The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Below is the letter I sent this morning to Rep. Ander Crenshaw, my congressman, regarding the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. I am happy to report that the measure went down to defeat 228 to 205 with 1 not voting, as of the latest information on C-Span.

If you watched the vote in real time, it was exciting. For the first 8-9 minutes, the measure was passing. Then, for awhile, it flipped back and forth -- up by 1 or 2, then down by 1 or 2. Finally, in the last 5-6 minutes, the "nays" stayed ahead.

All readers are encouraged to continue to hold their congressmen and senators' feet to the fire. Keep your letters and calls flowing to their offices to let them know you do not want this bailout.

After reading the draft text of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, I can say, with great confidence, it will not work. It is a sausage of divergent courses of action. Worse, it does nothing to guarantee that the banks, once bailed out, cannot or will not repeat the practices that brought us to the precipice of financial collapse.

This act would be better entitled the Economic Destabilization Act of 2008. It is little more than a debt consolidation loan for Wall St. It clears the banks books of risky debt, allowing them to restart or continue their lending.

Consumer lenders like myself know that debt consolidation loans are dangerous and rarely solve consumer’s debt problems. The only way they help is if the consumer cuts up their credit cards, stops borrowing, and curtails their spending. Then, and only then, does a debt consolidation loan work.

Unfortunately, what usually happens when consumers take out debt consolidation loans is their best intentions of better managing their spending habits gets lost. In almost every case, these consumers continue using their credit cards or borrowing on their home equity credit lines. They only end up in deeper debt that they find impossible to pay. If they are unable to get more credit, they end up in severe economic distress and often are forced into bankruptcy.

The only way I could support this message before the House today and due to come to the Senate on Wednesday is if it had the regulatory teeth to stop the banks from their risky lending practices. Oh, I am sure the banking lobbyists are promising to mend their ways. The Treasury Secretary, SEC Chairman, and Federal Reserve Chairman are trying to assure legislators that the banks have learned their lessons.

Unless regulatory control is in the legislation, I do not hesitate to tell you to vote “Nay” on it. A group of 400 economists, including three Nobel Laureate prizewinners, have signed a resolution to the Congress that this measure will only make the problem worse in the longer term. The only thing this Act would assure is the inevitable collapse of the entire world’s economy, according to these economists.

Yesterday, I heard one economist on CNN state, we can either allow an 18-month recession by not passing this measure or we can have a “decades-long depression.” I encourage you to vote “No” on this Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

For further information on the root causes of this crisis, please go to my blog at http://yankeereb.blogspot.com . There, you will find several essays posted in recent days on this subject.

Sincerely,
(signed)

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac: “Just the Facts, Ma’am”

Previously, I looked at the systemic roots of the current economic crisis. Today, let us look at the near-term causes of why we are being asked to foot an additional $700 billion bailout of our credit markets. Everyone seems to be ignoring or has already forgotten that the taxpayers have already incurred a $780 billion bailout in the last two weeks when the federal government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [M&M].

Every economist agrees that the need for a second bailout, this time of Wall Street, is the direct result of the housing bubble and the risky lending behind it. That lending was fueled by and supported by M&M. Before the Federal government was forced to take over M&M a few weeks ago, they owned or guaranteed “about $5.2 trillion worth of mortgages,” according to The Wall Street Journal. About 15 percent or $780 billion are in very risky “Alt-A” and sub-prime loans.

How and why did M&M get away with those kinds of risky business practices when they are government-sponsored entities, supposedly regulated by Congress? Well, M&M bought their protection from scrutiny.

M&M, over the past ten years, have spent over $200 million in lobbying expenses and campaign contributions to buy influence in Congress and protect them from stronger regulation. For the 2008 elections, they have contributed over $2 million to House and Senate members, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Who have been the beneficiaries of this largesse from M&M? Between 1989 and 2008, the top recipients of campaign contributions from M&M have been:

#1 Christopher Dodd received $165,400 ($116,900 from individuals and $48,500 from Political Action Committees)
#2 Barack Obama received $126,349 ($120,349 from individuals and $6,000 from PACs)
#62 John McCain who received $21,550 (all from individuals)
[Source: Center for Responsive Politics, The St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact Check http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/727/ and http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/2008/09/18/all-recipients-of-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-campaign-contributions-1989-2008/]

Why was Sen. McCain dead last among all Congressional recipients of M&M contributions? Sen. McCain joined Sen. Elizabeth Dole [R-NC] and Sen. John Sununu [R-NE] to co-sponsor the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 [S.190] authored by Sen. Charles Hagel, [R-NE]. This bill would have improved regulations on “secondary mortgage market enterprises” or M&M. In support of this legislation, Sen. McCain spoke on the Senate floor on May 25, 2006:

Mr. President [of the Senate], this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S.190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. [emphasis added]

[Source: The Congressional Record http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060525-16&bill=s109-190]

The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 passed the House of Representatives but was killed in the Senate by the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Christopher Dodd [Democrat]. M&M’s contributions to Dodd, who received more than any other member of Congress, paid off handsomely by staving off stricter control and oversight by Congress.

The Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought off Republican efforts to reform M&M. President Bush had proposed similar reforms in the previous Congress. “Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives, where they have earned millions in compensation, despite a continuing series of financial scandals.” [Source: Jerome R. Corsi, ”Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac execs now offering advice to Obama Senator's links to mortgage giants also include campaign contributions,” WorldNetDaily, September 17, 2008 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75586]

During the current election cycle, Fannie Mae has given 56 percent of their total $1.1 million in contributions and Freddie Mac has given 53 percent of its $555,700 in contributions to Democrats.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also strategically given more contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry. Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president."

[Source: Open Secrets.org http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/07/top-senate-recipients-of-fanni.html]

Why would M&M give over $126,000 to a freshman Senator, Barack Obama? It is remarkable that in a mere four years Sen. Obama outstrips all but Sen. Dodd in total funds received from M&M over a twenty-year period. Is it because M&M expects a President Obama would continue the Democrats’ protection against reform of the financial markets?

Three of Sen. Obama’s top advisors were former M&M executives: Franklin Raines, James Johnson, and Jamie Gorelick. Raines, budget director under President Clinton, was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. He earned $21 million during his last year there. Johnson was a former aide to Vice President Walter Mondale and the successor to Raines as Fannie Mae’s CEO from 1999 to 2004, earning $90 million.

“Even after he left, Fannie continued to pay him an annual fee of at least $300,000 a year for consulting services and a $71,000 monthly pension, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission… Fannie also paid for Johnson’s support staff, communications services and provided him a car and driver.”

[Source: Lisa Lerer, “Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence,” Politico, July 16, 2008 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11781.html] Gorelick, Clinton’s deputy attorney general, was vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003. He earned $26 million in that role.

All three were involved in various scandals and questionable accounting practices while at Fannie Mae, according to reports from The Washington Post and The Associated Press. Raines is Obama’s advisor on housing. He had to return $15.6 million in Fannie Mae stock options in a settlement negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “Until a controversy concerning an alleged $7 millions in questionable real estate loans he received on favorable terms from failed sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial surfaced and forced him to step down,” Johnson led Obama’s vice presidential selection committee. Gorelick was accused of conflict-of-interest while serving as a member of the 9/11 Commission in 1995 when she attempted “to establish barriers that barred federal anti-terrorist criminal investigators from accessing various federal records and databases that may have assisted them in their criminal investigations.” Dean and professor of law at Harvard Law School Elena Kagan and others have said Gorelick is Obama’s choice for Attorney General if he wins the election. [Source: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75586]

To be fair, Sen. McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis is a former lobbyist for M&M. Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., McCain’s vice presidential search committee head, was a former employee. Questioned about these links, McCain’s economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin responded, “Sen. McCain has favored GSE reform in the past and continues to favor GSE reform. That’s unchanged.” [Source: op.cit.]

Commentator and reporter John Gibson in a recent interview with Heather Nauert put these issues in perspective. He said:

“Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs…Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people, and as it turned out, some people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions…Now remember, Obama’s ads and stump speeches attack McCain and Republican policies for the current financial turmoil. It is demonstrably not Republican policy and worse, it appears the man attacking McCain, Senator Obama, was at the head of the line when the piggy’s [sic] lined up at the Fannie and Freddie trough for campaign bucks. Senator Barack Obama, number two on the Fannie/Freddie list of favored politicians after just four short years in the Senate. Next time you see that ad, you might notice he fails to mention that part of the Fannie and Freddie problem.”
[Source: Ed Morrissey, “McCain’s attempt to fix Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in 2005; Obama can’t get AIG right,” HotAir, September 17, 2008 http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/17/mccains-attempt-to-fix-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-in-2005/]

Those are the facts. You decide which candidate -- Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama -- is most likely to reform our financial system as President.

Email Letter to Sen. John McCain

Dear Sen. McCain:

God bless you for putting country first before your political campaign. You are demonstrating the kind of courage we so desperately need. I do not know if the $700 million bailout can forestall an economic collapse into deflationary depression. I suspect it would only delay it, at best. Nonetheless, I trust that you will do your very best to protect the taxpayers of our country. I know you do not like the idea of government bailouts.

As far as all the silly talk about tomorrow night's debate, here's my suggestion if this vote cannot be accomplished by tomorrow. Sen. Barack Obama still does not seem to understand that when there is a crisis as serious as this one, routine has to be interrupted.

If Sen. Obama will not cancel the debate, then you should send Gov. Palin in your place. That's what a vice president does; she steps in for the president and represents him as requested.

Although everyone's expectation would be that she couldn't possibly stand up to Sen. Obama, I'll bet our "pitbull with lipstick" would clean his clock. Sending her to Ole Miss would shake up the Obama campaign like nothing else I can think of. If he refused to debate her, he would be accused of being too afraid to take her on. And, if he did, I am absolutely confident she could hold her own against him.

Looking forward to voting for you,

Forgotten Wisdom: "Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be"

Will the proposed $700 billion bailout of the banking industry work? Or, is an economic collapse into a deflationary depression unavoidable? Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that our economy is a house of cards, as I have warned for years.

Ever since going off the gold standard, the economy has been based on worthless paper or, more accurately, paper that is worth only what the market pretends it is worth. It has no intrinsic value. Banks are holding piles and piles of mortgage papers that the market has now decided are worth zero. The banks have run out of fools to buy these "toxic" loans, so they are stuck with them. Thus, they are unable to borrow more funds from the Federal Reserve to continue lending additional monies to new or existing customers. These banks are at their lending limits under funds' reserve rules that require them to have a certain percentage of their total funds as "cash" on hand. This has frozen the credit markets.

Now, let me make clear I am not an expert on investment or mortgage banking; my expertise and experience is in consumer lending. But, I have been a student of banking and credit issues for many years, and I worked in credit card operations for one of the largest banks in the world. I have railed against many of the changes in our banking system for years.

How did we get into this crisis? First and foremost, we foolishly went off the gold standard. That was the first step down this road to economic oblivion. If we ever hope to have a truly stable economy again, we must return to a monetary system based on gold, a commodity with intrinsic value. We cannot do that suddenly or immediately. If we did, our economy would completely collapse. However, returning to the gold standard should be our ultimate goal. We must recognize that the transition will be painful but necessary for long-term stability.

The next most disastrous change made in the banking system was deregulation that allowed federal banks to go into the mortgage, securities, and insurance businesses. This is the direct result of a mass amnesia regarding our economic history, specifically the Crash of 1929. I do not know if it is a failure of history education or a certain innocence that causes us to think such a disaster could not happen again to us. Whatever it was, we as a nation collectively forgot the lessons of the Great Depression.

Before that catastrophe, banks were heavily involved and leveraged in mortgages, security investment schemes, and insurance or risk management. After the crash, regulations in the the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 were put in place that strictly separated banking from mortgages, securities, and insurance. Mortgages were offered by Savings & Loans. Securities were handled by stock brokers, and insurance was sold only by insurance agencies. Commercial (consumer) banks could not engage in investment banking. "Never the twain would meet" was the rule to keep these different financial businesses separate.

These regulations kept the financial markets relatively stable for over sixty years until 1999. Then, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed by the Republican Congress and signed into law by the Democratic President Bill Clinton, discarded these stabilizing rules. "Universal banking" became the standard, launching a feeding frenzy of larger national and international banks gobbling up local and regional banks. Banks, stock brokerages, and insurance companies cannibalized each other. The lines between commercial and investment banking blurred. Financial institutions ballooned in size and diversity of products offered.

Although the process is too complicated to explain in this essay, the end result of banking deregulation of U.S. banking was the transformation of our economy from one based on industrial capitalism to financial capitalism. For an excellent analysis of this process, go to http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/II06Dj01.html . There, Henry C. K. Liu, chairman of a New York-based private investment group, explains, "Finance capitalism is a system in which capital is only a notional value upon which to build a gigantic mountain of hidden debt." In such a system, financial instruments, including stocks, are traded with valuations not based on physical assets. Instead, their value becomes "conceptual," something that exists only in the ether of financial computer systems or cyberspace. Critics' concerns about institutional and economic risk exposure have been dismissed as silly and old-fashioned in a post-modern financial world without borders.

Liu wrote for Asia Times in 2007:

"As an economist, Ben Bernanke [U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman] no doubt understands that the credit market through debt securitization has in recent years escaped from the funding monopoly of the banking system into the non-bank financial system...The Fed can only intervene in the money market through the shrinking intermediary role of the banking system, which has been left merely as a market participant in the overblown credit market. Thus the Fed is forced to fight a raging forest fire with a garden hose." [Henry C.K. Liu, "CREDIT BUST BYPASSES BANKS Part 1: The rise of the non-bank financial system," Asia Times Online, September 6, 2007 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/II06Dj02.html]

Liu understood that "the liquidity crunch is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is a decade of permissive tolerance for credit abuse in which the banks, regulators and rating agencies were willing accomplices." [Ibid.] The SEC is suppose to be the watchdog of these markets and an advocate or protector for investors. Liu said in 2007that there has been massive withholding of information from investors on the actual condition of many firms' books. He accuses, "The aim of this charade has not been to enhance the return on the public's investment, but to exploit the public trust to shore up a declining market and postpone the inevitable demise of wayward institutions." [Ibid.]

Liu warned in 2002 that unregulated markets always collapse. He went on to say,

"Such a decline can happen in a period of days in this age of program trading and socialized risk, even with circuit breakers and trading curbs. When that happens, structured finance will be a sea of dead and wounded in counterparty casualties, regardless of who won and who lost." [op.cit.]

He was spot-on as proven by the headlines of this past weekend.

Ultimately, our current financial crisis can be laid at the feet of our national foolishness in creating the Federal Reserve Bank. Our most esteemed founding fathers warned against ever establishing a central bank. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless." James Madison, father of the Constitution, understood the danger of tyranny if a central bank controlled the currency. He advised, "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance."

We did not listen, and we created a monster that was intended to protect free markets but is now about to devour our free market economy. As Liu states in his most recent essay,

"The lender of last resort has become a predator of last resort, nationalizing all dying enterprises. But it seems to be racing headlong onto the road of nationalization not so much as to help the common people as to keep dying financial dinosaurs alive." [Henry C K Liu, "Too big to fail versus moral hazard," Asia Times Online, September 23, 2008 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JI23Dj13.html]

This is exactly where we find ourselves today. We failed to learn the hard lessons of history. Treasury Secretary Paulson, along with the Federal Reserve Chairman and the SEC Chairman, are trying to persuade Congress and the American people that it is absolutely necessary to bail out the banks to the tune of $800 billion. The arguments of necessity can take away liberties as surely as conquering armies, as Thomas Jefferson warned.

Let us be very clear. If Congress approves this bailout, then we will cease being a capitalistic society. We will have slipped into national socialism if we nationalize our financial markets. We will no longer have a free market economy. Do we even remember who the last great advocate of National Socialism was? It was Adolf Hitler.

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West

The DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was distributed for free as an advertising supplement in newspapers across the country, including the Florida Times-Union, on Sunday. Today, I watched it. I encourage you to watch it if you have not done so already. It is a sobering explanation of who and what is behind radical Islamic jihad. Gather family, friends, and neighbors together to view it.

"Using images from Arab Television, Obsession reveals an 'insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching their children, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. The film has first hand interviews with experts including a former PLO terrorist-Walid Shoebat, a Nazi youth commander-Alfons Heck, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader-Nonie Darwish.

"The film shows, clearly, that the threat is real. A peaceful religion is being hijacked by a dangerous foe, who seeks to destroy the shared values we stand for. The world should be very concerned."

As the film makes clear, there are more than 1 billion Muslims in the world today, the vast majority of whom are peaceful and do not support Islamic terrorism. Experts estimate only 10-15% of all Muslims are believers in or supporters of violent jihad. However, that means there are 10-15 million radical Islamists in our midst around the world. They are in every country, and their numbers cannot be dismissed. We ignore or deny this threat at our own personal and social risk. Their goal is total, uncompromising destruction of America, Britain, the Jews, and all Western (Judeo-Christian) culture. They want global domination and surrender to Islam with Sharia law replacing democratic government and liberties.

After viewing it, I encourage you to go to www.radicalislam.org to learn more about the issues and what actions you can take to stop radical Islam's war against the West. If you did not receive one in your paper and cannot find a copy to borrow, go to http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/shop_dvd.php to purchase it. The price is $14.95 plus shipping. The run time is 77 minutes.

Barack Hussein Obama Will Not Be America’s First Black President

Even if elected, Barack Hussein Obama will not be America’s first black president. He would become our first biracial president, if the American electorate were foolish enough. It is as inaccurate to say Obama is black as it would be to call him white. He is neither; his ethnicity is biracial.

Why does this matter? Well, words mean things, as Rush Limbaugh frequently repeats. And, some would like to make this election about race, when it is not and should not be. The race card is being played already among some Obama supporters.

Jack Cafferty on CNN’s “Cafferty File” segment of The Situation Room dealt the race card on Thursday. His question asked, if Obama is not elected, does it mean that America is still racist? This question will be asked more frequently the closer we get to November 4th, especially if Obama’s poll numbers continue their downward trend. Cafferty just happened to be the first one I heard do it, but it was predictable.

The premise of the questions is: If whites do not vote for Obama, it must mean they are closet racists. It is a subtle play on white guilt. It might work, too, if Obama were black, but he is not. Obama is as white as he is black. During the early primaries, this reality posed a problem for many black voters; Obama was not black enough for them. Since then, black voters have joined Obama in his denial of his white heritage. This allowed him to clinch the Democratic nomination.

This denial may be new to other blacks but not to Obama. By his own admission, Obama has been denying his 50% whiteness since his early teens. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, he remembered: “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race [white] at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”(1)

Obama disdained his white grandparents’ and mother’s Midwestern roots. He wrote:

Theirs [his white grandparents] were the faces of American Gothic, the WASP bloodline’s poorer cousins…the world in which my grandparents had been raised, the dab-smack, landlocked center of the country, a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty…where fear and lack of imagination choke your dreams…(2)

About his white grandparents’ reaction to the marriage of his white mother to his black African father, Obama opined:

Whether Gramps realized it or not, the sight of his daughter [Barack’s mother Ann] with a black man offered at some deep unexplored level a window into his own heart. Not that such self-knowledge, even if accessible, would have made my mother’s engagement any easier for him to swallow. In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky…The whole thing seems so fragile in retrospect, so haphazard. And perhaps that’s how my grandparents intended it to be; a trial that would pass…

The family from Wichita had in fact moved to the forefront of Kennedy’s New Frontier and Dr. King’s magnificent dream. How could America send men in space and still keep its black citizens in bondage? …With his black son-in-law and his brown grandson, Gramps had entered the space age.(3)

Abandoned children often turn their missing parent into an idealized, heroic character. The pain of abandonment is too difficult to feel in its full reality. Therefore, abandoned children transform their pain into an intense, if misplaced, identification with the missing parent. Often, this is accompanied by an equal rejection of the parent and family who did not abandon them and is present in their lives. In fact, abandoned children often blame that parent for the missing parent’s leaving.

This was certainly true of Obama. He developed a fantasy vision of his African father and heritage while rejecting his mother’s. He wrote: “To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.”(4)

Writing of his father Barack Obama, Sr., Obama, Jr. admitted:

All my life, I had carried a single image of my father…The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader – my father had been all those things…It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin [Luther King] and Malcolm [X], [W.E.B.] Dubois and [Nelson] Mandela.(5)

Living in Hawaii with his white grandparents as a teen, Obama recalled:

I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight…I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant…I was living out a caricature of black male adolescence, itself a caricature of swaggering American manhood…(6)

On the basketball court, Obama befriended “blacks close to my age…whose confusion and anger would help shape my own.” Only rarely would he remember guiltily that he had white blood coursing through his veins:

White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first…Sometimes I would find myself talking to Ray [a black friend] about white folks this or white folks that, and I would suddenly remember my mother’s smile, and the words that I spoke would seem awkward and false…Our rage at the white world needed no object…no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure.(7)

Not only can Obama still not admit to being partially white, but also on his first trip to Kenya, he denied he was American. In an encounter in a Nairobi marketplace, Obama’s half-sister Auma translates a comment from an old woman, “’She says that you look like an American to her.’ ‘Tell her I’m Luo,’ I said, beating my chest.”(8)

No, Barack Hussein Obama can never be our first black president any more than he can be our 43rd white president. Obama could become our first biracial president. Too bad, if that should happen (God forbid), he would not want to be identified as an American president. No, as his writings prove, he would be our most racist president. Wake up, America.

1 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, (Three Rivers Press, New York, NY) 1995, 2004, p. xv
2 Ibid, 12-13; 15
3 Ibid, 22-23
4 Ibid, 51
5 Ibid, 220-221
6 Ibid, 75-76
7 Ibid, 80-81
8 Ibid, p. 310

Barack Hussein Obama “Disses” Flag Again…and Again…and Again….

At the “green” Democratic National Convention in Denver, over 12,000 U.S. flags were trashed after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field. I guess recycling does not apply to the American flag.

The flags were handed out to the crowds as they entered the stadium. They were waved throughout the convention’s closing event. Now, one would expect that the audience would want to keep their flags as mementoes of this “historic” event. And, that would happen except for one fact: these were Democrats.

Now, I’m sure a few did take their flag home and handled it with the respect it deserves. But that does not extirpate that 12,000 or more trashed their flags. After being alerted by an Invesco Stadium vendor involved in the post-speech clean-up, veterans retrieved the flags and sent them to McCain’s campaign for his Colorado Springs rally on Saturday, September 6th.

Realizing the potential for damage this story presents to Obama’s aspirations, the campaign went on spin cycle immediately. Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, claimed Republican operatives stole the flags for “a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism.” Another Obama campaign official reported, "All of the flags at Invesco were picked up and put in bags and into storage, along with the unused flags and campaign signs. The flags were going to be donated, and the signs were going to be sent out to be used elsewhere."

The problem with these denials is photographs clearly show the flags mixed in with other trash and left behind after the DNCC had vacated Invesco Stadium. Additionally, Boy Scouts had to sort through 84 bags of these flags in Colorado Springs because some were too soiled from other trash to be used at the McCain rally.

According to proper flag etiquette and federal statute [Title 4 Chapter 1 Section 8(k)], a flag should be disposed of only when it is “so worn it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of our country.” Then, “it should be destroyed, preferably by burning in a dignified manner.” Traditionally, groups such as the American Legion, VFW, and the Boy Scouts conduct these ceremonies on Flag Day, June 14th. Under no circumstances, should a flag be thrown into the garbage.

Is Anyone Surprised? Look at the Acceptance Speech Admission Ticket

At the same event, the crowd had credentials with an upside down flag behind a photo of Osama-Obama. An upside-down flag is the universal symbol of distress. It is an insult to the flag except in a true emergency, such as a ship in imminent danger of sinking

On the ticket, the blue union is in the lower left of the flag, below the red and white stripes. Caught red-handed, Obama spokesman Matt Chandler spun an excuse to KUSA-TV (Denver) that “the flag isn't upside down; it was just stylized to blend the stars on Obama's shirt with the flag.” As one commentator remarked: "It's an upside down American flag…Declaring it is anything else is a lie. Deflecting attention from it is a typical political maneuver. Falling for it is more proof of the dumbing down of the American voter."

These Are Only the Most Recent Examples of Obama’s Disdain for the Flag.

After clinching the Democratic nomination, Obama leased a 757 jet as his private campaign plane from North American Airlines. Their planes are decorated with American flags on the tail and on both sides of the fuselage. Obama had the plane refurbished. He replaced the tail flag with his campaign’s symbol and the fuselage flags with his campaign slogan. Nowhere are their any American flags on the outside or inside of Obama’s campaign plane.

During the primaries, Obama was photographed with Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Ruth Harkin at a steak fry for Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin. When the National Anthem was played, Richardson, Clinton, and Harkin placed their hands over their hearts. Obama, instead, stood with his fingers laced in front of him. When the National Anthem is played and a flag is present, proper etiquette is to face the flag and place one’s hand over one’s heart or, if in military uniform, stand at attention and salute.

For a long time, Obama refused to wear a flag lapel pin following the 9/11 attacks. When still an Illinois Senator, Obama told an Iowa television station, "I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great." More recently, Obama has been seen wearing a flag lapel pin.

Sources:
The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10398830
Digital Art Press http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/obama-denver-rally-throws-12000-american-flags-in-garbage-co-vets-save-them-and-use-them-at-mccain-rally/
Fox News http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/06/mccain-camp-to-chastise-dems-for-discarding-american-flags/
World Net Daily & KUSA-TV (Denver) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72802