her 18 million supporters at the Democratic convention, she fulfilled her promise to “work my heart out” and campaigned at full tilt for Obama till the very end and convinced a painful number of her supporters that Obama was a suitable replacement for her. Rather than stand on principle and speak out against Obama’s Constitutional ineligibility to serve as POTUS, she knowingly and willingly aided and abetted the criminal activities of Obama and the DNC.

Main Stream Media: Of course one of the biggest reasons for the destruction of the United States of America and life as we know it is the Main Stream Obamedia. I cannot adequately convey my disgust with them, but let’s face it; they created a President. We have allowed them to decide a Presidential election for the third time in a row, and there is no stopping them now. Plan on spending the rest of your lives (and money) on whatever crap they decide to sell you, whether it be political candidates, lousy programming, toothpaste, or male enhancement products. They bought the soul of America with infomercials and “reality” shows that don’t vaguely resemble reality. It was the Bargain of the Century.

Fox News: “Fair and Balanced” reporting was next to impossible to find this election season as MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC immediately suited up for Team Obama during the primaries. Before the GE race started in earnest, Fox appeared to be the only source of coverage that wasn’t totally biased in favor of Obama. It turned out that was a sham. The first to start fawning over Obama was the shameless Bill O’Reilly. His disgust with John McCain overruled his whatever journalistic instincts he had, and he threw the race in order to feebly protest the people having chosen McCain as the Republican nominee. The rest of the network quickly followed suit with only a few exceptions (Megan Kelly stands out), and by election night they were quicker to call the race for Obama than nearly anyone and spent all their post-coital analysis slamming McCain for having has the cajones to even consider running in the first place, nonetheless with a woman on the ticket. In the end, it’s tough to decide if they were influenced by owner Rupert Murdoch’s endorsement of Obama or were just trying desperately to keep a luke-warm candidate from embarrassing the party. Either way, they garnered millions of cable viewers based on their supposed impartiality, then proceeded to join in the mass brainwashing, with unparalleled gusto by the last week of the campaign.

The Republican Party: In a year when the Republicans had virtually no chance in hell of taking the White House, true conservatives “allowed” the public to nominate John McCain in what they though was a throwaway election. Imagine their surprise when McCain actually started to show some signs of life (and without them)! After the base was reinvigorated by the brilliant announcement of Sarah Palin as McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee, the party had 2 choices: support the centrist McCain and try with gusto to steal the White House from the Democrats in a year that it was all but guaranteed to be theirs, or sit back and do nothing in quiet protest of the likelihood of a McCain victory. The party decided as an entity to do the latter, and the sheeple of the right within the party followed suit, complaining that he wasn’t really their man and they’d rather give the White House to the Dems than suffer losing their control of the party from the radical right. The party that a few short weeks before had looked like heroes for putting a woman on the ticket after the brutal ravaging of Hillary Clinton wound up looking like misogynists; campaign leaks called Palin a “rogue” and “out of control” in efforts to prevent her from seeking further national office in the future. In the end, it was not the leadership of the party or McCain, but the spineless conservative members who tanked an election and gave up control of Congress rather than let a woman near the White House.

The Democratic Party: Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Donna Brazile, Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brezinski and other Democratic leaders colluded, long before the start of the 2008 Presidential campaign, to use radical tactics to steer the party to the far left and overthrow the legitimate government of the United States. They selected a young, unknown freshman Senator from Illinois with literally no history and molded him into their dream candidate. Their plan to use race as a means to energize the African American voter base and intimidate whites into voting out of guilt and fear dripped of cynicism and hatred for America. The one obstacle that stood in their way was popular front-runner Hillary Clinton. With unprecedented viciousness, the DNC and Obama campaign launched an all out misogynistic attack on Clinton, accompanied by charges of racism against her, husband Bill Clinton, and literally all of her 18 million supporters. Suddenly empowered by the report-nothing media, they started to publicly break their own rules, change rules midstream, change and assign votes cast to their chosen candidate, and lie about virtually everything. Once their ravaging of Clinton brought her to her knees, they thought they were golden, until John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Unequipped to handle the public’s adoration of the Alaska Governor, they trashed Palin with lies, innuendo, and false charges which were all lustily covered by the media. Their destruction of everything female in this country now stands complete, and sadly I know many women that voted Democratic yesterday, probably a straight party ticket. When all is said and done, it will be shown that the Democratic brand is nothing more than the flip side of the people that brought us the corrupt Republican brand of George W. Bush.

The Socialists: I won’t spend time right now going into repeated detail about the likes of William Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, Khalid al Mansour, et al. Let it be enough to say that an organized Socialist movement that started smoldering in the 1960s burst into full flames this year and will soon sweep this nation like wildfire. Their efforts were deliberate, domestic terrorism and I’m quite sure that Timothy McVeigh is smiling like mad from his platform in hell.

Mob Rule: You can include the illegal activities of ACORN in this category or the one above – take your pick. Angry blacks, agitated to the brink of race war by the Obama machine, and young white college types determined to put a black man (any black man – with man being the operative word) in the highest office in the land to assuage their white guilt, threatened to riot, bullied opponents mercilessly online, and even intimidated other voters while standing in line to vote by discussing the riots that would ensue if Obama lost. Never underestimate the bullying of thugs both physical and psychological. I also include trolls in this category, because without their relentless assault on literally every website that ever posted even 1 word in opposition to Obama, this victorious annihilation of all common sense and decency would not have been possible. Pat yourselves on the backs, Psy Ops Warriors! Job well done. There will be posts for all of you in the new Civilian Police Force, dragging PUMAs off to re-education camps, so the fun isn’t nearly over yet.

“4th Wave” Feminists: Never underestimate the power of women defiling other women in this coup d’etat. Names like Nancy Pelosi, Donna Brazile, Claire McCaskill, Arianna Huffington, Erica Jong, Alice Germond, Peggy Noonan, Maureen Dowd, Oprah Winfrey, and literally every woman in Hollywood leap to mind in this category at first blush, but let’s not take the credit away from the invisible everyday “feminist”. I’m talking the ones that cried “It’s not that I don’t want a woman President, I do. Just not that woman!” and “I just can’t believe they picked Sarah Palin. That woman isn’t qualified to be President!” They did more to demoralize and frustrate the efforts of every woman in this nation than we have seen in decades. As I stated at the outset, these women (the type who live merely to find men and have no sense of self outside their relationships) have ensured that I shall not live to see a female President of the United States of America. Perhaps it makes them feel more powerful in their own meaningless lives, but they are traitors to us, to themselves, and to this Republic. They have played a vital role in pushing back the clock to roughly the 1920s as far as Women’s Rights are concerned. And I will not be able to laugh or say I told you so when they realize the aftereffects of what they have done.

The American People: Ultimately, the blame must lie with those who did nothing or not enough to stop this decline during this and the previous 5 administrations. I count myself in the latter category. I apparently awoke too late to stop the juggernaut of the New World Order. I fought like mad at the end (during the last year), but like most of America I was asleep at the wheel when people like both George Bush 41 & 43, Reagan, Carter, and even Bill Clinton steered this nation towards the slippery slope that it is on today. I watched and either complained or ignored as our liberties were slowly eroded. I bristled at the overt actions, but was easily assuaged back to my complacency when adjustments were made to allow my comfort level to return. I sold my country out for the ability to buy PCs, cell phones, SUVs, bigger houses, designer clothing, “organic” foods, and other such frivolities. I got angry and excited at an unseen enemy when my handlers in the media told me it was time to do so. I ranted about Global Warming and going Green, signed up for an HMO that had nothing whatsoever to do with Health Maintenance or even getting better when I was sick or injured, and dug deep into my pockets to help others less fortunate than I around the world when disasters struck and even remained silent when I had to do it for my own countrymen in the Hurricane ravaged south after Katrina and other storms showed that our government was unwilling and incapable of helping our own in time of need, regardless of how many tax dollars they had paid into the system. I kept silent. I averted my eyes. I deafened myself to the sure sounds of corruption and moral decay. And I turned off my feelings for my fellow Americans long enough for them to become so very angry that they would lash out at me in fury to destroy America as payment for my complacency. And for that, I am truly sorry America. I have failed you.

Parts 1 & 2–The Lineup: A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

Editor’s Note: Part 1 of “The Lineup” has been added to this post to make the information it contains easily available.–See the Part 1 for the comments to the original posting.–GRL

After Part 1 of this article was published, we received several requests/suggestions for more individuals to be included in the hit parade. As with Part 1, please circulate it to friends, family, co-workers, casual acquaintances, or anyone who needs to be educated about the truth the MSM has kept buried. And per a special request from reader Song, I would like to challenge each and every one of you to ask 10 people to vote against Barack Obama on November 4^th.

The Lineup: Part 2

Alexi Giannoulis: Became Illinois State Treasurer after Barack Obama vouched for him. He has been described as a “man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure”. Giannoulis “pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator’s Oval Office bid,” Charles Hurt reported September 5, 2007, in the New York Post. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael ‘Jaws’ Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.

“Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state’s speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama’s help.” States Congresspedia

Jim Johnson: Former Fannie Mae Chair that was hired to vet Vice Presidential candidates for the Obama Campaign. Johnson allegedly received $7 million from Countrywide Mortgage, one of the biggest players in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. He received below market mortgage rates form the lender that Obama railed against personally:

“This is a company that is as responsible as any firm in the country for the housing crisis we’re facing today. When Countrywide Financial was sold a few months ago, its top two executives got a combined $19 million. These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis….They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Emil Jones: President of the Illinois Senate and Obama’s political mentor. When in the State Senate, all of Obama’s accomplishments were in his 7th year. Jones was discovered to have handed Obama all these bills after being worked on by other legislators. Jones is credited with the statement “I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.” When asked who that might be, Jones replied “Barack Obama”.

David Axelrod: Chicago political consultant and Chief Strategist and Media Advisor to Obama, Axelrod has worked on the campaigns of John Edwards, Deval Patrick, and Eliot Spitzer. He also owns ASK Public Strategies, a firm credited with mastering the tactic of “Astroturfing” or organizing a political effort and making it look like a grassroots effort. Wikipedia describes it as follows: “Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual pushing a personal agenda or highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research.”

Tom Daschle: Former Democratic Senate Majority and Minority leader who was voted out of office by South Dakotans despite his presitgious position. Daschle is now a nationa Co-Chair for the Obama campaign. According to Wikipedia: “On February 13, 2006, Daschle became one of two Democrats (with Rep. Jane Harman of California) to endorse a warrantless domestic surveillance program conducted under the authority of President George W. Bush by the National Security Agency (NSA).”

Percy Sutton: This 87-year-old icon of the Civil Rights Movement recently recounted a story where he claimed he was asked to write a recommendation for Barack Obama to enter Harvard. Sutton’s quote follows:

“I was introduced to him by a friend who was raising money for him and the friend’s name was Dr Khalid al Mansour from Texas. He is the principle adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama. He wrote to me about him and his introduction was ‘there is a young man that has applied to Harvard and I know that you have a few friends left there because you used to go up there to speak, would you please write a letter in support of him?’ That’s before Obama decided to run. And he interjected the advice that Obama had passed the requirements, had taken, and passed, the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and become President of the Law Review. That’s before he ever ran for anything. I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I surely hoped they would treat him kindly.”

Khalid al Mansour/Donald Warden: The mysterious man Percy Sutton referred to in his interview is somewhat difficult to identify (a very common name in several countries). The al Mansour that is also known as Donald Warden has ties to both the radical Black Panthers and has served on the board of a bank in Nigeria that may have connections to money raised for Barack Obama. For more detail, I recommend the following 2 articles, and bear in mind again the caveat “follow the money”: (photo not readily available)

More at Texas Darlin’s blog:

Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq al Mansour

Khalid al Mansour/Donald Warden: Obama Money Man in Nigeria?

The ACORN connection:

While not all directly associated with Barack Obama, these people formed the basis of his political philosophy and influenced him heavily, sometimes via theory, often via a strong organizational connection. Understanding who they are leads to a better understanding of the 2008 Presidential election.

Saul Alinsky: Writing a brief overview of Alinsky is nearly impossible; so I strongly urge you do look into the varied sides of this man further. That being said, Alinsky was a radical and community organizer (sound familiar?) who started the movement that grew into the SDS and ACORN (among other groups). Perhaps his own words explain his ideas best:

“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Alinsky served as mentor to many (including Hillary Clinton, who is said to have studied him and then continued on her political career, and Barack Obama, who still uses his techniques on a daily basis in this election), and put the fear of God into just as many (he one traveled to Oakland, CA and the local politicos were so shaken that they actually passed a resolution to ban him from the city). His talent was for organizing the poor into powerful political forces that can combat government and replace it with Socialism. Barack Obama is said to have taken Alinsky training when he began his Community Organizer career in Chicago. To understand Saul Alinsky and his followers is to gain much insight into Obama.

Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven: Columbia University radicals and creators of the so-called “Cloward-Piven strategy,” which called for swamping the welfare rolls with new applicants, beyond what the system could bear. The idea was that the resulting economic collapse would lead to political turmoil and ultimately socialism. This concept was used effectively in New York City, and was cited as one of the causes of the city’s financial collapse as welfare rolls jumped from 150,000 to over a million in just 10 years.

(Photo not readily available)

Wade Rathke: The founder and chief organizer of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a group Obama has worked for and represented in lawsuits, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Rathke’s brother Dale was reported to have embezzled over $940,000 from ACORN and it’s affiliates, which Wade did not report to the full board and kept hidden for 8 years. ACORN is under investigation for voter registration fraud in 18 states, and past employees have admitted to simply making up names of supposed voters. Many consider ACORN to be a leftist extremist organization using the principles of Saul Alinsky and Cloward & Piven.

George Wiley: Mentor of Wade Rathke, founder and leader of the radical ACORN, best know for his use of the Cloward & Piven strategy. Wiley is known as the Founder of the National Welfare Reform Organization, and as a pioneer of the radical “franchise” concept, now used by ACORN and other groups, which helps local activists quickly build local outlets of national activist organizations by using church groups and other pre-existing community groups.

Carl Davidson: Former President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn (a precursor to the Weather Underground), Davidson is credited with organizing the 2002 Anti-War rally where Obama gave his infamous speech against the Iraq war. Davidson is a self-styled “progressive for Obama” according to his blog http://carldavidson.blogspot.com/

Claire McCaskill: This Missouri Senator has supported Obama since her children shamed her into it in the beginning of 2008. McCaskill has been a vocal supporter, and her name was bandied about as a potential VP pick by Obama. She has been accused by ACORN workers in MO of using the organization to bring out new voters to support her instead of registering new voters or getting them to support a minimum wage bill as they were hired to do. The workers were all fired from ACORN after refusing to campaign for McCaskill.

Herbert and Marion Sandler: A New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst that sold Golden West Financial (GDW), one of the largest savings and loans in the nation to Wachovia Bank just before their portfolio dragged the S & L under. Wachovia failed in the recent Wall Street crisis as a result of the high number of sub-prime mortgages it acquired in its $24 billion purchase of GDW. The Sandlers personally made billions (yes, that’s with a B), and went on to fund organizations like ACORN and the International Crisis Group, the staff of which is said to form the basis of the future State Department of an Obama Administration.

Peter Lewis: Chairman of Progressive Insurance who along with George Soros gave $23 million to Moveon.org, and formed a group called The Democracy Alliance, both strong ACORN supporters. In 2004 he was one of the top donors to 527 groups promoting a far left agenda. Lewis describes himself as “half screwball, half businessman” and once showed up to a City Council meeting wearing a Lone Ranger outfit.

For a look at ACORN on video, see Uppity Woman’s post from 9/30/2008 “Video:Barack Obama and ‘Let’s Take Over The World” Acorn .'”

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Part 1–A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

For months now, we’ve been reading and hearing from the Obama campaign that it’s not experience that matters for Barack Obama (whose paper-thin resume includes being a Community Organizer, Chair of the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and running for public office), but rather the excellent judgment that he displays. In light of the continued media frenzy favoring Obama and shielding him from public scrutiny, I decided that it would be timely to revisit that judgment in the form of the people Obama associates with professionally and personally (both past and present). I personally have been able to find few people that are close to the Illinois Senator that I would want anywhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll let you be the judge. I intend this article to be part of a much needed grassroots effort to educate those that only get their news from the Main Stream Media or do not follow politics closely, so feel free to link it, print it, e-mail it, or do whatever you need to do to get the word out (giving proper credit and/or links to Insight Analytical and myself is always appreciated). You can consider it an Obama 101 Picture Book Primer and a serious attempt to save this great nation.