Ponderstorm My Brainstorm on Life & Politics

The recording below contains a stunning admission by Barack Obama regarding the redistribution of wealth. It seems he is not arguing about whether we should or should not redistribute wealth but how best to do it. The recording is taken from a 2001 interview segment with the Odyssey radio program on WEBZ (91.5 FM) in Chicago. At that time Obama was an Illinois state senator from the 13th district and a senior lecturer in the Law School at the University of Chicago.

Please listen to this 4:17 audio segment and notice how Obama laments that the Warren Court was not that radical and failed to bring about redistributive change. He also said he was “not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts.” He does seem to think that it can be done legislatively, though, as an administrative function. Note his lack of opposition to the idea of wealth redistribution by government. Contrary to that, he seems to wholeheartedly support that notion.

Unfortunately the above recording contains just snippets of Obama’s redistribution of wealth statements. Does anybody know where a recording of the rest of the interview can be found?

My thoughts on this: Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, Video

As I noted in my polling post yesterday, we are witnessing an unprecedented amount of pro-Obama bias in the mainstream media. The bias is so widespread that in many circles it has become politically incorrect to even voice support for John McCain. This peculiar political scenario reminds me of the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen.

As the story goes, the emperor cares about little more than clothing and always wants to wear the best in the land. One day he is approached by two swindlers who promise him the finest suit from the most beautiful and amazing fabric in the world. This fabric, the emperor is told, is visible to only the wise. In short, anyone who is either stupid or unfit will not be able to see the fabric.

The weak-minded emperor is flattered by the swindlers and, when shown the magical “fabric” does not want to admit he cannot see it. So, to not appear stupid or unfit as emperor, he vainly pretends the fabric is beautiful and authorizes the suit be made at once. Similarly, none of the emperor’s ministers want to appear unfit or stupid so they also pretend to see the fabric and proclaim their admiration.

After much supposed labor, the swindlers tell the emperor that the suit is finished. The emperor, still not admitting he cannot see a stitch of clothing, is “dressed” in the suit. Those around him applaud and gush over the tailors’ workmanship and how good it looks on the emperor. The emperor in his vanity enjoys the attention and proceeds to parade through the capital in a special procession to show off his new “clothes” that only the wise can see. Everyone in the kingdom succumbs to the pressure to not appear stupid. They lavish admiration for the beautiful “clothing” that is fit only for the emperor.

During the parade, however, a small child cries out, “But he has nothing on!” At that moment the crowd no longer withholds their better judgment and admits that the child told the truth — the emperor really is wearing no clothes! The emperor, though, not admitting his foolishness, holds his head high and continues to proceed through the town without clothing.

I feel this nearly 200-year old fairy tale fits our times very well. I offer the following analogy: The emperor is Barack Obama who has been swindled into thinking he is “the change we can believe in” and a few other foolish, empty campaign slogans.

The mainstream news media, much like the emperor’s ministers, don’t want to appear foolish in front of the emperor since he has a rock star-like following among the young and the elite. Instead of researching the fabric (and noting its flaws, including lack of executive experience, radical associations, ACORN fraud, “spread the wealth around” socialism, give 95% a tax cut when only 65% pay any income taxes lie, etc.), the media swoons over the emperor’s fabric and overlooks the obvious. Meanwhile, they busy themselves microscopically researching the fabric worn by John McCain, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and others not associated with the emperor.

The American people, not wanting to appear stupid, feel compelled to go along with the adoring ministers (mainstream media) and likewise admire the fabric. In droves they also overlook its obvious flaws and enthusiastically proclaim its greatness. When asked, however, few can explain why they like the fabric. Instead they loudly proclaim that we need the emperor because he talks so well and looks so good to the world. Besides, what he is wearing doesn’t matter.

The rest of this analogy will be written on November 4th. Hopefully a child will step forward and tell the voting crowds that the emperor has no clothes on. When the crowds hear that child will they open their self-imposed blinded eyes and admit that Obama is an empty suit and unfit to serve as President? Only then, when voters realize the emperor is naked, will it be politically correct to oppose Barack Obama.

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign

There is such an incredible level of bias in most mainstream news media coverage in favor of Barack Obama that even the Clintons complained about not getting a fair shake during the Democratic Primary. You know it must be way out of balance when the smooth-talking Bill Clinton, the darling of the 1990s, is thrown under the bus in favor of somebody even more smooth-talking.

Howard Kurtz reported (Oct. 22) on a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that showed that “media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama.” In all, 57% of print and broadcast stories about John McCain were “decidedly negative” while only 14% were positive. Contrast that with Barack Obama’s coverage during that period: “36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.”

Kurtz continues:

The Wall Street meltdown appears to have been a turning point for both candidates. Thirty-four percent of the stories about Obama’s reaction to the crisis were positive, while 18 percent were negative. McCain’s coverage, though, went into a free fall after he initially declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” By the following week, more than half the stories about McCain were negative and only 11 percent positive, just as Obama’s coverage was turning positive by a margin of more than 5 to 1.

Kurtz’s concluding paragraph offers this statement:

While some will seize on these findings as evidence that the media are pro-Obama, the study says they actually contain “a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls . . .”

I will go a step further and state that many in the media are pro-Obama and clearly so. I feel that their pro-Obama enthusiasm carries over to the mechanics of polls and the interpretation of polling data.

Michael Barone wrote an intriguing article (Oct. 22) entitled “Are the Polls Accurate?” with a subtitle “Reading them right is more art than science.” Barone maintains that we can trust polls but “with qualifications.” He then points out several inherent imperfections in political polling that can cause under-representation for some candidates and over-representation for others. Sampling errors can be introduced by cell phone-only households, pollsters not calling back, and respondents refusing to answer questions. These factors can skew results. Also, it seems that during the Democratic Primary, some people didn’t want to admit they did not vote for the rock star-like Obama and so exit polling was higher than actual results.

That brings me to my final point in this article. Most people are probably familiar with the polls that show a large Obama lead over McCain; however, two polls (AP-Ipsos and AP-Gfk) released on October 22 suggest that the Presidential race is essentially tied with Obama at 44% and McCain at 43%. These polls showed that the race tightened after the third debate (which is something I predicted would happen).

Key takeaways from the AP-Ipsos poll are these: Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign, John McCain

Article II of the United States Constitution presents the qualifications for the office of the Presidency. I quote in part:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

There are questions about the birth place of Barack Obama. His paternal grandmother reportedly claims she witnessed his birth in Kenya, while others, including Obama himself, claim he was born in Hawaii.

If he was born in Kenya then he would not be a natural born citizen (his father was Kenyan and his mother American so U.S. citizenship would not flow to him as a birthright). Needless to say, assuming he is Constitutionally qualified, Obama could clear up the controversy by simply submitting his birth certificate as John McCain did (McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone to a military family).

However, to this day, Obama has not submitted his birth certificate or any records proving his citizenship. He refuses to release any college records as well that would state his citizenship. That has prompted at least one lawsuit to prove he is Constitutionally eligible to be President. The video below (10 minutes 52 seconds) is the story of one such lawsuit from a life-long Democrat and attorney in Pennsylvania.

Barack Obama’s refusal to show that he meets the basic Constitutional requirements for holding the office of the Presidency troubles me. It is a legitimate Constitutional question that should be asked of every candidate.

John McCain’s birth has been analyzed at length by the mainstream media and bloggers (see Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign, Video

Brian Perry wrote a well-reasoned article for today’s Madison County Journal entitled “Enemies Foreign and Domestic.” This editorial highlights his visit to the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC and provides a historical review of domestic and foreign terrorist attacks on the United States.

For the sake of a quick review, Perry noted domestic terrorist attacks that included those from anarchists, the Ku Klux Klan, the Weather Underground, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Timothy McVeigh. Foreign terrorists attacks included the pre-9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, multiple American embassies in Africa, and, of course, those on 9/11.

Perry elaborates on the museum’s exhibit of one particularly violent Klan member, the

Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers of Laurel, Mississippi. Bowers was suspected in hundreds of bombings and attacks. He orchestrated the fire-bombing that killed Vernon Dahmer and masterminded the killings of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in Neshoba County. Time Magazine called Bowers “the most dangerous man ever to don a white hood.”

Perry also wrote about the museum’s exhibit featuring the Weather Underground. As Perry noted, the Weather Underground was described by the FBI as “a small, violent offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), created in the turbulent ’60s to promote social change.” This organization has once again been in the news due to Barack Obama’s recent associations with Weather Underground member William Ayers. Perry continues:

The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks including bombings of the U.S. Capitol Building, the Pentagon, and the US State Department. In an article appearing in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, one of the organization’s founders, Bill Ayers, said “I don’t regret setting bombs” and looking back on their actions, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Senator Obama likes to claim that Ayers’ actions happened when he (Obama) was just eight years old. True. However, there is more to it than just Ayers’ past actions. To this day Ayers remains unrepentant and even expressed regret just a few years ago that they “didn’t do enough.” Perry writes: Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign