Chicago Politics in the Health Care Bill

Barack Obama's health care bill passed the second of four cloture votes in the Senate this morning and will likely pass entirely during an eleventh-hour vote on Christmas Eve. Polling universally shows that Americans don't support the government power grab. So how did Obama and company rack up the required 60 votes? They used the sort of corrupt pay-to-play politics usually restricted to smoke-wreathed Chicago backrooms, that's how. Here's a list of payoffs from the Washington Post:

"First there was the 'Louisiana Purchase,' $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Then came the 'Cornhusker Kickback,' another $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this time for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

This was followed by word that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) had written into the legislation $100 million meant for a medical center in his state. This one was quickly dubbed the 'U Con.'

...

Indeed, the proliferation of deals has outpaced the ability of Capitol Hill cynics to name them.

Gator Aid: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) inserted a grandfather clause that would allow Floridians to preserve their pricey Medicare Advantage program.

Handout Montana: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) secured Medicare coverage for anybody exposed to asbestos -- as long as they worked in a mine in Libby, Mont."

Earlier this week, Joe Lieberman revealed that Obama never pressured him to support the public option; instead the president and Rahm basically gave Lieberman whatever he wanted to obtain his support. It was also reported that Ben Nelson was meeting constantly with his friend Obama to hammer out a compromise on abortion. (The compromise ultimately had very little to do with abortion and everything to do with cold hard cash to Nelson's state in the form of Medicaid money.) In other words, the driving force behind these kickbacks was none other than Barack Obama -- which makes perfect sense given his background in Chicago politics.

Blago to Rahm: Can I interest you in a House seat?

Disgraced Illinois governor and longtime Barack Obama friend Rod Blagojevich just can't seem to keep his fingers off of congressional seats.

"Illinois' ousted governor researched if he could keep the White House chief of staff's former U.S. House seat warm for him, The Chicago Sun-Times said Monday.

Records obtained by the newspaper showed John Harris, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's top staffer, last year began researching whether the governor had the authority to appoint someone to temporarily fill Rahm Emanuel's Chicago congressional seat on the day Emanuel was named President Barack Obama's chief of staff.

The newspaper said Web browser histories from Harris' state-owned computer showed he conducted Google searches on the term 'temporary appointment to fill vacancies in the House of Representatives.'"

Emanuel's office shockingly didn't return phone calls on the matter. The White House has continually distanced itself from the radioactive former Illinois governor, but the record suggests otherwise. Obama and Emanuel both worked on Blago's campaigns and had a history of exchanging questionable political favors with Blagojevich. Of course Blago was indicted for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat but it looks like he wanted to keep the Illinois House seat under his command as well. Typical Chicago politics.

Science czar used to be a global warming denier

John Holdren, Barack Obama's science czar and go-to advisor on climate change, is knee-deep in the negotiations at Copenhagen. There, the president is seeking a treaty that would drastically limit greenhouse gas emissions and hamper the economy.

Holdren and others have said repeatedly that climate change theory is based on sound science. But as recently as 1986, Holdren was predicting that so-called "carbon-dioxide-induced famines" could kill up to a billion people. Why? Man's emission of CO2 was going to cause global cooling which would bring about another ice age and kill off much of the world's food supply. Holdren fashioned the crisis to argue for compulsory population control. But as the atmosphere's temperature continued to increase incrementally over the next decade, Holdren quickly flip-flopped and began predicting that the earth would melt rather than freeze.

Why is Holdren advising the president instead of writing second-rate Choose Your Adventure apocalyptic fiction?

The Diversity Czar lies and lies

The FCC's Mark Lloyd, more commonly known as Barack Obama's radical Diversity Czar, gave a speech at something called the Media Access Project this week. Needless to say, he emitted so many toxic lies, the EPA may need to investigate. Here's a rundown.

Lloyd: "What is diversity? Diversity is not synonymous with minorities. I am not the Chief Minority Officer."

The truth: Lloyd views diversity exclusively in terms of minorities. His background is in civil rights, specifically minority rights for African-Americans. At a speech in 2005, Lloyd discussed why communications must be seen through a racial prism, saying, ""There's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem." His speech focused on ways to get those powerful whites to step down in order to make room for minorities.

Lloyd: "There should be little doubt that the voices of family farmers or recent immigrants or the disabled are barely heard in our local or national media. For all the great diversity of our nation, media voices do not seem particularly diverse."

The truth: Some of the most popular radio personalities in the nation are women (Laura Ingraham, Stephanie Miller), African-Americans (Joe Madison, Larry Elder), and Jewish (Mark Levin, Michael Medved). Sean Hannity is the grandson of impoverished Irish immigrants. Television programming is incredibly diverse as well, with entire channels dedicated to African-Americans (Black Entertainment Television), women (Oxygen, Lifetime), and Catholics (EWTN). Oprah Winfrey, perhaps the most successful TV personality in history, is an African-American woman. Late night TV features a Scottish immigrant (Craig Ferguson), a Jewish liberal (Jon Stewart), and an African-American woman (Wanda Sykes). In fact the problem is the exact opposite of what Lloyd claims. According to news insider Bernard Goldberg's book Bias, TV journalists often blow out of proportion issues that primarily affect the disadvantaged, such as AIDS or homelessness.

Lloyd: "I am not a czar appointed by President Obama."

The truth: "Czar" is shorthand in Washington for an unelected special advisor, which Lloyd most certainly is. And given that he previously served as vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella group of unions and community organizations, it seems very likely that Lloyd got his job through Obama.

Lloyd: "I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host."

The truth: Lloyd has repeatedly says he opposes the Fairness Doctrine legislation, but he agrees with the general premise. He has proposed an 100% tax on the operating costs of radio stations to divert money towards more local (ie: diverse) programming. He sees powerful conservative broadcasters like Limbaugh and Beck to be problematic. He also proposed an FCC plan in 2007 while he was working for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress that counseled the FCC to threaten the licenses of stations with which it disagreed politically.

Lloyd: "I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez."

The truth: At a 2008 media reform conference, Lloyd said, "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country. And we've had complaints about this ever since."

Lloyd: "I do support free speech."

The truth: In his 2006 book Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, Lloyd wrote, "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies...[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."

Obama says jump and the AARP asks how high

This week the AARP fired off an open letter in support of Barack Obama's health care plan to Harry "The Bill won't work in Nevada" Reid. Look for AARP president and longtime Obama crony Barry Rand to get an ambassadorship after all this.

Dear Leader Reid:

Thank you for your commitment—and that of Chairmen Baucus and Dodd—to closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap or “doughnut hole” by 2019 during the upcoming House-Senate conference committee on health reform legislation. We understand, given Senate constraints, that this action must wait until conference.

As you know, millions of seniors are being overwhelmed by skyrocketing out-of-pocket drug costs. Too many are going without the drugs they desperately need, which can lead to more serious health problems and higher long-term costs—both for them and for our health care system as a whole. In Nevada alone, 12 percent of those enrolled in Part D fall into the doughnut hole every year. For these reasons, closing the coverage gap is a critical element of health reform and will help to constrain costs throughout the system.

...

With your commitment to closing the doughnut hole in conference, consistent with the President’s pledge, and the many positive features referenced above, AARP is pleased to support your efforts to obtain cloture, and urges timely passage of this legislation by the Senate.

The current health care bill does extend Medicare Part D coverage to seniors of a certain income level not already covered, known as the "doughnut hole." But it also slashes spending on Medicare to pay for Obama's government takeover of the rest of the health industry.

So why is the AARP in full support of a bill that essentially redistributes money from seniors to younger people? Maybe it's because they received $18 million in stimulus money, the seventh largest sum in Washington, DC. Maybe it's because AARP president Rand is a big Obama donor with close ties to the president. Either way, it looks like the AARP has been completely bought off.

Rod Blagojevich wants revenge on Rahm

Oh sweet justice.

"Rod Blagojevich's lawyers want the FBI to give up details of interviews conducted last year of President Obama, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and others as part of the investigation into the former governor.

...

Then-President-elect Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett sat down with the FBI about a year ago -- just after Blagojevich was arrested on charges of trying to sell Obama's recently vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder."

It's been reported that Blago was enraged that he was the only one taking the fall for the corruption surrounding Obama's Senate seat. But will Emanuel be implicated in the scheme? Here's what we know so far.

• Emanuel's relationship with Blagojevich goes back to 2002 when the two formed a political tag team. Blago helped Emanuel win his vacated House seat while Emanuel was one of Blago's top advisors for his gubernatorial campaign (along with Barack Obama). As Emanuel put it, he and Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two." (Emanuel later claim he misspoke. Uh huh.)

• In his book The Governor, Blagojevich revealed that, at Rahm's request, he rammed a bill through the state legislature that legalized Mixed Martial Arts in Illinois. This meant that Ultimate Fighting, a popular fight show, could come to Chicago. Rahm's brother Ari, a notorious Hollywood agent, was representing UFC at the time.

• Emanuel was knee-deep in the negotiations over the Senate seat replacement, having delivered Blagojevich a list of acceptable candidates. He is reportedly on the tapes the FBI recorded of Blago's phone calls.

After a long history of wheeling and dealing with Blagojevich, Emanuel refused to defend the governor after he was indicted. Perhaps Blago is about to carry out a spectacular revenge.

Obama in 2004: I will take your health care away

Obama in 2004: I will take your health care away

As Barack Obama's slimy allies in the Senate flock to the idea of expanding Medicare coverage to those aged 55-64, here's what Obama had to say on the matter back in 2004.

Watch the shocking video here.
 

It's no wonder Obama hasn't stumped for the public option for two months now. It's also no wonder leftist loony Rep. Anthony Weiner, a proponent of a single-payer health care system, is thrilled with the Medicare expansion idea. It's already known that Obama loves the idea of forcing everyone onto a government insurance plan. Looks like the health care bill pending in the Senate is the perfect way to do just that.

Obama Administration sets in stone a massive power grab

Today Barack Obama's budget director Peter Orszag made official an unprecedented White House power grab.

From the White House blog:

"There have been other advancements, from providing online access to White House staff financial reports and salaries, adopting a tough new state secrets policy, reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records, and web-casting White House meetings and conferences."

Obama's state secrets policy, established by Attorney General Eric Holder in the midst of a lawsuit over Bush's warrantless wiretapping program back in June, has nothing to do with transparency. The policy dictates that nobody can sue Obama's government over sensitive issues related to national security. Of course, what constitutes a sensitive issue related to national security is also left up to Obama's government. It's a breathtaking power grab that goes well beyond anything George W. Bush ever wanted, and Holder came under fire from both the right and the left at the time. Now this is apparently official policy, despite Obama's pledge to run "the most open and transparent administration in American history." File it in the stuffed "Broken Promises" folder.

Why does Desiree Rogers still have a job?

The Chief of Protocol is a very important position in any presidential administration. Under the auspices of the State Department, this appointee advises the president on international customs and protocol, making sure the leader of the free world doesn't embarrass himself overseas. Naturally, Obama didn't get around to appointing a Chief of Protocol until August, and his selection, seasoned Hillary Clinton aide Capricia Marshall, still isn't allowed to travel abroad with Obama. Instead, the president relies on his Social Secretary, Desiree Rogers, an old Chicago friend.

Meanwhile, here's the latest news out of Norway, where Obama traveled to accept his premature Nobel Peace Prize.

"News outlets across the region are calling Obama arrogant for slashing some of the prize winners’ traditional duties from his schedule. “Everybody wants to visit the Peace Center except Obama,” sniped the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, amid reports the president would snub his own exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center. 'A bit arrogant—a bit bad,' proclaimed another Aftenposten headline.

'It’s very sad,' said Nobel Peace Center Director Bente Erichsen of the news that Obama would skip the peace center exhibit. Prize winners traditionally open the exhibitions about their work that accompany the Nobel festivities. 'I totally understand why the Norwegian public is upset. If I could get a few minutes with the president, I’d say, ‘To walk through the exhibition wouldn’t take long, and I’m sure you would love the show. You have no idea what you are missing.’'

Meanwhile, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet is reporting that the president has declined an invitation to lunch with King Harald V, an event every prize winner from the Dalai Lama to Al Gore has attended. (The newspaper’s headline: 'Obama disses lunch with King Harald.')"

Yet another offensive snub to a foreign ally, courtesy of Desiree Rogers. Many of Obama's biggest gaffes can be traced back to the inexperienced Social Secretary. It was Desiree Brown who bought a collection of DVD movies for Obama to give to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, even though the American DVDs wouldn't work with British appliances. (Gordon Brown's gifts to Obama included a pen holder carved from the wood of a famous anti-slave ship and a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.) It was Brown who thought it would be appropriate for Obama to present Queen Elizabeth with an iPod. It was Brown who advised Obama's embarrassing bows to both the king of Saudi Arabia and the emperor of Japan, humiliating and unprecedented gestures from a visiting head of state. And it was Brown who organized the recent state dinner which was somehow infiltrated by the party-crashing Salahis. Can't Obama just listen to the experts, like Capricia Marshall, instead of incompetent Chicago pals like Desiree Rogers?

Obama throws Israel under the bus

Barack Obama has poked yet another American ally in the eye. In 1995, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, pledging to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Israelis consider to be their capital. President Clinton signed this bill into law, but then established a practice of issuing a "Presidential Determination" every six months, delaying the move for another half-year out of concerns for national security. (The Palestinians consider Jerusalem to be their territory.) Nevertheless, these memos contained an important diplomatic sentence: "My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem." This practice continued through George W. Bush's two terms up until this past June, when Barack Obama issued the first of his Presidential Determinations. In Obama's version, the sentence about being committed to an American embassy in Jerusalem was omitted.

On December 3rd, 2009, Obama issued his second of these six-month delays, again without the "committing" line, and thereby nullified a law unanimously passed by Congress fourteen years ago.

For Sotomayor, law isn't the issue

Barack Obama's Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor set an unprecedented low for the court today.

"In an otherwise dry opinion, Justice Sotomayor introduced one new and politically charged term into the Supreme Court lexicon.

Justice Sotomayor’s opinion in the case, Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, No. 08-678, marked the first use of the term 'undocumented immigrant,' according to a legal database. The term 'illegal immigrant' has appeared in a dozen decisions."

The precedent of the Supreme Court is to say "illegal immigrants" whereas the politically correct parlance of the far left uses "undocumented immigrants" or sometimes "undocumented workers." Calling a person "illegal" -- even if their first act in this country was to break the law crossing its border -- doesn't show enough empathy.

Sotomayor's other notable decision on the Supreme Court has been to vote to take up the case of Jason Getsy, an Ohio hitman who opened fire on a businessman and his mother, killing both. Getsy had been sentenced to death by an Ohio court and had appealed his verdict to the Supreme Court. His trial had been fair and by the book, but Sotomayor evidently decided that the homicidal hitman deserved another chance.

Obama's doctor puts a price on your health

The only programs that Barack Obama refuses to spend money on are those that are wildly successful.

"As the Obama administration slowly unveils its global AIDS plan, the drive to put more people on drugs is being scaled back as emphasis is shifted to prevention and to diseases that cost less to fight, including pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and fatal birth complications."

AIDS advocates complained bitterly that they had been betrayed and that the Bush administration’s best legacy was being gutted — and they blame a doctor and budget adviser who is also the brother of the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

“I’m holding my nose as I say this, but I miss George W. Bush,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a long-time AIDS campaigner. “On AIDS, he really stepped up. He did a tremendous thing. Now, to have this happen under Obama is really depressing.”

Bush's foreign aid program to combat AIDS has helped Africans immeasurably and bought America much goodwill throughout their impoverished continent. And yet Obama, usually a profligate spender, is cutting money for the drugs relied upon by countless Africans. Why? The answer lies with the aforementioned Ezekiel Emanuel, a radical doctor and brother of Obama's White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has the president's ear on medical issues.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel

Emanuel is a bioethicist whose approach to health care is entirely empirical and statistics-based. Right now, the generally accepted premise in America is that doctors do whatever it takes to treat a patient, regardless of the cost. Emanuel wants to change all that. He has argued we need to "redesign the health-care delivery system" because "we have a lot of unnecessary care." He has blasted the idea that medical spending -- done to keep people alive and healthy -- is in any way different from other products, writing: "Increasingly, health care needs to be measured by the same metrics as other goods and services -- cost, quality, benefits, and value. It can no longer claim to be treated differently from other social goods". In other words, health care spending is just like auto care spending or buying a new appliance. And lest anyone think the medical slashing he wants is too superficial, he has said, "Vague promises of savings from cost cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for slow and public relations than for true change."

Emanuel's rationing -- costs based not needs based

Tellingly, Emanuel works under budget director Peter Orszag and not for the Department of Health and Human Services. For him, medicine is about costs and not about care.

Its an idea taking root in Barack Obama's White House. Obama's health care legislation contains draconian Medicare cuts on the assumption that some of that spending simply isn't necessary. His bill establishes a health care task force that determines how medical procedures can be funded. His task force recently recommended that funding for mammograms, key to detecting and preventing breast cancer, be slashed in the name of cost-effectiveness. It is estimated that this change would cause the deaths of 47,000 women. The White House hastily distanced itself from the finding, but it fits perfectly with Emanuel's philosophy.

Some have portrayed Emanuel as a modern Dr. Mengele and accused him of wanting to set up death panels. (This isn't entirely fair. Emanuel has opposed euthanasia for his entire career and has never directly discussed the idea of a death panel.) But he did write a paper with the euthanasia-obsessed Dr. Margaret Battin for the New England Journal of Medicine in which he discussed the potential cost savings of allowing physician-assisted suicide. The idea behind their study was, as Emanuel chillingly put it, "Clearly, the more life foregone, the greater the projected savings," although the paper did conclude that any savings from legalizing euthanasia would be minimal.

So another of the gifted Emanuel boys is affecting White House policy. As Ezekiel is officially a special assistant to Peter Orszag, maybe it's time to start calling him the Rationing Czar.

ACORN's designated whitewasher

An internal investigation of ACORN, the corrupt community organization previously represented by Barack Obama when he was an attorney, was concluded recently and found that not a single ACORN employee had broken the law. The probe, conducted of the entire ACORN organization, was somehow completed in a little over two months. Its outcome is patently absurd coming from an organization under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states, and whose former president helped his brother embezzle $5 million its coffers. It was a whitewash job carried out by Scott Harshbarger, the former Massachusetts attorney general and avowed leftist who headed up the "investigation."

Appointing Harshbarger to helm the ACORN investigation represents a total conflict of interest. Harshbarger has never been directly involved with ACORN, but as a radical liberal, he has drifted in and out of the organization's orbit. He served as president of Common Cause, a left-wing interest group worried about the influences of corporate money on government. He was instrumental in helping push through the campaign finance reform bill in 2002, which unconstitutionally limited everything from when candidates could air television commercials to how much money voters could donate to candidates. Common Cause is funded by George Soros, the billionaire socialist philanthropist. Unlike Obama, Soros isn't foolish enough to directly associate with ACORN. But his fingerprints are nevertheless all over their operations.

In 2004, Harshbarger spoke at a forum hosted by a liberal group called the Campaign Institute. Also scheduled to speak was Dan Cantor, the Executive Director of the Working Families Party, which is essentially a front group for ACORN. Five years later, as the media began slowly waking up to ACORN's corruption, a dozen or so left-wing groups attended a strategy session in Washington, DC to discuss how to proceed in light of ACORN's woes. Among the organizations there was Common Cause. ACORN president Bertha Lewis was the keynote speaker and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress hosted the event.

Given all these connections, it is improbable that Harshbarger's and ACORN's paths never crossed.

Additionally, Harshbarger is a diehard leftist. As Attorney General of Massachusetts, he banned Christmas decorations from his office. He established the most draconian gun laws in the United States, including mandated trigger locks for every handgun, despite the freedom of arms established in the Second Amendment. The radical ACORN is his natural ideological ally.

He also presided over one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in Massachusetts since the Salem Witch Trials. As a District Attorney, he crusaded against the Amirault family, which owned a daycare center in Malden, Mass., and had been accused of child sex abuse. Harshbarger paraded preschool children into the courtroom, accusing the Amiraults of bizarre behavior, including anally raping children with butcher knives, forcing their charges to drink urine, operating a child torture room presided over by an evil clown, and the murder of sixteen youngsters. Despite the absurdity of the charges, Gerald Amirault, his mother Violet, and his sister Cheryl were all convicted and sentenced to prison in 1986. Violet and Cheryl served nine years before their convictions were overturned; Gerald was released after 18 years. The Wall Street Journal wrote of the case subsequently, "Along the way, the law was stood on its head. The rules of evidence were changed to accommodate the prosecution; the burden of proof was put on the accused. Four- and five-year-olds were coached to say what adults wanted to hear. All this was done in the name of virtue, with the result being the kind of catastrophic miscarriage of justice we saw in Mr. Amirault's case."

Harshbarger, the driving force behind that miscarriage of justice, is the man ACORN considered impartial enough to conduct their internal investigation. Is it any wonder they were acquitted of any illegal wrongdoing? And with Barack Obama's attorney general Eric Holder refusing to open an investigation, ACORN may very well get away with it. It helps to have the right friends.

Obama - fiddling while Kabul burns

Barack Obama presided over a glamorous gala of Hollywood stars at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC this weekend. The event was billed as an honor to five of the nation's top artists . Despite his fine words about the importance of "the Arts" it was all just part of the payback to his entertainment friends -- some of the wealthiest and loyalist Democrats around.

For years, conservatives have called for the government to ax the National Endowment for the Arts, the huge bureaucratic piggy bank for artists. Barack Obama disagrees and has appointed a valuable crony with socialist leanings to run the NEA at the taxpayer's expense.

Old Chicago buddy, Rocco Landesman, 62, is now head of the arts monolith. He is a theatrical producer with a good line in sucking up: “Whether in musical song or drama, the art of the theater helps us define and understand the dreams and debates of the nation. This, too, is what Obama is about and why this mutual celebration is so significant.”

Landesman is a vocal supporter of state-sponsorship for the arts, and once said that “nonprofit theater is subsidized to protect it from the exigencies of the marketplace: resident theaters and the artists who work in them must be able to develop their work outside the hit-or-flop, what’s-in-the-box-office-this-week tyranny of the commercial system.” He truly sees capitalism – markets where artists must compete to survive – as “tyranny”.

Naturally, Landesman is a part of the Obama money machine. In 2007, he co-sponsored a fundraiser for Obama called, “Barack on Broadway", and ultimately raised almost $100,000 for the presidential campaign; he himself donated $4,900.

It was money well-spent. Obama has rewarded him with the NEA – despite the fact that Landesman has virtually no administrative experience. Landesman has already called for another government bailout…of artists. “I wish I had [Federal Reserve Chairman] Ben Bernanke’s check-writing powers. I would bail them all out,” he bleated.

Notes:
On August 10th the NEA and the White House organized a conference call with 76 artists. The artists were encouraged to “make a stink” about issues like healthcare reform and the environment. As libertarian artist, Patrick Courrielche, reported on his blog, they were being called into “service”. In other words, the taxpayer-funded NEA was encouraging artists to create Obama propaganda. This is absolutely forbidden under the “Objectivity” terms of the NEA’s Charter, which defines it as: ensuring that information is accurate, reliable, and unbiased, and that disseminated information is presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner.
The NEA cited the campaign blue-and-red “HOPE” poster of Obama as a way artists had made a positive difference. Here’s the connection.  Landesman’s wife, Debby, is the former executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, the owner of Levi Jeans who have heavily promoted the artist /vandal responsible for the HOPE poster, Shepard Fairey, since 2002. Fairey, by his own account, has been arrested at least 14 times on graffiti-related charges. But in Obama’s America, Fairey may as well be the next Picasso.

The climate czar has a deputy climate czar -- no really

Little fleas have smaller fleas upon their backs to bite them,
The smaller fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum...

Barack Obama's dizzying list of czars now has a lower order.

At the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen today, the U.S. keynote speaker was Jonathan Pershing, deputy to Todd Stern, the Climate Czar. The Deputy Czar portentously delivered the news that the U.S. will  reduce "emissions" by 17% by 2020, and 83% (!) by 2050. He also promised that America will "pay its fair share" of $10 billion to the impoverished economies that would be "destabilized" by climate change.

Pershing has a personal stake at Copenhagen. He was a lead negotiator on the failed Kyoto Accords and the treaty it spawned which would have required draconian emissions cuts had it not been rejected unanimously by the Senate. He also served as review editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which -- guess what -- produced a report calling for draconian emissions cuts. Pershing was also lead author on the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report which called for.... you get the picture.

Given all the fuss over the dubious data used by the IPCC in its "the sky is falling" prognostications, putting the man who should have checked the facts up there on the worldstage must be seen as yet another pratfall by the banana skin prone Obama White House.

Notes:

Pershing previously worked at the World Resources Initiative, a think tank that promoted his alarmist opinions. He has also advocated for either a carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme, both of which would wreak havoc on the American economy.
 

Pershing's boss Todd Stern headed up the United States' efforts on the Kyoto Treaty. He has advocated for an international collaboration between the world's biggest polluters called the E8, which could impose tariffs on nations who refused to limit their pollution. He was an early proponent of cap and trade, and wrote in 2007, "The next president should approach this issue the way President Franklin Roosevelt approached the Great Depression: in a spirit of restless determination." Upon his appointment to climate czar, Stern imperiously declared, "The time for denial, delay, and dispute is over".

Water, water everywhere -- except on the EPA's list

From Barack Obama's increasing discredited EPA:

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday [today] will finalize its determination that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and the environment, paving the way for regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, power plants, factories refineries and other major sources.

The move gives President Obama a significant tool to combat the gases blamed for the heating of the planet even while Congress remains stalled on economy-wide global warming legislation."

The EPA has unlimited authority to regulate greenhouse gases, thanks to the Supreme Court, and can now clamp down on the six greenhouse gases it identifies as dangerous. This gives EPA administrator Lisa Jackson incredible control over the United States economy. But missing from the list of is water vapor, the most abundant greenhouse gas by a country mile. Water vapor is twice as radiative a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, and yet Obama's EPA is primarily obsessed with limiting CO2.

Far from regulating water vapor, Obama announced a plan to spend $1.2 billion in taxpayer money to invest in hydrogen cell cars. These vehicles supposedly don't pollute the atmosphere, but they do produce excess water -- the one greenhouse gas that the president's EPA has conveniently chosen to ignore.

Biden has friends in high places

Joe Biden was the poorest member of the Senate who traveled most often by Amtrak, something he never grew tired of reminding everyone. But Biden is moving up in the world thanks to Barack Obama. For his Thanksgiving vacation, Biden went to Nantucket where Obama took some time off earlier this year. The everyday working man touched down at Nantucket Memorial Airport last Wednesday in Air Force Two and was whisked off by an 11-car motorcade. The vacation was courtesy of another old Obama friend, Louis Susman, who owns the seaside estate where Biden stayed for the holiday. Susman is so wealthy, he helped rake in $247 million for the Democrats in 2004, earning him the nickname the "Vacuum Cleaner" and the eternal friendship of Barack Obama. Obama appointed Susman ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Obama begins his "jobs tour" today to meet with unemployed Americans, who likely can't afford to vacation on exclusive estates in Nantucket.

Safe schools czar Kevin Jennings promoted pornographic books to children

For years, Barack Obama's safe schools czar Kevin Jennings served as executive director of a gay rights education group called the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). On its web site, the group published a list of books recommended for classroom reading in order to overcome gay prejudice. But an examination of 11 of the books GLSEN was recommending for grades 7-12 revealed that many of the books were XXX-rated pornography.

"We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview."

If you're not too squeamish, click here and scroll down for a list of quotes from some of the books, which includes literary masterpieces like Queer 13 and In Your Face. All of these books were recommended by GLSEN for children as young as 12. All were recommended while Jennings was executive director.

Jennings has written that, upon learning about a 15-year-old student's sexual encounter with an older man in a Boston bus station bathroom, he said to the student, "I hope you knew to use a condom." (The boy was later found to have been 16, not 15.) His group GLSEN once sponsored a mandatory seminar for students as young as 12 that taught various sexual techniques, including "fisting" (look it up). This is Barack Obama's point man in charge of keeping America's school safe.

Obama blackmails a bank

The Congressional Black Caucus has had harsh words for the Obama administration recently, which it sees at not doing enough to help create jobs. To placate powerful CBC member Rep. Maxine Waters, Obama cut a deal with his friends at Goldman Sachs, no doubt through Goldman Sachs alum and treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.

The move was the culmination of weeks of tension, including a testy meeting two weeks ago that included Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. In the meeting, Ms. Waters berated the administration for not doing enough to help minority-owned businesses, mentioning specifically a New York broadcaster that couldn't get a loan reworked.

Less than two weeks after the meeting, the company, Inner City Broadcasting Corp., said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to restructure the loan.

....

Pierre Sutton, chairman of Inner City Broadcasting, said Goldman Sachs officials on Friday agreed to rework the terms of the loan. He wouldn't specify how much Goldman had lent his firm.

Mr. Sutton said he raised concerns about his company's situation with Ms. Waters several weeks ago, but was unaware that his company was mentioned during the meeting with Mr. Geithner.

When asked whether Goldman agreed to rework the loan because of political pressure, Mr. Sutton replied, 'I'm not sure. That's not a position I want to be in, responding to that particular question.'"

The loan was obviously made because of political pressure. It's reminiscent of a similar situation in Chicago when a company called Republic Windows & Doors shuttered a plant and laid off workers after Bank of America refused a loan to the failing company in 2008. The workers went on strike and then-Governor Rod Blagojevich stepped in, threatening to cut off all Illinois government business with Bank of America unless the loan was made. BoA quickly conceded. Barack Obama supported this blackmail, saying, "They're absolutely right. These workers, if they have earned these benefits and their pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments."

But Inner City Broadcasting didn't deserve another loan, as Goldman Sachs saw it. They lived beyond their means, eating up radio stations that they couldn't afford, which they were forced to sell off. Just as with Republic Windows and Doors, they had a poor business model.

Good thing they had a powerful friend in Barack Obama.

New White House counsel: Criticizing ACORN is illegal

After ordering former White House counsel Greg Craig to take legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay and then firing him for taking legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama Administration named Robert Bauer his replacement. Obama's new lawyer is known as a power player and a defender of ACORN. Bauer sent a letter to the Justice Department during the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain began criticizing ACORN. The letter demanded an investigation into whether the McCain campaign had broken the law by attacking ACORN. The Bush administration Justice Department never took any action on it.

“I request Special Prosecutor Dannehy’s inquiry include a review of any involvement by Justice Department and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee’s systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud,” Bauer's letter said.

“It is highly likely that the very sort of politically motivated conduct identified in the department’s investigation to date, necessitating the appointment of a special prosecutor, is repeating itself, and for the same reason: unwarranted and politically motivated intervention in the upcoming election,” it went on.

Obama paid ACORN

Meanwhile, ACORN was under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states by the FBI. Dozens of employees had been caught filling out ballots with fake names and addresses. In Philadelphia alone, 8,000 questionable ballots were submitted. Interestingly, the "nonpartisan" group received $800,000 from Barack Obama's presidential campaign through one of its subsidiaries, Citizens Services Inc., to register voters.

Bauer is married to former White House communications director Anita Dunn who launched the administration's war on Fox News and called Mao Tse-Tung one of her "favorite political philosophers.

Thanks to Obama, we now have a pro-ACORN attorney general in Eric Holder, who has refused to investigate the group, and a pro-ACORN White House counsel in Robert Bauer. The White House seems ready to defend ACORN against congressional Republicans.

As an ACORN apologist, Bauer joins Barack Obama, who legally represented the group during a 1995 lawsuit in Illinois.

ACORN forces poor people to pay up

ACORN, the corrupt community organization that Barack Obama used to represent as an attorney, has always claimed that it's a harmless organization dedicated to helping the poor. It's hard to argue with helping the poor, but what about overdrawing their bank accounts?

Yesterday on Capitol Hill, Republicans held a hearing investigating ACORN. (Democrats, at Obama's behest, oppose such an investigation and Eric Holder's Justice Department won't open a probe.) Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) questioned Anita Moncrief, a former ACORN employee and whistleblower, on the organization's policies on collecting membership dues. What Issa and Moncrief revealed is shocking.

ACORN, the group allegedly dedicated to serving the inner-city poor, was forcibly extracting money from its members' debit accounts in the name of dues. Anyone who joined the organization, generally poor people, had their accounts raided to the tune of $8 to $10 per month. According to Moncrief, complaint forms crossed her desk accusing ACORN of racking up overdraft fees. This happened often without the member being aware what was going on.

With former ACORN guys like Obama and Patrick Gaspard in the White House, will we ever see a serious investigation of this corruption?

Obama Uses Our Military as Expensive Props

As Obama prepares to send our troops into harm's way, here's a glimpse into how much he respects them.

"When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hangar. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn't want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end.

'White House aides actually made them remove the F-22-said they would not allow POTUS to be pictured with the F-22 in any way, shape, or form,' one source close to the unit relayed.

Stephen Lee, a public affairs officer at Elmendorf, confirmed to The Cable that the F-22 was parked in the hangar and then was replaced by an F-15 at the White House's behest.

The airmen there took offense to the Obama aides' demand, sources told The Cable, seeing it as a slight to the folks who are operating the F-22 proudly every day. They also expressed bewilderment that the White House staff would even care so much as to make an issue out of the fact that the F-22 was placed in the hangar with the president."

Recently, some commentators have speculated that the military is not particularly enamored with Obama. This little stunt won't help.

Climate Czar Holdren Holdren Lies and Lies About Climategate E-mails

Barack Obama's science czar John Holdren was on Capitol Hill yesterday, where he testified before a Select Committee Hearing about climate change. Holdren whitewashed the recent scandal in which e-mails from the East Anglia Climate Center were released. The e-mails showed definitively that scientists manipulated the data, but that didn't seem to bother Holdren.

"The e-mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have interpreted and displayed that data set," he said. He later claimed that the data that was manipulated "constitute a very small part of the immense body of data and analysis on which our understanding of the issue of climate change rests."

In fact, the University of East Anglia is perhaps the central academic hub for climate research. Its work was featured prominently in the IPCC report that is always cited as gospel by global warming alarmists. The scientist who wrote many of the e-mails, Phil Jones, is considered one of the world's foremost climatologists. And contrary to what Holdren said, the e-mails were about much more than just the way data was "interpreted" and "displayed". They showed scientists tried to cover up inconvenient temperatures, attempted to blacklist scientific journals that published papers critical of climate change, and may have broken the law by evading Freedom of Information Act requests.

For how long can Holdren and Obama spin before the truth catches up with them?

Rumsfeld: Obama Lied About Afghanistan Troop Requests

In contrast to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld has remained largely out of the public eye since resigning as secretary of defense under President Bush. But today Rumsfeld broke his silence, blasting Obama for an egregious lie in the president's speech at West Point last night.

"'Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response,' Rumsfeld said in a written statement. 'I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006.'

...

In his speech, Obama gave a detailed history of the Afghanistan war starting with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He argued that the Iraq war drew needed resources away from Afghanistan, allowing the situation to deteriorate since 2003.

'Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq,' Obama said. 'Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.'"

Rumsfeld went onto say that Obama should release any such requests or admit he fibbed. Given how willing Obama has been to release sensitive national security documents in the past on topics like torture, surely this won't be a problem. Unless, of course, he's lying.

Key Issue in Barack Obama's Afghanistan Speech: Barack Obama

From the president's address to cadets at West Point last night:

I see firsthand the terrible wages of war.

Come again? Maybe Obama was referring to the war on Fox News. Except he lost that one too.

Hillary Clinton Thinks Pakistan Needs More Big Government

During a recent visit to Pakistan, Barack Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a stunning economics lecture to a group of Pakistani businessmen.

"At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities ... The percentage of taxes on GDP [gross domestic product] is among the lowest in the world ... We [the United States] tax everything that moves and doesn't move, and that's not what we see in Pakistan ... You do have 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million. And I don't know what you're gonna do with that kind of challenge, unless you start planning right now."

Yes, she just told the Pakistanis that they have too much economic freedom. This is nothing new for Clinton, who once warned American entrepreneurs, "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." It's in keeping with her political writings, which have emphasized that the state must work for the community at the expense of individual liberty, particularly on issues of education.

Barack Obama should be thrilled. Having run up an enormous deficit with his domestic spending and presided over a federal government that takes 22% of the average American's income away in taxation, his ideas are now being exported to other countries.

Shocking Development: Another ACORN Employee Charged with Embezzlement

Well this is a real surprise.

"A former ACORN organizer and city Education Department worker scammed Verizon out of a half million dollars in goodies, including Mets and Yankees tickets, investigators charged Tuesday.

Donnett Davis allegedly signed up for the phone company's rewards program back in 2004, using 9,000 Education Department phone numbers, Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon found.

Davis pocketed gifts worth up to $10,000 on a single day and received scores of deliveries - some so heavy a neighbor who signed for several couldn't carry them, investigators reported.

As a New York ACORN organizer, Davis must be close to both ACORN president Bertha Lewis and White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard. (The White House denies that Gaspard was ever employed by ACORN, but he worked with Bertha Lewis and for ACORN's closest organizational cousins, the SEIU and the Working Families Party. His brother, Michael, works for the The Advance Group, a lobby group that lists ACORN as a client.) As an ACORN lawbreaker, Davis joins the likes of former ACORN president Wade Rathke, who helped his brother Dale cover up close to $1 million in embezzled money, and countless ACORN organizers who have committed voter fraud.

Ironically, the now discredited Davis once played a positive role in a New York community incident. She joined with other ACORN employees to fire Joseph Parker, the president of the ACORN High School for Social Justice in Brooklyn (yes, ACORN has a high school). The stated goal of the school was to "develop social awareness in students so that they become future leaders who will make a positive difference in our communities" -- in other words, train them to become community organizers. Academically, the school was failing miserably and received an "F" grade on its city report card. ACORN blamed this on Parker who was deemed to be incompetent and organizers like Davis pushed him aside."

Tear Up Your AARP Card

My grandfather destroyed his years ago and it's time for our elderly readers to do the same. The AARP is not the caring seniors club that it used to be. It's morphed into a self-interested insurance company that's been entirely bought off by the Obama administration.

In May of this year, the AARP board of directors elected a new president: Barry Rand. Rand is a genuine success story and self-made man who worked his way up through the corporate world with tenacity. He also reads from the same playbook as Jesse Jackson, gaining a reputation for fierce advocacy on behalf of minority-owned businesses. In this sense, he was an odd choice. Why elect a man who has spent his life advocating for racial minorities to helm a group that advocates for seniors?

Rand is a Democrat with strong ties to Barack Obama, including a $2,300 donation to his presidential campaign in 2008. Although a clear picture of the relationship between Rand and Obama through the years is unclear, it's preposterous to think that Obama never came to the attention of minority advocate Rand.

In Rand, Obama had a pliant liberal ideologue who could be persuaded. Almost immediately, the payoffs to the AARP began. The group received some $18 million in stimulus money, an incredible sum and the fourteenth-largest stimulus payout in Washington, DC. (These are those "shovel-ready jobs" Obama and Biden were always harping about.) The other big kickback will come if Congress passes the health care bill. As detailed by political pollster Dick Morris, the AARP had transitioned from an advocacy group to an insurance company, selling seniors "Medi-gap," which filled the holes in the government's Medicare coverage. President George W. Bush knocked the wind out of this program when he created Medicare Advantage, which served the same purpose as Medi-gap, but did so with much lower costs thanks to heavy government subsidies. Obama's health care bill diverts Medicare Advantage subsidies which will drive costs up and, surprise surprise, give the AARP a serious edge.

Obama wanted something substantial for these kickbacks. In August, he gave the AARP what seemed like a warning when he claimed he had the endorsement of the group. In fact the AARP had yet to endorse ObamaCare and asked for a retraction, but the signal had been sent. Shortly thereafter, Barry Rand's AARP endorsed Barack Obama's health care bill.

This ignited a firestorm among senior citizens, who began tearing up their AARP cards and mailing them back to Washington. Sen. John McCain, a senior himself, encouraged them to do just that on the Senate floor. With that one endorsement, Rand presided over perhaps the largest AARP exodus in history.

If you're currently an AARP member and still have your card, it's time to consider doing the same. Your organization has thrown itself into the cigar-wreathed Washington back rooms with Barack Obama. It has endorsed legislation that will cut both Medicare and Medicare Advantage. It has blithely ignored concerns among seniors that the bill could bloom into government-run health care that would ration treatments for the elderly. It has thrown its weight behind a bill that ultimately does nothing to help seniors, who already have taxpayer-funded health care and prescription drugs.

The AARP under Barry Rand has shown itself to be more concerned with receiving free public money than stumping for seniors. It's time to take your money elsewhere.

Obama Maxes Out Our Credit Card

File this under galling hypocrisy. Barack Obama has spent our nation so far into debt, Congress is rushing to raise the national debt ceiling. Right now the government is legally barred from accruing a debt greater than $12 trillion. With his enormous spending spree underway, Obama is slated to exceed that debt. If Congress doesn't either cut spending or increase the debt ceiling by $1 trillion or so, the government could go broke and lose its triple-A credit status.

You didn't think the profligate Barack Obama was going to cut spending, did you?

But the president hasn't always been so reckless with the country's finances. Back in 2006, President Bush asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling, primarily to finance the continuing military escalation in Iraq. With righteous indignation, an outraged Senator Obama took to the floor. "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," he railed. "America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership." Although domestic spending increased between 2001 and 2008, Bush's government debt was spent primarily fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama is more than willing to mortgage America's future in order to bring one-sixth of the American economy under federal control with his health care bill, or to give the likes of the AARP and La Raza kickbacks with the stimulus. But accruing debt to fight for national security? That's just irresponsible.

Obama later voted "no" on the debt ceiling increase along with his fellow Democrats.

This is stunning hypocrisy, but it also has a large silver lining. Obama is trying to force feed his health care bill through the Senate in December, the same month in which the debt ceiling must be raised to prevent financial hell from breaking loose. A coalition of Republican and moderate Democrat senators, led by Dianne Feinstein of California, are drawing a line in the sand, demanding that Obama submit budget cuts before they'll vote to raise the debt ceiling. If more liberal Democrats protest this (which they likely will), there could be a contentious battle on the Senate floor which could drag on for days. This would take up a good deal of the precious time that Harry Reid needs to steer ObamaCare through before the Senate adjourns for Christmas break.

Will Obama's big spending come back to bite him this month? It seems almost too good to be true.